You may not be aware of it but there is a good chance you are on one side of a war in which you didn’t even realize you were a combatant. It’s a war that the other side thinks you declared. Like most wars in which we find ourselves, not exactly sure when it began or who we are really fighting against, there is a majority in the middle wondering what is going on while the fringes on both sides fight an existential battle to the death.

It’s a war over animals. And this week, USA Network, which is airing the Westminster Dog Show, suddenly became Alsace and Lorraine in a jostling over territory.

Westminster Dog Club and its annual pure breed extravaganza have long held a funny place in the hearts animal welfare do-gooders. It is the place for top form breeders to show that what they do is as far separated from what back yard breeders and puppy millers do as the Beatles are from the Monkeys. But just like the Beatles, the show probably also serves to inspire anyone with a dog, a little ambition, and a total lack of self-reality to believe that their dog might just breed the next champion. Or least a few $1,200 puppies.

We watch the show like a conservative, closeted politician uses an airport bathroom. With fleeting enjoyment before post-pleasure self-loathing makes us rail on about immorality of the act in which we ourselves have just indulged. One minute we are watching unneutered testicles swinging in the wind, cheering on our favorite class of show dogs. The next we go back to Facebook and sign some mandatory spay/neuter legislation petition. Good old American self-contradiction.

So we shouldn’t be any more surprised than Progressives were when all those Tea Partiers showed up, completely pissed off about the things those pinkos had been saying about them, very personally saying about them. “What? They were actually listening to the stuff I was spouting off?” Alec Baldwin was overheard saying, in utter dismay. Because, yes, all those breeders, farmers, pet store owners, hunters, and anglers have been paying attention to everything we’ve been saying about them.

We know that when we say that every pet should be mandatorily sterilized we mean that in a somewhat esoteric sense. Of course, not every pet. If that were the case, in a couple decades there wouldn’t be any left. We mean every pet owned by some other jerk- you know, especially the ones with funny sounding last names. They didn’t think we really meant all of them, did they?  We just didn’t say it that way. Or that we meant it when we said we’d move to Canada if Bush was re-elected. Because we all know that was just us talking a little smack.

The problem is that they were paying attention every time we vilified them, threatened their livelihoods, said mean things about the quality of their parenting, or worst of all, acted superior to them. Because if there’s one thing people love, it’s some smarmy self-righteous know-it-all with all the answers, with answer number one generally being, “Because I know better than you.” You know, like I’m doing right now.

They really believed that Pedigree’s shelter adoption campaign, chock full of enough sad faced shelter doggies to make Sarah McLachlan cry, “Uncle!” was part of a Psy-Ops campaign against their very existence. They seem to believe that there is actually an effort to bring an end to dog breeding at any level, not just by crappy and cruel puppy mills. Why would they want to have a sponsor who is using their curb appeal to promote its pet food by running ads which they think vilify them and their membership?

Paranoid? Yes, more than a little. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that there are animal advocates out there who are bat-crap-crazy, say all kinds of super nutty things, and they truly, deeply mean every single word. And just like Democrats have Kucinich and Republicans have Paul, who they love to cheer on but know that they’ll never actually vote for in a big election, the main stream animal folks like us have been known to cheer on the fringy elements, just for a little harmless fun.

However, this knee jerk reaction on Westminster’s part is truly self-defeating- for all of us- because it actually moves those of us in the center closer to the fringes. Instead of watching the show and telling ourselves that that is the way breeding should be done and that we should also consider adopting from a shelter because those sad dogs need a home too, we go knee jerk and turn away from them and the amazing dogs they have to show us. They make us the enemy they think we are because a few snotty comments we’ve made at their expense made them feel bad. We should never underestimate the power of simple hurt feelings.

Poor USA is stuck in the middle. They just thought they would get some ratings on their “we like happy people” network by showing dogs and getting the added benefit of airing some paid pro-shelter dog commercials for Pedigree. Instead they probably can’t air the ads because of their Westminster agreement, pro-shelter people are all bent out of shape at them for airing the show at all, and they are now a scrap of land being fought over by two competing sides in a fight USA certainly doesn’t have a dog in, if you’ll forgive the phrase.

