On December 15th, 57-year-old Dino Cerda of Del City, Oklahoma, reacted quickly when he heard a woman crying and yelling, “They got him. They got him.” Three pit bulls belonging to a neighbor, Antwon Moore, were mauling five-year-old Xavier Gomez in his grandparent’s backyard. “They were feeding on him,” Cerda said. “If I had got […]
A dog owner on Oahu, one of the Hawaiian islands, allowed her Rottweiler to run loose on the beach twice in one week, and two little girls were mauled, six days apart. You would think that after the first girl’s mauling, the dog owner would have prevented her savage animal from returning to the beach. […]
A one-month-old baby was mutilated for life by her parents’ pit bull in Bossier City, Louisiana, yesterday. The dog chewed off four of the infant’s toes while her parents were sleeping. The baby is going to a foster home and her parents hopefully will be going to jail. (For the news story, click here.) The issue […]
“I think they should be as illegal as owning a lion and they belong in zoos,” a Colorado judge said as he sentenced a pit bull owner on a criminal offense. It stemmed from an unprovoked attack upon a woman who knocked at the defendant’s door and was mauled by her pit bull. The judge […]
The discussion of breed specific laws requires us to understand what makes a dog “dangerous.” As I attempt to explain in the section of my website called Dangerous Dogs, the term “dangerous” can refer to a particular dog that attacked a person, a dog that belongs to an owner who repeatedly violates animal control laws, a […]
Virginia has joined Florida in establishing a registry of dangerous dogs. The web-based registry will publicize the location of dogs adjudicated as vicious throughout the state. (To read the article, click here.) It’s a good idea but it is not the only way to avoid a dangerous dog in your neighborhood. I addressed this last December […]
A new study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence has confirmed a link between ownership of high-risk dog breeds and deviant behaviors, crimes against children and domestic violence. Read Ownership of High-Risk (“Vicious”) Dogs As a Marker for Deviant Behaviors, J. Interpersonal Violence, Volume 21 Number 12, December 2006 1616-1634. Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s, the […]
Hilbert Jones, 66 years old, was tending his garden when he was attacked by three pit bulls on November 6, 2006, in Lumberton, NC (USA). They bit him 150 times and yet he has survived. In Robeson County, where this attack happened, there have been 94 dog bites since the beginning of this year. About […]
A new article in a Colorado paper refers to breed banning as “a Holocaust against dogs.” Once again we are stunned by the inappropriate and demeaning linking of breed specific laws and human horror. The 20th Century saw millions of human beings murdered in the Holocaust and genocides. To compare this to breed bans is […]
An Illinois man is on trial for killing his neighbor’s dog. The charge is animal cruelty. The dog was trespassing on his property, had been pursuing another animal, and was racing toward him for the apparent purpose of attacking him. (For details, click here to read the news article.) We read about dogs rushing into a […]