National Canine Research Council

Ontario Dogs on Death Row

February 5, 2010 – Brittany and Rambo, two dogs that haven’t bothered anyone, languish in the Brampton Animal Shelter, awaiting judicial proceedings for the capital crime of being labeled “pit bulls” in Ontario. 

The two were born in separate litters of the same parents.   The dam is a purebred boxer.   The sire was classified at one time as a pit bull, though the only veterinarian who has seen him says that he is an American bulldog/Boxer cross. The city, whose animal control seized the dogs in separate actions January 13, contends the original classification of the sire is enough to mark his offspring for destruction. 

However, confronted now by a storm of outrage and unwanted publicity, Brampton authorities postponed the execution originally set for February 5th.  A city spokesperson says that the city will proceed “with an abundance of caution” in determining whether or not the dogs meet the definition of pit bull under the Ontario’s Dog Owners’ Liability Act. Brampton has not, as of this writing, set a new date for issuing its determination. 

Are the men, women and children of Brampton safer today than they were on the day before Brittany and Rambo were seized, whatever the breed labels the city places on them? Has the government of Brampton set an example that any other municipality should even consider following? 

The answer to both questions, of course, is no. 

Brittany’s owner, Rui Branco, told Global News that six squad cars pulled up to his home, and intimidated the family into surrendering their pet. 

Rambo, owned by 75-year-old Maria Gaspar, had been spotted in his yard.  Though licensed as an American bull dog/Boxer cross, and properly vaccinated, Animal Control declared Rambo a pit bull, and removed him from his home. 

What we are witnessing in the story of Rambo and Brittany in Brampton is not a community securing its citizens from harm, but, rather, a full flowering of the abusiveness which results from laws such as Ontario’s DOLA. Trapped by its own reactive officiousness, the Brampton government has committed itself to defending the actions of Animal Control and hiding behind the letter of the DOLA, never mind the documentation presented by the dogs’ owners and veterinarians, and never mind that the dogs were at home bothering no one when animal control invaded private property and spirited them away. 

Some have hastened to the dogs’ defense – and blessed be all who have —  contending that Brittany and Rambo are not pit bulls.  We don’t argue with that. They don’t look like pit bulls to us either. But it’s not enough that the dogs do not look like pit bulls. It won’t be enough if the City of Brampton beats a bureaucratically comfortable retreat from the ill-considered ground it has staked out, and reunites Brittany with the Brancos, and Rambo with Maria Gaspar. 

It is only enough when all the dogs of Ontario are secure in their lives with the people who love them. 

“This is what happens when you unleash badly written, abusive legislation onto a public, and then put it into the hands of bureaucrats who make it their own and use it to terrorize people,” MPP Cheri Di Novo told Global News.  DiNovo has previously introduced a bill to repeal the breed specific provisions of the Dog Owner’s Liability Act. (see story below)

Not that far to the west, Calgary’s breed-neutral Animal and By-Law Services has set an example of service and cooperation with its citizens that Brampton, and all Ontario, would do well to emulate. 

Ontario’s Parliament passed this vicious law. The story of Brittany and Rambo in Brampton is an excellent reason to unpass it.

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Bill to repeal Ontario pit bull ban introduced.

(Compiled from various sources.) On November 18, 2009, MPP Cheri DiNovo introduced* legislation to repeal the Ontario-wide pit bull ban that has been in effect since 2005.

DiNovo wants Ontario to follow the lead of countries such as the Netherlands and Italy, which have repealed their breed specific regulations in the last few years because they s had no effect on the incidence of dog bites.

 “All breed specific bans do is harm owners and dogs,” DiNovo said. “It’s a kind of grudge law.”

 Despite the opposition of Premier Dalton McGuinty, DiNovo’s bill passed its first reading.  .

(*In Canadian news stories, you will read that the bill was “tabled.”  Tabled has a different in meaning in Canada than in the U.S. To table a bill in Canada means to introduce it for consideration.  In the U.S., to table a bill is to remove it from consideration.)

