From My Google Alerts- October 16, 2010

A man in Russia keeps his dog in his car instead of at his house as most normal people keep their pets. The dog is described as a “large pit bull terrier” and he lives in his owner’s old Volga car. The man says he cannot keep the dog at home. This is just so sad because no dog, especially pit bull type dogs should have to be confined to such a small space. The Russian police have stated that the man is not breaking any laws thus there is nothing they can do about the situation.

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An 11-month-old boy was bitten by the family dog, a yellow Labrador retriever named Fat Boy, in Nebraska last week. The baby, the mother, and the dog were all lying in the mother’s bed until she got up to get something. She then saw the dog bite the child, lacerating his forehead and biting his cheek. The dog will more than likely be put down; however, no breed of dog is mentioned in the article headline.

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In Hillsboro, Oregon, a man was bitten by a police search dog when they responded to a call about a possible break in at an Oregon rock museum. The man has been dubbed the “Moss Man” because he was concealed on the ground by a moss-like camouflage outfit. The “Moss Man” allegedly had secretly cut a hole in one of the building's walls days earlier and was trying to get in. Deputies who responded searched the grounds, finding a bike and a backpack.

"The K9 tracked to a wooded area and was very interested in a particular piece of ground about a half a mile away from the building," Thompson said in a release. "The dog then bit the ground that in turn cried out in pain."

The officer then realized there was a man hiding at his feet, dressed in a "ghillie" suit, Thompson said. A ghillie suit is a head-to-toe camouflage outfit used by military snipers to blend in with vegetation. The man was then arrested and is being held at the county jail.
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In Lebanon, Ohio, two women were attacked and bitten by a German shepherd dog when it approached them while walking down the street. The dog jumped on the 18-year-old woman, biting her arm. The dog turned on the mother when she came to her daughter's defense. The dog’s breed is not mentioned in the headline.
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A schnauzer was killed by a pit bull type dog last week after the pit bull attacked it for the second time in eleven days. Michael Kopynec, the 22-year-old irresponsible owner of the pit bull, was arrested Thursday and booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on one count each of unlawful ownership of a dangerous dog and negligent injuring.
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Carrie Rae McKinney of San Diego will not face charges following the April incident when her 7-month-old son’s genitals were mutilated by her boyfriend’s mixed breed dog. She had left the baby unattended in his car seat on the floor when one of the dogs tore into his diaper. One week prior to this incident, her older two children were removed from the home by Child Protective Services.
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In Detroit, a pit bull was shot and killed when it bit a police officer responding to a call about gunfire between two groups of boys. Police arrived and a pit bull was released. The pit bull bit one of the police officers. That is when the officer shot and killed the dog.

  

From My Google Alerts- October 10, 2010

In Iceland, an aggressive raven attacked a dog and a child. It was euthanized.

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In Sacramento County, California, three pit bull type dogs were shot during two separate incidents. One of the dogs that were shot was killed as a result; the dog was a ten-month-old female and was pregnant. The fact that the owners of the dogs in the separate incident have a 10-month pregnant female leads me to believe that AC should have taken the remaining dog because these people are not responsible enough to have a dog of any breed period.

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A K-9 dog was bitten by a man after it jumped out of its police cruiser to help the officer who handles him. A suspect started an altercation with the officer and began punching him in the face. That is when the dog jumped out and bit the man who in turn bit the police dog causing it to yelp in pain.

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Two Rottweilers will be euthanized in Florida this week following their attack on a woman and her nephew. The woman was checking on the dogs while their owner was out of town. The owner surrendered them after the attack.

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In Vicksburg, twelve pit bulls were found chained in the woods by firefighters responding to a fire in the woods. Three of them had severe wounds. The Humane Society president said the dogs probably won’t be adoptable.

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In Elk Grove, police shot and killed two loose pit bulls after they acted aggressively towards an elderly couple and two other men. They attacked one man who tried to help scare them away. He received stitches and he is recovering at home.

