Okay, folks. I’m about to make some of you very, very angry. Sorry about that. But what’s happened here — and what happens hundreds of times a year — makes me mad and it should make you mad.
Let me start by saying I love my dogs just as much as you love your dogs.
However. We need to be realistic about what dogs are and about what a dog can do. Any dog, even a little one, can inflict serious damage on a human, especially if that human is a child. Big dogs can kill. And they do. With surprising frequency.
This week yet another little child here in Arizona was killed by pit bulls. The mother had left her kids with a long-time, trusted babysitter, a woman who usually came to the family’s home. For reasons unexplained in the media, this particular day she decided to leave the kids at the sitter’s home. At some point the sitter went outside to tend to the dogs, carrying the two-year-old in her arms. After she released them from their backyard kennel, in a routine way that she had done all their lives, the animals unexpectedly turned on her. They grabbed the baby away from her and attacked both the child and the woman. She tried to protect the child by covering him with her body, to no avail. He was killed and she was gravely injured.
Folks. A dog is not your child. A dog is not your benign little pal. No, not even if nothing could seem sweeter than your canine sidekick. Not even if it’s true that the more people you get to know, the better you like your dog. If you’re going to have dogs around you, you need to understand and be realistic about what they are — for your safety and for the safety of everyone you and they meet.
A dog is a mutated wolf. Over about 20,000 years, it has evolved to live with humans, and during that time its biology and psychology have changed. It breeds more often than a wolf does. It no longer has that big scent gland at the base of its tail. It can thrive on a more omnivorous diet than a wolf needs. It can follow the direction that your hand is pointing in. To a degree, it can understand many of the words you utter, and it can grasp your intentions by the tone of your voice, the expression on your face, the body language of your stance and your gestures. It may even think you’re part of its pack. Most of these are things an undomesticated wolf cannot or will not do.
But it is still a wolf. Many of its lupine characteristics persist in beneficial ways — the dog’s pack instinct, for example, makes it a useful companion for pods of humans, and its instinct to work together with other pack members lends it to hunting, herding, guarding…and those are good things. But that instinct is double-edged.
Wolves are predators. They are evolved to kill, and they kill by biting. That is the underlying nature of a dog. It’s something you forget at your peril.
Dogs have not evolved by accident and merry serendipity. They have become what they are today because humans deliberately manipulate their genes by breeding, giving us a wide variety of dog types with a wide variety of dog mentalities. All dogs can and, under certain conditions, will bite. But some dogs are significantly more dangerous than others. These include pit bulls — yes! And German shepherds, Rottweilers, doberman pinschers, St. Bernards, malamutes, chows, huskies, all of the Molosser breeds, and mixed-breed offspring of these varieties.
All dogs are capable of biting, but these breeds can be exceptionally dangerous. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this site. Read this stuff. Look at the photos. Watch the videos. Every day a thousand Americans are bitten seriously enough to need emergency care. That’s 4.7 million bites a year, of which 800,000 require medical care. The most dangerous dogs are pit bulls and other breeds developed specifically for fighting (and I’m sorry to have to say this, but “Pitties don’t bite unless they’re abused” is a myth). Between 1982 and 2006, pit bulls, Rotweillers, Presa Canarios and mixes thereof were responsible for 65 percent of the fatal attacks on humans.
And now let me tell you a little story about what happened to my son.
At the time M’hijito was born, I had a German shepherd. Her name was Greta.
Greta was the single most extraordinary dog I have ever known. She would allow small children to crawl all over her and even poke her in the eyes; when she grew tired of this, she would simply stand up, shake them off, and walk away. She could recognize the difference between a stranger who meant no harm and one who bore watching. When roused — as she was the time a burglar entered the house in the middle of the night — she could be utterly, unthinkably terrifying. But where her own humans and their friends were concerned, she was mellow.
Every day Greta and I would walk around the neighborhood.
By the time my son was a toddler, she was getting on in years. She always would heel off the leash, and in my youthful callowness I rarely put her on a lead when we took our strolls through the yuppified historic district where we lived.
Our neighbors across the street had a dog about Greta’s size, a German shepherd mix named Colonel. This dog was allowed to lay around the front yard. Often when my son, Greta, and I would go for a walk, Colonel would amble along with us.
My little boy thought Colonel was about the funniest thing that ever came along, and Colonel loved little children. Colonel would allow the kids to hold onto his tail as he led them around.
So it was this particular afternoon. Colonel led the way up the sidewalk, with my son hanging onto his long, pennant-like red tail. I followed about ten or fifteen feet behind them, and Greta brought up the rear, pausing now and again to pee on the neighbor’s lawns and smell the flowers. Or whatever it is that dogs like to smell. She was a good twenty feet behind me.
As we approached Third Avenue, we came to a house on the corner that had a large wall around the side yard. This wall blocked the view of the street to the left of us.
Third Avenue had a bicycle path that was popular with the Yuppie residents, who, like today’s young upwardly mobile types, cherished physical fitness and would use the road for jogging and running.
When Colonel and my son, well ahead of me, came to this corner, all of a sudden up from behind the wall came a willowy young woman at a full run, with a great Dane on a leash about a body’s length ahead of her.
My son was a very small boy, the sort who doesn’t yet fully know language. He expressed delight and joy with a high-pitched squeal and a flapping of his little arms.
The instant he saw this huge dog, he shrieked QUEEEEKIEE QUEEEEKIEEEE QUEEEEEEEEE! and he dropped Colonel’s tail and ran ecstatically toward the woman and the dog, waving his hands in the air.
The dog, not surprisingly, saw this as an attack. It responded accordingly.
Dragging the woman, it lunged at my child. I jumped after him, snatched at him, just barely caught his jacket — and he pulled away from me. The dog grabbed and connected.