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 Mayor Hobart expresses regret over Sioux City pit bull ban

By Lynn Zerschling lzerschling@siouxcityjournal.com

January 20, 2010:  Sioux City Mayor Mike Hobart said Tuesday he regrets voting to ban pit bulls in 2008 and would consider lifting that breed ban.

He also said he would consider tweaking the city’s vicious-animal law but doesn’t want to revisit the issues with hours of public hearings.

“I’ve had a lot of discussion with individuals and their desire to see that rescinded,” he said of the pit bull ban, addressing the matter at the conclusion of a budget session. He said he’s heard “some heart-wrenching stories. … I would vote to rescind it tomorrow. I was never a strong proponent of it. I thought we would give some exceptions and found out too late we didn’t. I think everything done by the council was with the best of intentions.”

Councilman Aaron Rochester, who proposed the pit bull pan two years ago, said the measure was based on information he and the city attorney had gathered. Before the ban is lifted, he said, city staff should provide a report on whether the ban has had a positive or negative effect on dog bites.

Rochester suggested that if it is brought back, the three newly seated councilmen — Keith Radig, Tom Padgett and John Fitch — be briefed on the reasons the council enacted the ban.

Radig said he would support continuation of the pit bull ban, noting he’s worried his children would be bitten by pit bulls running free at Headid Park.

Padgett said, “I’m not a breed specific person. I think a lot of it has to do with responsible owners. I would like to see the data.” Fitch agreed, saying he would like a report on the impact the ban has had.

City Manager Paul Eckert said he will propose a way for the council to obtain recommendations from such groups as the Public Policy and Animal Control Advisory committees and others.

Regarding changes to the vicious-animal ordinance, Rochester said he has been prepared to recommend changes for months. He said, however, he does not want to discuss the vicious-animal law and the pit bull ban at the same time, contending they are separate issues.

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 What has remained the same from that day to this?

It is the purpose of the NCRC to honor the contribution that dogs make to our lives.  Nevertheless, because of  the volume and scope of sensationalized misinformation about fatal dog attacks that saturates the internet, we are prompted  to address the statistically insignificant number of dogs that inflict fatal injuries.

An examination of the fatal dog attacks that we have been able to identify that occurred 25 years ago demonstrates the point that we have been trying to make for years, and that earlier researchers into fatal dog attacks made:  that the breeds of dogs involved in fatal attacks change over time.

What does not change is the circumstances surrounding the majority of these incidents: chained dogs, unsupervised children with unfamiliar dogs, and reckless behavior on the part of some adult victims.

See list of fatal dog attacks from 1974:

NCRC FDA 1974

 

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Aptly named “Angel” – this dog saved her young master from a cougar attack in British Columbia

Boy calls dog who fought off cougar his ‘guardian’

 Sunday, January 3, 2010 -   CBC News

A boy from Boston Bar, British Columbia, whose golden retriever saved him from a charging cougar says he wouldn’t be alive if his dog hadn’t stepped in.

Austin Forman, 11, was gathering firewood in his backyard at about 5 p.m. PT Saturday when his dog, Angel, started acting strangely.

Angel started following him to and from the woodshed, Austin said, almost as though she was checking to make sure he was OK.

Suddenly, Angel ran toward Austin and jumped over a lawn mower — right into the path of a charging cougar.

Angel the white retriever, credited with saving an 11-year-old boy’s life, suffered only minor injuries. (RCMP)”I knew at that moment that I would have to go get help, otherwise [Angel] wouldn’t have any hope,” Austin said.

As Angel fought the cougar, Austin ran inside, where his mother called 911.

When the RCMP arrived on scene minutes later, they found the cougar under the back porch of the house, chewing on Angel’s neck.

An officer shot the cougar, killing it instantly.

Austin said it was the first time he’d ever seen a cougar in the yard.  “I was shocked and scared at the same time.  I wasn’t expecting a cougar at all to be in our yard,” he said.

