I have scars on my leg from being attacked by a German Shepherd when I was ten -- I was selling Girl Scout cookies door to door, and the animal zoomed out of the house when the door was opened and latched onto my thigh.
I'm not sure I have much of a point, except that *any* breed of dog can be dangerous, and if you actually look at breed attack statistics, you start seeing cocker spaniels and chow chows. But there's a class divide in the popularities of those animals, and I think more than anything its class consciousness that drives pit bull bans.
Laws against puppy-milling would go much farther towards protecting children from maulings than trying to select out "dangerous" breeds.
This crap gets to me because, despite the fact that I recognize that breed predicts some aspects of temperment and intelligence in dogs, the whole thing smells of eugenics; and, as a former victim of a dog attack, it makes me feel like people would rather take easy shots than go after the industries that depend on and promote animal and human suffering. None of these dangerous breed laws would have protected *me*.
(Yes, I take the position that a well-bred German Shepherd, with, allegedly, no history of any behavior problems, would not have attacked a child unprovoked.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-05-04 11:45 pm (UTC)I'm not sure I have much of a point, except that *any* breed of dog can be dangerous, and if you actually look at breed attack statistics, you start seeing cocker spaniels and chow chows. But there's a class divide in the popularities of those animals, and I think more than anything its class consciousness that drives pit bull bans.
Laws against puppy-milling would go much farther towards protecting children from maulings than trying to select out "dangerous" breeds.
This crap gets to me because, despite the fact that I recognize that breed predicts some aspects of temperment and intelligence in dogs, the whole thing smells of eugenics; and, as a former victim of a dog attack, it makes me feel like people would rather take easy shots than go after the industries that depend on and promote animal and human suffering. None of these dangerous breed laws would have protected *me*.
(Yes, I take the position that a well-bred German Shepherd, with, allegedly, no history of any behavior problems, would not have attacked a child unprovoked.)