Shameless Bragging

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A few months ago, I sent an article I wrote to the local newspaper for a column-writing contest. And I won! I would have been happy enough just to have the media exposure, but I also got a $250 cheque, in addition to multiple offers from women of Christian virtue to bear my children. Of course though, you know I'm only joking. I didn't really get any money.

For posterity, and your reading enjoyment, here is the article as it appeared in the January 10th, 2005 edition of the Ottawa Sun:

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Dogged by Bad Press

The face, framed by a spiked collar and riveted steel muzzle, appeared poised to lunge for my throat, despite those evidently necessary constraints. Thankfully, the demonic figure I had spotted was safely contained in an above-the-fold newspaper photograph. Still, the image was impossible to forget. A picture says a thousand words, and the few lines captioning the photo were barely necessary to tell me that there had been yet another frightening pit bull attack.

When he introduced his plan to rid Ontario of pit bulls, Attorney General Michael Bryant referred to them as “inherently dangerous animals.” And if any dog looks “menacing” enough, Section 13 of the proposed Bill 132 grants police officers the right to obtain a warrant to enter the premises where one of these “ticking time bombs” has been reported. Thank goodness. The authorities need the power to protect us from all that exploding pit bull shrapnel.

It sounded like pretty sobering stuff, and frankly, after all I had heard, getting rid of these obviously crazed canines made perfect sense to me. In reading one news report, I learned that in the process of killing one of the animals, a police officer had needed twelve bullets to slay the creature. Twelve bullets! Maybe body armour should be made from pit bull carcasses. I asked a dog-loving colleague of mine her opinion of the beasts: “I don’t go near them,” she sniffed. “They scare me. They’re the ones responsible for the really severe mauling.” Severe mauling, pit bulls? How do you know that? A frown. “It’s in the news almost every day, isn’t it?” And Bryant himself stated that he had received thousands of messages from citizens saying much the same. It seemed that everybody was on board then; this is no-brainer legislation that can only help both an increasingly unpopular provincial government and its concerned citizens.

However, so far, the Ontario government has not commissioned any survey or study to back their claim that the majority of Ontarians support a ban of pit bulls.

In addition, in quoting that “pit bulls account for between 48 and 56 per cent of serious dog bites” in the United States, Bryant failed to mention that his numbers originate from an obscure Washington state publication, and that those figures are non-representative of dog attack trends in America. Why should it be necessary to cite such a deceiving statistic? Isn’t there a solid case for breed specific legislation?

The answer is: No, there isn’t. There are no reliable studies in Canada recording dog attack statistics. And when asked for any evidence at all that pit bulls are genetically predisposed to violence, Bryant actually admitted that, “I don't know of any scientific evidence in terms of looking literally at their DNA or looking at the genetics of it.” Essentially, he acknowledged there is no empirical data supporting the ban. This breed-specific legislation, in his own words, is a ban of uninformed, discriminatory prejudice, based on a handful of sensationalized individual experiences.

Interestingly, when Bryant makes sweeping generalizations regarding pit bulls, that they are genetically inherently dangerous, he is saying that all dogs are predisposed to violence, because the “pit bull” is not a purebred animal. It is bred from an undeterminable number of other breeds that are probably running around our neighbourhoods. And even if a particular strain of pit bull can be traced along a specific lineage, suggesting that they are predisposed to any kind of specific behaviour is like saying that racial profiling for humans is acceptable – something that no government in Canada agrees with.

The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association is against any form of dog breed ban.

And so is the Canadian Safety Council.

Why does the Ontario government support it? Bill 132 was one of the fastest Bills to be approved by Queen’s Park in history.

Perhaps they all saw the same scary photograph I did.
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