My little boy’s entire head fit inside this animal’s mouth.
Colonel ran away.
At this point things started to move in slow motion. Everything went silent. The dog had the child. The woman managed to keep her footing. She hauled on the leash with exactly no effect. I swam toward the child and the dog as through molasses.
From my right side, something came flying through the air.
It was Greta. She had come up beside me leaped airborne before she reached me. She shot past me at chest height and barreled full force into the Dane.
I plunged into the melee, caught the boy, and yanked him out from beneath the two dogs. They fell into an explosive ball right where he’d been a fraction of an instant before. Greta had knocked the Dane off my son, disconnecting its jaws from his head, so I was able to pull him away, miraculously uninjured.
Things didn’t look so good for Greta, though. She fell beneath the great Dane and it went after her.
As it set to tearing her apart, all of a sudden it collapsed. It had passed out.
Pulling on the leash, the young woman had squeezed its windpipe enough to cut off so much air the Dane lost consciousness.
Stunned stupid, I said to her, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“That’s OK,” she said coolly. The dog quickly regained consciousness and just as quickly returned to her control. “This happens all the time.”
Holy sh!t.
* * *
Well. There was a lot of stupidity going on there. First off, I was roaming around in public with my son and two large dogs, none of whom were directly in my control. That was very, very stupid.
But “This happens all the time“? What was that about? If you have a dog that weighs more than you do — as this animal certainly did, in the woman’s case — and you know it can go so far out of control that you have to haul on its collar until it freaking PASSES OUT, what on earth are you doing running up and down the streets with it?
Both of us had lost track of just what a dog is and how dangerous it can be. I was extremely lucky — no, make that my son was extremely lucky — that one of the animals involved happened to be on our side. My son came within a fraction of an instant of being permanently maimed, if not killed.
So, am I saying you shouldn’t have a dog? Obviously not. I’ve had four German shepherds and a doberman pinscher over the years, to say nothing of the beagle, the schnauzer, the Labrador retriever, the golden retriever, the greyhound, and the corgi. I wouldn’t be without a dog — they add a great deal of pleasure to life.
However, I am saying that you should keep your common sense about you when you have a dog and when you’re around other people’s dogs.
• First and foremost, please: Remember that it is a DOG, not your furry little child!
• Avoid breeds that have been developed as guard dogs, attack dogs, and fighting dogs.
• Socialize pups from a very early age — around other dogs and around humans, including children.
• Obedience-train your dog thoroughly. If you don’t know how to do so, refrain from imagining that you can figure it out from YouTube videos. Take classes. Hire a trainer. Be sure your dog will heel, sit, stop on command, and come to call. Keep practicing these skills throughout the animal’s life.
• Establish yourself as the head of the pack. If your personality does not allow you to pull this off, get a cat instead. Or maybe a goldfish?
• Never let your dog off the leash in public, even in your own front yard. This is for your protection and your dog’s protection as much as for others’ safety.
• Do not take your dog to dog parks. That is asking for trouble.
• Don’t run your dog beside your bicycle — on or off leash. For the reasons why not, ask a) your orthopedist and b) your veterinarian.
• Don’t let a dog into a room where an infant or small child is sleeping unattended. In fact, never leave a child unattended with a dog, even if you do buy the story that pit bulls were bred to be children’s nannies.
• Don’t be an idiot about other people’s dogs. “He doesn’t bite,” “he’s friendly,” and “he loves children” are statements that should be regarded as sentimental errors if not downright lies. When you have your own dog or a child with you, proceed with caution.
• Teach your children to ask if it’s OK before trying to pet any dog. And teach them how to pet a dog without alarming it.
• Do not leave your child at the home of a babysitter who owns one or more pit bulls. Or any of the other dogs regarded by experts as potentially aggressive, over-protective, or unpredictable. Let’s go over those again:
Pit bulls, German shepherds, Rottweilers, doberman pinschers, St. Bernards, malamutes, chows, huskies, all of the Molosser breeds, and mixed-breed offspring of these varieties.
• If your next-door neighbor owns pit bulls or any of the above-mentioned potentially dangerous breeds, do not let your kids play in the backyard unattended. Several of the tragedies in our parts have happened when neighbors’ vicious dogs have scaled or broken through a fence and gone after kids or elderly adults.
• If you imagine that you simply must have one of these breeds, be sure you have the skills and personality characteristics to train and handle it effectively. Videlicet:
♦ You need a calm and assertive nature.
♦ You cannot be violent or abusive — if this is your style, take in a convicted murderer as a roommate instead. It’ll be safer.
♦ You must have time and patience to work with the dog every day, several times a day.
♦ Your lifestyle must accommodate a “job” for the dog, and that does not include sitting in the backyard and barking. Agility training, advanced obedience training, herding, tracking, rescue, and the like are appropriate work for these breeds.
♦ If you can’t establish yourself as the head dog calmly and as a matter of course, do not get one of these breeds.
♦ You must be smarter than the dog…which may not be as easy as some of us think. 
About half of dogs in Phoenix’s shelters are pit bulls or pit mixes. They’re favored by criminal gangs, which are growing robustly in these parts as poverty spreads and drug use continues. Sometimes these people use them in dog-fighting; sometimes as guard dogs; sometimes just to show how macho they are. The result is that we have way, way too many of this type of dog. Do not breed pit bulls and pit bull mixes. Do not buy them as puppies, thereby encouraging backyard breeding of still more unwanted, potentially aggressive dogs. If you must have one, adopt it from a shelter.
And remember: it’s a dog!
Images:
Blue-nose pit bull puppy. Tattooedwaitress. GNU Free Documentation License.
Eurasian wolf. Quartl. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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Funny, the German Shepherd, and the Dog Behavioralist
Stupid People
Do You Carry Your Pets Safely in the Car?