New law in PA, spurred by "pitbull" attack

well they are apparently passing a law here that anytime you walk a pitbull terrier in public they will have to be muzzled, I'm not sure if it's been passed yet and i donot intend to muzzle mine until I actually am told to do so then i suppose I will have no choice. They are doing this because a little boy was recently attacked by two " pitbulls" . The pitbulls were brought to our ASPCA, and although they were viscous ( they had to be darted just to be put down) they were not even pits!! I mean ya I think they had pit in them but I would say at best guess they were pit rott and Dane or some other large dog I wish i had pictures. They were also obviously used for fighting and severely abused they were underfed covered in scars, and an X-ray showed numerous previous breaks.
Well anyway i almost lost my job that day. I was balling when they brought these dogs in because I know they have to be put down, but they never should have been like this. It's not there fault they are the rusult of bad breeding and severe mistreatment and now not only is a little boy hurt,but these dogs have to die and the saddest part is it's probablly the kindest thing anyone can do for them! Anyway a reporter made a comment he said "how could you cry for those monsters? They deserve to die" I lost it I called him every foul word you can think of and went after him if it weren't for my coworkers jumping on me and dragging me away, I would have knocked the SOB out for sure. Anyway hate to have to tell such a sad story but I thought it should be told! :cry:

 

Things like this really make me fear for the breed. It seems that everyday we come a step closer to the complete annihilation of such a wonderful breed. It's sad that BYBs and wannabe thugs have turned a one time most loved breed into one of the most feared and hated breeds. I pray these unsavoury characters will soon loose interest in this great breed.

 

PA has a law prohibiting BSL, so if you fight this law, you can probably keep it from being passed.

 

really? Well not to sound stupid but what could I do? Thanks for the info!

 

Not stupid at all

I hunted around a bit for an actual copy of the code addressing dangerous dogs, but couldn't find it. I did find these links, which may or may not help a bit.

http://www.adoa.org/participate/cdf02.php

http://www.akc.org/love/dip/legislat/ph ... eedleg.cfm

http://www.iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/dogbite/

I'm sure that if you contact your state legislative office, they can get you a hard copy of the law as it pertains to you. Then, you find out who you need to contact (municipal officers, council members, whoever is going to have a say in the law being passed), and let them all know how you feel about having your rights violated by their attempts at passing a law not permissible by your STATE laws. Get as many people as possible to do the same, remember, 1000 voices have more chance of being heard than 1. Be sure to attend any meetings or hearings on the proposed law, and let them know how it will affect you. There are several groups that are active in fighting BSL, and may be able to help as well (even if only to get word out). Contact the AKC (since amstaffs are usually included under "pit bulls" in BSL, they absolutely SHOULD care, www.akc.org ), UKC (www.ukcdogs.com ), and the ADOA (american dog owners association, www.adoa.org )... the former two are breed registries, but active in protesting BSL, the latter is a group which was formed specifically for fighting BSL and other restrictive dog laws. There are also email lists for BSL, so if you search on yahoo or some other group site, you'll be able to find some others who are more experienced in this, and can help you as well.

If you can find contacts for the people who need to be written to, and post them, along with the proposed legislation and your location all in one post, I'm sure people would be glad to forward it and help you get word out.

 

http://bbs.mrlandlord.com/qanda/datafiles/12140661.mgi2 I came across this while researching the dog laws, god i don't even know what to say just thought ya might find it interesting and terriblly aggrivating my post is at the bottom (Krystin PA) but you prob would have figured that out!!

 

Wow! I guess I should be thankful that I live in 'the good ole South' because APBTs seem to be a lot more accepted here. It's hard to believe there is a group of landlords who could be so ignorant! Just the other day, when taking my friend to have her ears pierced, we somehow got to talking with the piercer about dogs. I commented that I had 7 dogs. The piercer asked me what kind. I told him, and he asked if I bred. He then said to contact him when I have some pups available. Also, a while back, we had Comcast to come out to the house. The tech was outside at the cable box, and I was trying to keep the dogs from driving him nuts barking. We got to talking and he said he has two pit bulls. He said he loves the breed, etc.

One thing that blew my mind was my mother-in-law said one of the guys in her NA meetings (she's a 'pot addict') breeds pit bulls. She told me that she had told him how it worries her our dogs being around our son. I asked her what he said about it. She told me that he said he agrees with her!!! That he's been breeding pit bulls for years and they are the most unpredictable breed. He said he's got a mother and daughter that he can't even feed together. Well, duh! I told her that if he thinks dog aggression makes them 'unpredictable' around children, then he should not even own, let alone breed APBTs. How stupid is he?! If he feels that way about them, then why does he breed them? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Okay - I've vented enough about that for now.