Let’s declare a détente. Even Ronald Reagan worked with Gorbachev where he could while he was trying to overthrow the USSR. Let’s recognize that neither side is facing imminent collapse and try to effect what change we can in our little cold war, but let’s leave the Olympics, or elite level dog shows, out of it. They can show their spectacular dogs and we can all kind of wish we had one. They can let us run our shelter adoption commercials knowing that they won’t stop people from getting pure bred dogs if they actually want them but it might inspire a person to adopt a dog who really needs it.

We won’t call them the Evil Empire; they won’t call us the Great Satan. And then we can both get back into that airport bathroom for a little innocent, guilty fun.

You should feel that The Clash is the only band that ever mattered or ever will.  You should feel that, despite the fact that he keeps making the same daddy-issue movie over and over, Wes Anderson is one of the greatest directors ever.  You should feel that Egon Shiele is obviously a greater artistic talent than his teacher, Gustav Klimt.  You should feel that David Bowie’s Panic In Detroit is the best song ever recorded.  I know who you should vote for in the next Presidential election.  Maybe you’d like me to enlighten you as to what is the one true religion?

Egon Schiele's "Death and the Maiden". Awesome.

Of course, I can’t actually make you feel any of these things because all of these things are qualifiable.  There are no metrics for determining what the greatest band ever was.  I have lots of reasons why I feel the way I do but you might think Bon Jovi trumps The Clash based on album sales.  I’d think you were delusional, but I can’t prove your belief wrong.  We feel, believe, love and hate the things we do, just because we do.

Unfortunately, so many arguments in animal welfare end up ignoring the fact that we can do many things but we can’t snap our fingers and change what people feel.  Worse, we often tend to glom on to some bit of the quantifiable to make an argument for someone else believing the qualifiable.  While we can use genuine facts and data to change policy and mandate different behavior, rarely, if ever, have they been used to change values and opinions.

David Bowie's "Panic In Detroit". Awesome.

I have been in meetings where animal welfare professionals have actually said things along the lines of, “If only we could make people adopt pit bulls.”  I imagine we could, but what those pit bull loving professionals are actually saying is, “I wish we could make people love pit bulls as much as I do.”  We can’t.  Nor should we.  Me, personally?  I like medium sized, long snouted dogs like Labs and Setters.  I like the natural behavioral traits of dogs bred for hunting.  I don’t dislike them but pit bulls just don’t do it for me esthetically.  No amount of facts or data is going to make me attracted to something I’m not or make me decide I want Petey the Pit Bull over Treetop, my Yellow Labrador.

We can use data to change how we deal with pit bulls.  In Reading, where we had a de facto pit bull restriction ordinance, we changed our behavior by looking at the facts surrounding the supposed bite epidemic everyone felt we were in the midst of.  The facts told us that pits actually bit a rate lower than their percentage of population and all the bites came from unsterilized pit bulls.  These facts changed HSBC’s behavior, as we refused to enforce the ordinance (which was later found to be unconstitutional, as well).  If the City truly wanted to improve public safety, those facts could have been used to craft a better policy which would have targeted the real source of bites, unsterilized and unlicensed dogs.

The Clash. Awesome.

But those facts couldn’t be used to change the minds of people who just don’t like pit bulls, or fear them, or just don’t want to adopt them.  That’s because these things are all based on qualified beliefs.  People don’t like pit bulls for the same reason they don’t like this painting over that painting, this music over that music, this candidate over that candidate.  It may be entirely irrational, it may be unsupported by facts, it may be counter to their own interests, but it is what people feel.

When we overturned racist Jim Crow laws in the South (and opened the doors of the non-legislated cages in the North, don’t feel too smug about being a Yankee), we changed what actions and policies were permitted.  But that didn’t make racists run out and hug a non-white the next day.  It took fifty years for this country to elect a black man President.  It took that long for what the majority of us feel to catch up with the laws and policies which controlled our public actions regarding race.  It can take generations and it is why we should all expect the first gay President to be elected in about sixty years.  No, that’s not quantifiable and you don’t have to believe that.

Feral TNR is another notorious case of conflating the quantifiable with the qualifiable.  Without a doubt, Trap/Neuter/Release has shown the most promise for decreasing the problems associated with feral colonies and feral euthanasia.  After decades of in-fighting by animal welfare professionals, the overwhelming opinion among us now is that TNR should be a key arrow in our quiver.  However, TNR advocates ignore a very important point when they present TNR as the one true path or use the handful of facts we now have about its effectiveness to tell the public that they should want to have feral cats around.  The fact is that some people just don’t want to have feral cats around.