“I feel very, very lucky. If it wasn’t for my dog, I don’t think I would be here.”

Austin said he now feels very differently about Angel. “She was my best friend, but now she’s more than a best friend — she’s like my guardian now.”

Angel suffered some puncture wounds on her head, neck and one of her hind legs. Austin was not hurt.

Boston Bar is located roughly midway between Vancouver and Kamloops.

In July, 2006, another Canadian dog defended his master

 

Tom Tilley and his dog, Sam

Waterloo, Ontario - Following a swell of national attention highlighting the heroism of Tom Tilley and his dog Sam, offers  flooded in to pay for the dog’s medical treatment.

Some callers wanted to nominate Sam for a canine hero award.

When a bear had blocked Tilley’s path, and begun advancing menacingly, Sam, his Staffordshire terrier, placed himself between Tilley and the bear.  Sam was wounded when the 90-kilogram animal grabbed the dog in his jaws, tearing away skin and leaving several puncture wounds.

Thinking to himself , “You’re not going to kill my dog,” the horrified Tilley drew his hunting knife,  leaped onto the bear’s back, and began stabbing. Tilley killed the bear, and was himself injured in the struggle.

Following the incident , Tilley and Sam were inundated with media requests from across Canada, as well as with calls and e-mails from well-wishers.

“Personally, I’ll be glad when it dies down,” the soft-spoken Tilley had said.

Sam was recovering well.

“We went to the vet today,” Tilley told reporters at one point. “We were hoping to get some of the tubes out from the surgery, but they’re staying in for a little while longer.”

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NCRC Comment:  We all like to believe we can visually identify different breeds of dogs, but new research by animal experts is proving otherwise.   Denver Post Columnist, Bill Johnson, admits he too, has been “educated” on the unreliability of visual breed identifications.

If experts cannot ID dog breeds, how can cities?

 
By Bill Johnson,  Denver Post Columnist
December 16, 2009

So you think you know about dogs?

Sorry, you do not.

I break this news to you only because I got put to such a test Tuesday, along with about two dozen animal-shelter directors, volunteers, dog trainers and others who make a dog-related living.

The task was simple: View 20 dogs on a videotape and identify each one. Is it purebred or mixed? If believed a mix, what is the mixture of each?

How hard could it be?

All I know about dogs, I quickly learned, is that one lives with me. Of the 20 dogs shown, I got the breed correct one time, but only because it looked like Lupe, my mutt.

I did only slightly worse than the professionals.

“I was completely wrong. I probably got three to four out of the 20,” claimed Laurie Buffington, a Berthoud dog trainer, as we left a classroom at the Longmont Humane Society.

“Think you can tell just by looking?” was the teaser for the breed identification study we participated in. It was run by Victoria L. Voith, a professor of animal behavior in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University in Pomona, Calif.

What I and the others ultimately learned is you cannot simply look at a dog and know what it is.

Shelter workers, she explained, are generally 75 percent wrong when they list or tell you the breed of a dog. The only sure-fire way of knowing, she said, is DNA testing.

“I started this study,” Voith said, “because I am a lover of German shepherds and was appalled that every short-haired breed with brown hair was called a German shepherd. It simply isn’t so.”

Outside of the Lupe-looking Chihuahua-mix, I thought every dog looked like a pit bull or a shepherd-mix.

“So what in the hell is Lupe?” I jotted in frustration in my notebook about halfway through the session. I was not getting even remotely close.

My favorite of all was the 20th dog, a three-legged cutie that had been thrown from a car. She was not the English sheepdog I suspected, but a shih-tzu. Everyone else misidentified her too.

Through her work, Voith hopes to put to the lie two things: studies on which dogs bite the most, and the wisdom of municipal breed-specific bans, such as Denver’s, where hundreds of suspected pit bulls have been put to death.

“Visual identification simply is not in high agreement with DNA analysis,” she said when I protested that a dog I had falsely, dead-to-rights identified as a pit bull turned out through DNA testing to be mostly Dalmatian. “Dogs in Denver may be dying needlessly,” she said.

