From my bio page you can see that I am the co-owner of a cute little dog. It’s a Bitsa* breed, which makes it quite rare, and I only know of seven others in the world. It is a lovely dog, and thanks to tireless training from my girlfriend and occasional reinforcement from me, it is well behaved and friendly. We (this is the royal ‘we’) also take it for daily runs, play games with it, and feed it well, all-the-while maintaining discipline.
But you see there is the problem. My girlfriend has done a very good job of training our dog, and together we have discouraged and almost eliminated all of its bad habits. By keeping it an active happy dog, and maintaining its training, our dog is well behaved.
You can see all this leading somewhere, can’t you!
The state of
WA Govt may ban pit bulls
The Western Australian Government is to consider banning pit bulls and other dangerous breeds of dogs.
Yesterday, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr announced pit bulls, as well as Japanese, Argentinian and Brazilian fighting dogs would be banned in that state.
WA Local Government Minister John Bowler says he will consider introducing similar laws here.
"I'm a dog lover and, I think most people are, but I also think that most people don't see the need for some varieties," he said.
"I'm not going to say outright here and now that I'm going to ban them.
"However, our current drafting goes almost to banning and I'll now call for a report on the
The president of the American Pit Bull Terrier Club of Australia, Colin Muir, is urging the Government not to ban pit bulls, arguing they are no more dangerous than any other breed of dog.
"Breeds of dogs don't bite people, individual dogs do and it can be individual dogs of any breed," he said.
He says pit bulls are unjustly being blamed for all attacks.
"There have been no fatalities relating to this breed in
"There has been a small number of severe attacks, but there have equally been a large number of severe attacks relating to other breeds. It's not a breed issue."
New dog ownership laws currently being drawn up are due to go before Parliament this year.
There are no dangerous dog breeds! Yes some dogs are big and mean looking. Yes some dogs are naturally more territorial and aggressive. But this has nothing to do with the end product, the behaviour of the dog.
Geneticists proposed a pretty simple relationship for genetics called the G by E interaction or genetics by environment interaction. Basically we are a product of 50% genes interacting with 50% environment, so someone may have the genes to be tall but without the correct diet will never be tall. To put simply, no dog breed can be aggressive unless it is allowed to be aggressive.
New Pit Bull rules unfairly targets breed, says owners
The American Pit Bull Terrier Club that represents pit bull owners says tighter regulations in
Pit Bulls will have to be desexed and no new dogs will be allowed to be registered in
Pit Bull Terrier Club president, Colin Muir says the regulations unfairly target the breed and the Victorian Government should be focussing on laws that ensure responsible pet ownership.
"American pit bull terriers, off the Government's own figures, are responsible for something like one per cent of serious dog attacks in the community," he said.
"So even if you are looking at a short-term fix by removing this breed you are still not going to achieve any large results as a result of that."
Recently at the park I was sitting down while our dog had a break from a frenetic ball retrieval game. While I was seated someone else’s dog collided with me. This same dog was also bugging its owner to play games by nipping the hands of the owner. Clearly this dog had not been trained well enough. The owner had not imposed a restriction on what the dog was allowed to do around people, and the owner had also not bothered to train out the hand bitting. These were two things that our dog also did but now doesn’t due to training.
The scary thing is these irresponsible people are not only allowed to own poorly trained dogs (which reflects badly on all dog owners) they are allowed to have children that they will also neglect to train and discipline. Where's the laws to neuter badly behaved, lazy, irresponsible adults to control them from breeding?
The government regulates again because people aren’t responsible for themselves. But they have regulated breeds that are not necessarily the culprits of dog attacks! Most dog bites come from the family pet biting the child (usually because the child is out of line in the pack structure, and the dog hasn’t been placed below the child in the pack correctly). Amazingly the vicious breeds are underrepresented in not only these attacks, but in all dog attacks, with most attacks being from smaller “gentler” breeds. Clearly the government is trying to appease lobby groups and the media, while stomping all over common sense. Talk about poor training!
So what’s the big deal its just dogs?!
First comes the dogs, then comes the (insert your hobby/area of interest here) regulations. That’s the way it works. On the surface the regulations look good, but they essentially erode away pubic rights, while simultaneously treading on logic and personal responsibility. Someone owns a vicious dog, they shouldn’t be able to have dogs (and possibly not kids either), someone has delinquent kids, the parents should be held responsible, etc. The more we allow government to regulate in this way the more we allow stupid people to rule our lives! Why stupid? Because who else would ignore all facts in imposing regulations, who else would go the quick fix which ultimately doesn’t work, who else will listen to a lobby group that is made up of fanatics with little-to-no grasp on reality?
So fight the system. Write to your member of parliament. Write to the idiots who take the decisions. Fire bomb a consulate!**
*bits-of-a kelpie, bits-of-a collie, bits-of-a whippet.
**don’t actually do this one, it was meant as a joke and ultimately will not do anything to change the decisions made, whereas lobby groups are far more successful.
bravenet.com