New Study Explains Why Breed Specific Legislation Does Not Reduce Dog Bites*

New Study Explains Why Breed Specific Legislation Does Not Reduce Dog Bites*
Important article now available from JAVMA website.
October 1, 2010 — For years, evidence has mounted that breed specific legislation (BSL) fails to reduce dog bite incidents. The data supporting this conclusion has come from cities and counties all over North America, and from four European countries.
An insightful new analysis, recently published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, explains why BSL has consistently failed to reduce dog bites. The authors, Gary J. Patronek, VMD, PhD, and Amy Marder, VMD, CAAB, of the Center for Shelter Dogs, Animal Rescue League of Boston; and Margaret Slater, DVM, PhD, of the ASPCA, have applied one of the most valuable and well-recognized tools of evidence-based medicine to this question.
Number needed to treat (called NNT) measures the effectiveness of new medicines or treatments. It asks the question: How many patients have to take the medicine or get the treatment in order for one patient to avoid a bad outcome? The fewer patients that have to be treated in order to avoid a bad outcome, the more effective scientists consider a medicine or treatment to be.
But what if we had to treat thousands of patients to avoid even one bad outcome? Would we bother with a new medicine if the number of people we needed to treat to prevent one bad outcome, was 10,000? If we could only identify 9,900 people suffering from the disease, we could not treat enough people with the new medicine to be sure that even one of them would avoid the dreaded symptom.
This is precisely the result that Patronek and his colleagues obtained when they applied this evidence-based method to estimating how many dogs a community would have to ban to prevent a single, serious dog bite. They called their mystery number the number needed to ban (NNB). Using dog bite injury data from the Centers for Disease Control, the State of Colorado, and other, smaller jurisdictions, along with guestimates of the population of various breeds or kinds of dogs, the authors calculated the absurdly large numbers of dogs of targeted breeds who would have to be completely removed from a community, in order to prevent even one serious dog bite. For example, in order to prevent a single hospitalization resulting from a dog bite, the authors calculate that a city or town would have to ban more than 100,000 dogs of a targeted breed.
To prevent a second hospitalization, double that number.
Dog-bite related fatalities are so extremely rare that not even a state could ban enough dogs to insure that they had prevented even one. (Consider: in Denver, Colorado, after they banned pit bull dogs in 1989, they had another dog bite related fatality in the Denver area, involving another type of dog.)
Spain, Italy, Great Britain and the Netherlands have all reported that their breed specific regulations have not produced a reduction in dog bite incidents. The Toronto Humane Society surveyed health departments throughout the province of Ontario, and reported that the breed ban enacted in 2005 had not produced a reduction in dog bites. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, after the city banned one type of dog, dog bites actually rose, just involving other types of dogs. Reports from Denver, Colorado, Miami-Dade, Florida, Prince George’s County, Maryland, and Omaha, Nebraska all tell the same story.
While there is no scientific evidence that one kind of dog is more likely to injure a person than another kind of dog and BSL’s documented record is one of ineffectiveness, BSL remains a policy that some find attractive. Patronek, Marder and Slater explain why.
“It is our belief,” they write in their conclusion, “that BSL is based largely on fear, and it has been emphasized that appeals to fear have their greatest influence when coupled with messages about the high efficacy of the proposed fear-based solution.”
The documented failures of BSL, now combined with the NNB analysis, can be marshaled to undermine such fear-based appeals. BSL proponents will be unable to show “high efficacy of the fear-based solution” or that BSL is rationally related to the public safety issues communities are typically attempting to address when implementing BSL.
The complete article can be purchased from the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association at http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/full/10.2460/javma.237.7.788
*Patronek, G., Slater, M., Marder, A., “Use of a number-need-to-ban calculation to illustrate limitations of breed-specific legislation in decreasing the risk of dog bite-related injury,” JAVMA, vol 237, Number 7, October 1, 2010.
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This is an excerpt from the new study; however, most people already know that BSL does not work because they have common sense. It is nice to have scientific data to back it up though!

From My Google Alerts- October 4, 2010

In Lantana, Florida, a pit bull was shot and wounded after it charged officers responding to a call. The officers fired two shots, injuring the animal, which was taken to a veterinary emergency clinic. The dog has reportedly been a chronic problem in the neighborhood.
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A German Shepherd/Rottweiler mix aka a MUTT bit a 2-year-old Trenton boy as they were playing together on the floor. Police stated that the boy was possibly too close to the dog’s face. Gee… You think. The child was airlifted to the hospital; however, he is expected to recover. No dog breed is mentioned in the article headline.
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A Tulsa, Oklahoma girl was attacked by a pit bull type dog on Sunday. A witness said the attack was “brutal”; the girl remains in the hospital under serious condition. Police have not said what happened to the dog. The dog type, “pit bull,” is mentioned in the headline of the article.
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In Brookville, Ohio, a pit bull was seen wandering the area and AC was dispatched. The dog was found wandering a bike path. At that time, a woman happened by and she was asked if she knew the dog. Of course, she did; she had given the dog to a man a few weeks prior. She didn’t know the guy’s name, but speculated the dog returned to familiar surroundings. She also didn’t want the dog back and it was taken by AC. So who knows what the fate of this poor dog will be. Its first irresponsible owner gave it away to an even more irresponsible owner, which is exactly why some people should not own any type of dog. This irks me deeply; however, I hope that if the dog is deemed adoptable it will find its forever home.

From My Google Alerts- September 26, 2010

In Detroit, a Samoyed dog stood up to an Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake, and he was bitten twice. Anti-venom from the Detroit Zoo saved his life. To his owner he is a 114-pound White Knight.

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__________A dog is a true hero after his barking saved his family from a house fire in Dubois. No breed of dog is mentioned in the article.

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In Braddock, PA, a 10-year old girl was attacked by a dog after its collar broke from its chain. The girl was attempting to feed the dog crackers. The girl's cousin described her injuries. "Her leg got cut, bite on her arm, scratch underneath her eye and a gash by her left ear, so the dog did scratch and bite," said Anthony Price. The dog's owner was surprised about the attack. "I have five kids of my own. I have a 6-month old grandson that plays beside him. Every kid in the neighborhood knows him. He has never done anything like this, ever." Police helped take the dog away from the home. I am curious as to where the girl’s parents were during all of this. No dog breed mentioned here either.

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A pit bull was shot and killed by police Saturday afternoon after a family called 911 and reported the dog was "terrorizing them”." The dog belonged to James King, a police dispatcher, who was not home at 2229 W. 10th St. when the pit bull escaped through a window, Sgt. Jess Neal said. It was the second pit bull shooting in Muncie since August; the first dog that was shot belonged to a retired 911 supervisor and it was fighting with a German shepherd. Police administrators responded in August by saying they were considering buying tranquilizer guns. As of Saturday, however, police still did not have tranquilizer guns. "It's not an option for us," Neal said. "We don't carry tranquilizers."

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A pit bull and nine pit bull pups were rescued from a house fire in a Port Orange, Florida house fire. A Chihuahua and a cat were not so lucky though and died from smoke inhalation. Port Orange Fire Marshal Chief Christopher Weir ruled the fire was electrical and caused a total loss of about $125,000. RIP little Chihuahua and kitty cat.

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