 

Hey guys god you wouldn't believe some of the s**t I've come across while researching the laws, I guess talking to people like you all, I forget how ignorant people can really be. However things are lookin very good for me. My gram knows one of the ladies who is a secretary for our congressman and I was talking to her, (Her son has Two pitbulls,BTW) she said that yes their are people who are trying to pass the law but that she knows for a fact the congressman is against it, as is she and she dosn't think it would ever get passed. She says as far as the politicians go ( and PA is mostly democrats) even those who are not neccesarily pro-pitbull will vote to uphold the laws. Voting for a law like that is just opening a political can of worms that noone wants to deal with. I mean if they pass that law what's next? Banning blacks from restaraunts, saying woman can't be doctors ect. ect. So i see she really has a point!! Also I know lots of people who would stand up and fight!! And if worst came to worse I even have a lawyer who says if the law were ever passed and anyone ever fined me or ordered me to muzzle my dog, he would take my case pro bono!! He said he "dosn't even like dogs that much but it's just the principal" !! So I'm really not too worried about it anymore. Thanks Goob for reminding me there are things I can do!!

 

SugarLovesPits- I'm usually on the cat boards, but i was poking around on here today cuz of something bad that happened last night. I was sorry to hear that story about what happened with those 2 dogs while you were working. I used to work at my county's animal control clinic, so i know how that is. I haven't worked there since this past June, but last night i was feeling all those frustrations all over again. My step-kids had two 8 month old male pit bull puppies that had to get put down this morning. Unfortunately, I have a german shepard of my own here, i live in an apartment and i have a cat, so there's no way i could have saved them. The kids dogs had disemboweled one of the kid's 2 potbellied pigs and were caught attacking the 2nd one last night. Luckily the kids were here when it happened and didn't have to see that. thier mom surrendered the dogs over to Animal Control last night. I tried my best to look for any no-kill shelter i could find in the area but they were all full and Pit Bull Rescue wasn't taking any more either. One of the neighbors had already called Animal Control and an officer was already on the way to pick up the dogs when the kids' mom went to hand them over. I know the dogs will be considered unadoptable under those circimstances and i feel so bad for them cuz it's not their fault. They never should have been allowed near the other animals, especially unsupervised. I was originally afraid the dogs would fight each other and they only just recently had them neutered a few weeks ago. It was just a bad situation altogether and a bad night especially for my step daughter, she was heart broken, although we didn't even tell them the dogs would be PTS. Sorry, just had to vent about that and it seemed like a similar feeling you described with getting upset at that guy for saying the dogs deserved to die.

 

i hate it too, when people call them "monsters" and other poss. names! that is sooo cruel! those poor dogs! and the kid i feel bad for him! now he may grow up to hate dogs, and poss. hate pits! thats aweful! but once my dog gave me stiches i never hated her, me and her got closer because of that (we still have her! i had to beg to keep her) but thats aweful! and that reporter! OH MUH LORD! i would have gone after him as well! and say a bunch of crap to him as well! i'm sorry to hear that! what you could do! when you take your pit for a walk, try to find one of those muzzles they use for Grey Hounds when they race, that way your pit can still open its mouth to pant, and wouldn't feel uncomfterble, or you could just put it on when a cop tells you to then watch fo rit to leave and take it off, lol.. sorry to hear about tat again

 

Thanks guys anywho Faeriedust, that is too bad about those dogs. There are actually pitbulls who are bred to be "hogdogs" and other type of catch dogs. Who knows could have even been in ther lines somewhere. Not to mention the "ooh what's that lets catch it!!" factor!1 Hello they are terriers after all! Who did the pigs belong too? Same person not a smart thing to do putting them where they could get at the pigs. If they had been raised with the pigs since they were pups maybe they would have been ok, anywho please give your step child a big hug for me!!

 

Well the way the originally got the dogs was they had found a box of pups that someone abandoned on the side of the road and they took in the 2 brothers. Their mom's not exactly what you would call especially knowledgeable about animals or compassionate towards them either. As an example, the dogs were left outside during BOTH hurricanes we got hit with down here this season. I was SO ticked! The kids both love animals, but don't recieve great guidance about them at home. They only see me and their dad on weekends and holidays. I have heard of pits used as catch dogs, so who knows, but they had only recently gotten the pigs and had them for a couple weeks only before the dogs started going after them. The whole situation was bad, they just assumed that since the dogs were so sweet and still acted like puppies that there wouldn't be a problem, which as i'm sure all of you know was a HUGE mistake. I'd been telling them the 2 dogs together unneutered and with farm animals wasn't gonna work for the last 6 months since they took the dogs, but of course I don't know what I'm talking about until it's too late and then the kids' mom wants my advice on what to do with the dogs. The dogs FINALLY got neutered at 8 months old after i found them a place that would do it for only $25. My step daughter has also had her heart set on getting a baby goat and was sposed to get one for Christmas, plus her horse just had to be put down about 6 weeks ago. I recommended to her mom that either keep one dog and keep it completely separate from all other animals, or keep a dog and get rid of other animals, or get rid of both dogs. She chose to give up the dogs but was dead set on doing it that night, so the poor babies got PTS. Then she goes and gets stupid again 2 DAYS LATER and gets ANOTHER dog! This time a Corgi adoption. Which in my experience have a high rate of being given up from families with children because they have a tendency to be heel biters, cause of their breed nature as herd dogs, and not great with kids. There are 2 kids there under 8yrs old. GRRRR!!! I wish she wouldn't get animals that she doesn't want to take care of properly and at least research a bit before amking another big mistake that causes my step-kids more heartache!