Baltimore County gets it wrong about aggressive dogs

Baltimore County Councilman Vince "I have four college degrees" Gardina strikes again.

After young Dominic Solesky suffered an attack by a vicious dog, Gardina called forth a task force to look at dog attacks. But the task force's report recommended seven things that did NOT include the breed-specific law Gardina had hoped they would call for. So he decided to ignore the report and do what he'd wanted to do all along: introduce a bill requiring the owners of specific breeds of dogs to take specific precautions. Irrespective of the individual dog's temperament, of course.

Gardina could have asked someone who knows something about dogs, by virtue of having bred, trained and handled them. Someone with a "degree" in canine behavior, in short. Baltimore County is home to at least one well regarded dog training club, whose members own all manner of canines, purebred and otherwise. He might have learned, for example, that you cannot accurately assess whether a dog is a "pit bull mix," as his bill terms it, without a genetic test.

Gardina could have gone a bit farther still, and investigated the national dog registry and dog training clubs. In addition to the American Kennel Club, two other registries thrive here. The most sane of the three when it comes to dog behavior and performance is the Continental Kennel Club, based in Louisiana. Here's an excerpt from CKC's position paper on breed-specific legislation:

Instead of labeling breeds as “dangerous”, local law enforcement should work with local animal control organizations to identify owners with dogs that show signs of aggression toward people. Owners with dogs that show signs of aggression should be the target of legislation which requires them to prove their animals are not dangerous to society. In addition, enforcing existing leash/restraint laws and animal abuse laws would go a long way in reducing dog-related incidents in the community. If necessary, communities could require mandatory temperament testing for dogs which have access to public streets and parks.

I don't happen to support that last suggestion, because mandatory temperament testing gives local governments a little too much power. But I do support the idea of temperament testing of dogs suspected of dangerous tendencies, provided it is done uniformly and by someone with no particular ax to grind. Not surprisingly, an organization and a test standard exist, in the form of the American Temperament Testing Society. (I say "not surprisingly" because pet dogs represent a huge financial enterprise in the USA. Americans spend more than $12 billion a year on dog food, grooming and boarding alone. To put that figure into perspective, the average US household spends at least three times as much on its pets as on reading material.) The ATTS is not some new, whiz-bang outfit, incidentally. It has been organized for thirty years now. The society's copyrighted standard tests a dog in ten distinct areas of behavior including behavior towards strangers, response to stimuli (including gunshots!) and aggressive/protective behavior. It's a realistic test that should not require extraordinary talent on the part of the dog or its owner, unlike the "dog sports" that you see so much about on Animal Planet.

As reported in The Jeffersonian, Gardina has been aided and abetted in this know-nothing legislation by Ken Oliver, the Council's token black member. Never mind that the bill works on the same principles as "racial profiling," which is supposed to be anathema to all sentient black people, at least as the average politician tells it. As usual, the "jeff" didn't bother to quote Oliver, but they certainly gave Gardenia  Gardina enough rope to hang himself.

Last week's article about the introduction of the bill notes that it "would require owners of pit bulls, pit bull mixes and dogs that have a history of biting to keep their dogs in covered, anchored runs. Those runs would have to be locked. The bill... also would require that the dogs covered by the bill be muzzled when out in public."

The article goes on to quote Gardina saying, "If there's a safe enclosure, there won't be a threat to another person or animal."

Now, as a guy who is always crowing about his experience on the county police force, while he was studying for his law degree, Gardina ought to know better than to make such a dumbassed statement. I know that he had some firearms training in the police academy; I have a close friend who was in the same academy class." SHE, after a career in law enforcement, personal protection, commercial security and firearms instruction, will tell you that you never trust the "safety" on a firearm, and that you always assume it is loaded and ready to be fired. Gardina's police experience may have been different, from what I have heard about it.

But viewed in the light of that training, Gardina's statement above is especially stupid. We know from experience that even when people are required by law to use trigger locks on firearms, or to store them under lock and key, often they don't, and that injuries occur as a result of those failures.

Why, then, would someone trained in firearms safety make the dunderheaded assumption that nobody will ever neglect to lock a dog run, that locks and fences will never fail, that people who are required as a matter of law to muzzle a dog will always muzzle the dog, etcetera?

Predictably, this weeks Jeffersonian carries an article [mysteriously not yet published on their web site] describing the outrage among the responsible owners of the breeds condemned as dangerous. And God help us, its headline reads "Dog owners unleash criticism of pit bull bill." It's bad enough that the legislation is in itself ill-informed and useless, without the county's self-anointed newspaper-of-record trivializing it further.

It's difficult to believe that the County Council can be more incompetent than it has been on this particular issue, but I'm certain that they will, as always, rise to the challenge.

tags: vince gardina  dogs  aggressive dogs  pit bulls  baltimore county  

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