http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... D4G1S1.DTL
Controlling an animal as deadly as a weapon
Ingrid Newkirk
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Most people have no idea that at many animal shelters across the
country, any pit bull that comes through the front door doesn't go out
the back door alive. From California to New York, many shelters have
enacted policies requiring the automatic destruction of the huge and
ever-growing number of "pits" they encounter. This news shocks and
outrages the compassionate dog-lover.
Here's another shocker: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
the very organization that is trying to get you to denounce the
killing of chickens for the table, foxes for fur or frogs for
dissection, supports the shelters' pit-bull policy, albeit with
reluctance. We further encourage a ban on breeding pit bulls.
The pit bull's ancestor, the Staffordshire terrier, is a human
concoction, bred in my native England, I'm ashamed to say, as a
weapon. These dogs were designed specifically to fight other animals
and kill them, for sport. Hence the barrel chest, the thick
hammer-like head, the strong jaws, the perseverance and the stamina.
Pits can take down a bull weighing in at over a thousand pounds, so a
human being a tenth of that weight can easily be seriously hurt or
killed.
Pit bulls are perhaps the most abused dogs on the planet. These days,
they are kept for protection by almost every drug dealer and pimp in
every major city and beyond. You can drive into any depressed area and
see them being used as cheap burglar alarms, wearing heavy logging
chains around their necks (they easily break regular collars and
harnesses), attached to a stake or metal drum or rundown doghouse
without a floor and with holes in the roof. Bored juveniles sic them
on cats, neighbors' small dogs and even children.
In the PETA office, we have a file drawer chock-full of accounts of
attacks in which these ill-treated dogs with names like "Murder" and
"Homicide" have torn the faces and fingers off infants and even police
officers trying to serve warrants. Before I co-founded PETA, I served
as the chief of animal-disease control and director of the animal
shelter in the District of Columbia for many years. Over and over
again, I waded into ugly situations and pulled pit bulls from people
who beat and starved them, or chained them to metal drums as "guard"
dogs, or trained them to attack people and other animals. It is this
abuse, and the tragedy that comes from it, that motivates me.
Those who argue against a breeding ban and the shelter euthanasia
policy for pit bulls are naive, as shown by the horrifying death of
Nicholas Faibish, the San Francisco 12-year-old who was mauled by his
family's pit bulls.
Tales like this abound. I have scars on my leg and arm from my own
encounter with a pit. Many are loving and will kiss on sight, but many
are unpredictable. An unpredictable Chihuahua is one thing, an
unpredictable pit another.
People who genuinely care about dogs won't be affected by a ban on
pit- bull breeding. They can go to the shelter and save one of the
countless other breeds and lovable mutts sitting on death row. We can
only stop killing pits if we stop creating new ones. Legislators,
please take note.
Ingrid Newkirk is president of People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (www.peta.org) and the author of "Making Kind Choices" (St.
Martin's Griffin, 2005).
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