She hopes that her work, which she expects to be published in a year, will better inform cities and statistics gatherers on breeds most likely to bite.

“We really don’t know yet. I don’t think we have ever really known,” she said.

The professionals all walked out scratching their heads, each mumbling something akin to “that was very informative!”

“I always thought I was really good at identifying breeds,” a chastened Shantel Southwick, another Berthoud trainer, moaned. “And cities are killing dogs based on uninformed visual identification? That’s pretty scary. It’s heartbreaking, really.”

[Victoria Lea Voith, PhD, DVM, DACVB, is a Professor of Animal Behavior at Western University.]

* * *

Do You Know a Pit Bull Mix when You See One?

Animal controls and shelters assign a breed label to every dog they admit into their facility.  How accurate is a label given a mixed breed dog whose parentage is unknown?  And what does the label signify? Does it strengthen or weaken the human-canine bond? In a climate of breed discrimination, the label “pit bull” or “pit bull mix” can signify a great deal, even life or death for the dog.  If the label “pit bull mix” meant the dog would never leave the shelter, how would you label these sixteen dogs?

  Most people think these dogs are pit bull mixes

 How about a Labrador Retriever mix?

Most people think these dogs are lab mixes

 

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The dog pictured above is  a sad and terrible reminder of the untold number of abused dogs that suffer at the hands of human beings.  How many dogs tolerate unimaginable cruelty, yet live and die quietly, unrecognized and unnoticed?  

There is a great deal to be learned from the overwhelming and silent majority of dogs that don’t bite. Among other things, we might have more compassion, as a society, for dogs that seem to have every reason to bite, but don’t.  We might be more aware that a great many dogs do not live in familial, companionable circumstances with the human beings upon whom they are dependent for their very survival.

We might even turn our attention away from the dogs long enough to look at the owners who do them wrong.

If there is any wisdom to be gleaned from epidemiological and behavioral research into dogs that have bitten, would it not be even more illuminating to study the dogs in distress that haven’t bitten, even in the face of extreme neglect and/or cruelty?

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The real meaning in dog bite statistics is that dogs are incredibly tolerant of human behavior.

Tallies  of severe or fatal dog attacks reveal  no useful information on general canine behavior because they are only a tally of  an infinitesimal number of dogs  that reacted to a situation with extreme aggression.

The dog below is one of the thousands or perhaps millions of dogs  that despite suffering tremendous provocation and abuse, still attack no one.

What about a study of that dog?

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Man assaults police by throwing pit bull at them.  Dog does not bite the officers.

August 20, 2009:  St. Petersburg, Florida — An assailant who attacked police officers used a dog, police said, throwing a pit bull at officers not once, but twice.

The dog did not attack the officers either time he was thrown at them.

“That’s a new one,” St. Petersburg police spokesman Bill Proffitt said of the incident involving the dog.

The assault took place at 4114 Fairfield Ave. S.   A woman recovering from surgery told police her troubled son refused to leave their home.

The son, Renaldo L. Gary, wouldn’t budge from the doorway, police said. Then he struck Officer Michael Romano, ran outside and grabbed a family pet.

Gary threw the dog at Officer Romano, police said, yanked on the dog’s chain, pulled the animal back to him and then thew it at the officer again.

In stark contrast to the dog, Gary hit Officer Norma Alanis, police said, and shook off two Taser blasts and a dose of pepper gas before the two officers handcuffed him.

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Find out by trying to identify Zeus (pictured below) and by taking our test

 

Hi, I’m Zeus.    Can you guess what kind of dog I am?

DNA is now proving that visual identifications are NOT reliable in determining a dog’s genetic make-up.

Answer to Zeus’s Breed:   Zeus’s ancestry contains significant amount (over 50%) Labrador Retriever.  Zeus also has faint signals from other breeds which are not strong enough to identify. *

Wisdom Panel™ MX Tested: February 2009

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National Canine Research Council