These TNR advocates believe that their value judgment that an improved feral cat colony situation is preferable to mass round ups and killing of ferals so the people who don’t want a feral cat pooping in their flower bed are simply wrong and need to readjust their feelings.  Only they don’t have to.  And trying to force people to feel something they don’t makes them stauncher in their opposition.  When we stopped banning interracial marriage we didn’t mandate the neighbors had to approve of it.  We just said they couldn’t stop you or me from doing it.

Petey the Pit Bull? Pretty cool, I guess.

We must stop fighting wars against feelings and start fighting battles in support of facts and effective policies.  Don’t oppose pit bull bans because your pit bull is a love bug and everyone else should think so.  Fight them by showing that pit bull bans don’t work effectively by the numbers, or that the problem isn’t what it is claimed to be by the numbers, or that there are other more effective ways to achieve the desired public safety outcomes by the numbers.  When our society doesn’t crumble around us, in a few years or decades, we’ll all be wondering what we were worried about, just like we don’t remember the hysteria of the seventies about killer German Shepherds or Doberman Pinschers.

Stop trying to make people love feral cats and target the policy makers who are increasingly spending money on killing them and offer a cheaper way to handle the problem.  Share with those who hate ferals that TNR may not solve their problem but it will surely improve it, while doing the same old thing obviously hasn’t worked for them.  And stop acting like anyone and everyone has to love pit bulls or feral cats as much as you do.

Let’s think about this in the long scheme of things and work to change minds first and worry about hearts later.  Put some thought to the first Presidential ticket featuring a talking pit bull in 150 years.  That might sound crazy but what do you think George Wallace would have said about an Obama Presidency in 1940?

I saw a disheartening recent blog post from another organization which was essentially attacking any other organization for not doing things the way they do things and actively encouraging supporters of other organizations cease supporting their current charity and instead exclusively support the blogger’s organization.

Messages like this are sad but I understand the place of frustration they can come from with resources being so short, the seeming competitive fundraising environment, and the natural tendency to a “grass is greener” mindset.  We’ve been hard hit in this economy and it’s easy to get bitter. And Lord knows I’ve quite critical of how some organizations have worked on this blog- just look at the last post.  It’s often an easy step to go from a legitimate difference of opinion on the best strategy or even criticisms of what and how others have done their work to blaming where we are based on the decisions we’ve made on others.  But almost inevitably, we are where we are because we have chosen to be here, not because of someone else’s choices.

HSBC’s successes are a group effort and result from the work and support of many.  But our occasional defeats are own and not the result of anyone else.  We share our success, we own our failures.

So let me offer an alternative request to everyone out there who cares about animals: HSBC thinks that every organization, whether it is a no kill, open access, animal control, governmental, breed rescue, foster group, advocacy group or the increasing number of organizations like ours which don’t fall neatly into any of the old standard categories, are trying to do something good for animals and people in the way they think is best for them and the most effective overall.  We think they ALL deserve support and we don’t think that the way for us to succeed is to drive wedges between our common interests.

I will ask you to support our work and I will ask you to support anyone and everyone else who you think is doing a good job and is doing something which you think is important.  Please share share this message of support and inclusion to all those you know who support any organization doing good.  We achieve more, give more and get more when we work together.  We are stronger united than we are divided.

The State of Pennsylvania seems a little like one of the Presidential candidates. Just because you have a contract with it doesn’t mean it isn’t sniffing around for new partners at the same time; when the going gets tough, you better expect it to leave you; and when it does dump you, you can bet it’ll be in the most callous way possible.

That’s just what it has reportedly done this week to four of its “partners” in Pennsylvania, including one right here in Berks County. For years the Dog Law Enforcement Office (formerly the Bureau until it was downgraded by the Corbett administration), held contracts with animal shelters to provide dog law enforcement and stray dog pick up services. These contracts were paid for with a portion of dog license sales and saved the State a boatload of personnel and benefits costs by not having to staff additional dog wardens.

