Sunday, September 6, 2009

Chihuahua confused for a pit bull

It's a tragic story - five loose dogs (with a history of getting loose, no less) began attacking two foals. Their mothers' intervened and eventually had to be euthanized from their injuries.

The horses were being cared for by Serenity Equine Resue and Rehabilitation and on their home page, you can read that all five dogs were pit bulls. In the original Seattle Times report, the dogs are labeled as pit bulls as well.

Except they were not. Two were pit bull mixes. Two were mixed breeds, mutts. One was a Chihuahua mix.All five were mixed breeds, none were purebred "anything".

It is awful that these horses died. The owner of the dogs has a history of letting his dogs run loose. They have gotten into fights with other dogs. They have scared people.

None of that has to do with their breed, of course. Any dog can be aggressive and almost all mid-size to large dogs can cause significant physical harm (small dogs can too).

All of it comes down to human behavior. We have an owner/guardian unwilling to comply with common courtesy and the law by leaving the hole in his fence. We have a clearly understaffed animal control, sheriff's department who are unwilling to offer any other assistance than "shoot the dogs if they're worrying your livestock". It's a nasty cycle that has now ended in the deaths of seven animals. All because of one hole.

5 comments:

Kembree said...

Sad to hear that...so violent :(

Ashley The CRPS Girl said...

::sigh:: Maybe one day the media will want to start reporting truth rather than clinging to a stereotype they can sensationalize. Or you know, placing blame where blame is due-on the irresponsible owner and the lack of truly enforcing leash laws.

Unknown said...

@Kembree - it's very sad and violent (on many levels).

@Ashley - before 24/7 news, journalists had to do a lot of fact-checking and research before publishing. Sure, mistakes were made and there were sensationalist "news" agencies...but sometimes I wish it was more like that, you know, reporters taking a lot more time researching their stories and getting all the information first.

Anonymous said...

and of course it's stories like this that fuel the Merritt Clifton-Patrick Burns insistence that pit bulls are responsible for everything bad

EmilyS

Unknown said...

@EmilyS - I agree. If you're using news articles as your fact-based source of statistical data, then you're doing something wrong.