Strollerderby : pit bulls

Pit bulls and kids: Scared or Perfectly Comfortable?

JeanneSager — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:34:00 GMT

For the first time since a law was enacted putting the responsibility for a dog's attack on its owner, a Texas couple has been convicted in the death of a 7-year-old child. They were sentenced to seven years, one for each year of life taken from their 7-year-old neighbor by their vicious pack of pit bulls.

I know what you're thinking. She's gunning for those dogs. But where my heart aches for parents who've lost their child, I can't blame that all on a dog. And I wouldn't blame it all on a breed.

Tanner Joshua Monk was walking to playing with other neighborhood kids the last time his parents saw him on May 18. He was headed in the direction of Crystal Smith and Jack Watson's house. His body was later found in a ditch, surrounded by the couple's four pit bulls, 100 yards from his home and 70 yards from Smith and Watson's property line. The dogs were outside of their property and a clear danger - so more power to the court that convicted the couple for not keeping them locked up.

BUT, and this is a big but, I'm not ready to join the forces out there who are ready to ban pit bulls to protect our kids. That makes as much sense as banning cars because accidents are the leading cause of death in American children, and automobiles account for the largest number of these accidents (according to the National Institutes of Health).

Not every pit bull is a hulking beast with bloodthirsty jaws and no heart, a lesson I learned after warily watching as my friend began dating and then bought a house with a pit bull owner. Their move put the dog in the same house as her now 4-year-old son, who invites my daughter over for frequent playdates. Buster is certainly strong. His body is a lean block of muscle so strong that when he's leaning on me - as he loves to do, it's one of his ways of showing affection - he could easily drop me to the floor. That he maintains the control not to let me fall was one of the first signs that I could let down my guard when Buster is around my daughter.

He is your classic case of nurture versus nature, a dog whose owner has worked hard to train him to obey. My friend's boyfriend has lavished him with the kind of love that has brought out in a breed known for its mean streak a desire to cuddle up on the couch with anyone who's willing. He's no more of a danger to my daughter than our own dog, an exuberant hound and boxer mix who's more than earned a sign on our door that reads "warning, an attack licking may occur." Her presence in our home is also part of the reason I have stopped worrying about Buster. From the get go, we've taught our daughter how to act around animals, not to grab their tails or touch them while they're eating. Out in public, we warn her not to approach an animal without first asking its owner if she can put out a hand.

Maybe being a dog owner has made me biased, but I've never owned a pit bull. I wonder, how do other dog owners feel about their kids around pit bulls?

Image: The Sula Foundation, a rescued pit bull puppy

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Woman Tapes Dogs' Mouths, Gives Birth

Amy Kuras — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:24:00 GMT

I am on record as not especially loving our family dog, especially post-baby: she smells, she vomits if she drinks water too fast or eats people food, which she steals from the table or the counter if we’re not looking, and she barks piteously when we leave the house.

And after a particularly hair-raising escaping incident that had our deeply kind friends out at midnight and again at 5 am searching for her, finding friends to dog-sit is a little bit, um, challenging.

But I’ve never considered resorting to this: a woman in Johnston, RI taped her two pit bull’s mouths shut while she checked into the hospital for two days to give birth to her son.

Animal control finally found the dogs after neighbors reported no one entering or leaving her apartment (that’s right, she had two pit bulls, which are not small dogs, in an apartment) for two days and the sound of whimpering dogs. The dogs were emaciated when they were taken away by animal control.

Let’s just think about the wisdom of this woman: not one, but two, pit bulls in an apartment soon to contain a baby. Yes, I know pit bulls can be wonderful dogs when treated well, but somehow I am guessing these dogs were more likely not. Owner thinks this is an appropriate way to treat dogs – what happens when she needs to step out on the baby? And this is a 20-year-old with so little common sense, cash, or social support that she couldn’t find someone to care for her dogs while she was gone.

She’s been charged with two counts of animal cruelty. Let’s hope she’s convicted and her sentence includes some parenting classes lest her kid gets a similar level of care, huh?

Woman Clones Her Pit Bull—Five Times

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:30:00 GMT

While this stor y will hopefully never be remotely related to parenting human babies, this woman’s quotes are so priceless that I just had to share. Plus, she’s essentially paying to torture puppies, and she should get some backlash for it, even if it’s only of the indignant blogger variety.

Losing a pet is awful. No one knows this better than I, who cried for days after my goldfish died. (Don’t even get me started on my dog.) So I feel for Bernann McKinney, who took the loss of her beloved pit bull Booger quite hard. Still, I can’t exactly condone her method of grieving. McKinney recently became the first person in the world to pay to clone a pet. After selling her house to raise the necessary sum—when defying death, one must make sacrifices—McKinney had a South Korean cloning company create five puppies using a piece of the original Booger’s ear.

McKinney couldn’t be happier with Booger McKinney, Booger Lee, Booger Ra, Booger Hong, and Booger Park. “I dream of the day, some day, when everyone can afford to clone their pet because losing a pet is a terrible, terrible loss to anyone,” she said.

Let us pray that McKinney’s dream is never realized. Cloning carries a high risk of miscarriage and still birth, and those animals that do survive are usually plagued with health problems. As RSPCA scientist Penny Hawkins put it, “I can’t believe that any true dog lover would condone causing suffering to dogs and wasting their lives for such a trivial and selfish purpose, particularly when animal shelters worldwide have thousands of dogs who need loving homes.” I'm pretty sure Booger would agree.

Photo: Getty Images

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