HSBC held one of these contracts jointly with another organization for years, splitting Berks County up between us for service delivery. When we decided we were getting out of the dog catching business on January 1, 2008, the contract was paying a total of $100,000 between us. If you consider the cost of salary, benefits, mileage, and the holding costs which did not have to be paid for the strays under a different state reimbursement program, it was a real bargain for our “partner” in Harrisburg.

But at a per stray reimbursement average of about $40 a dog for us, it was hardly a good deal for us. When you factor the total received for all animal control services, from all service areas, for all animals, that per animal amount received dropped to about $24. Although it’s hard to say because not all organizations publish their intake and outgoing numbers like HSBC, that reimbursement is probably about the same rate today. To give you a contrasting number, now that Delaware County SPCA has stopped doing animal control and the County has had to build and staff their own shelter, Delaware County has set an animal charge for the municipalities the new animal control shelter will serve at $250 per animal- ten times the amount being paid in Berks for all animals and five times the amount the State was paying for dogs.

Berks County wasn’t just putting out for its partner in Harrisburg. Berks County wasn’t even making Harrisburg buy it dinner and a movie first. And Harrisburg still reportedly dumped the contract, by mail, with no notice, after the New Year when budgets have been set and plans for the year made! That’s like someone telling his wife to go ahead and sign for that credit line at Tiffany’s and then leaving her- and the bill- the next day.

These four organizations had the rug yanked out from under them by the State. These organizations do what they think is right and best for the animals and they try to do their job well, just like we do. If these reports are true, they don’t deserve to be treated like this, and neither do the animals of Pennsylvania.

I can say that we saw it coming. Dog Law has long been a jealous and vindictive lover. It plays the abusive role well. One minute smacking us around, then next soothing us and telling us we just make it so mad, buying us a little bauble and, oh, by the way, would we mind if it dropped off a couple dogs this weekend? We had received enough abuse and very publicly broke up with Harrisburg (and earned the wrath of some especially harsh words in return, threats of bad press and lawsuits, and swat team surprise kennel inspections). We have predicted that Harrisburg would just treat its next partners the same way. We even urged breaking up with Harrisburg first. For once, I am truly sorry I can say, “We told you so.”

Right now the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement- uh, sorry, Dog Law Enforcement Office- is dying a slow death. The Rendell administration gutted its “restricted” coffers for the general fund, leaving it on the verge of bankruptcy. He ensured one step back for every two forward- OK, three, he awesomely pushed through the Puppy Mill Bill- by staffing the BDLE with vindictive and ineffective management. The Corbett administration has done far worse by downgrading it to an “office”, hiring a bank manager with no animal experience to run it, and by not implementing the regulations Rendell worked so hard to get in place. In the words of an anonymous Reagan staffer, Corbett seems to be “starving the beast.” Unfortunately, starving dogs may follow.

So I just want to say something to the organizations that just got their text break up from that cold-hearted Harrisburg. Honeychild, I have been there. Harrisburg doesn’t deserve you and you are better off without Harrisburg. You are proud strong organizations and you should find yourself a good partner to work with, not some shifty service hound like Harrisburg. Sure, I know it seems bad now, but you put on some Gloria Gaynor and remind yourself: You will survive.

We did.

When people try to protect us by controlling what we can say and how we say it, they are in fact protecting tyranny.  Since the start of our nation people have feared that we are so weak that a harsh word, a short skirt, a fake logo, or a dirty lyric would bring down our economy, our virtue and our way of life.  So far, it hasn’t.  Why do we need to go through this exercise again?

“What they’re trying to do with radio, with this, uh, McCarron-Walter Act and a lot of other ways, is start by saying that they’re protecting the public from wicked rock bands, or girlie magazines, or whatever. but, if you follow the chain of dominoes that falls down, what they’re really trying to do is shut off our access to information itself. If they can’t do it by law they know there are other ways to do it…” Jello Biafra, Freedom of Speech (1989)

Devil?

In the area of animal welfare, living in Pennsylvania can be a hard row to hoe. With one exception: Breed specific laws (BSL) are illegal in Pennsylvania. Unlike other states, municipalities may not pass an ordinance banning a specific breed from its community. And by specific breed we, of course, mean pit bulls.

Not that it has not stopped some from trying, either outright or via “public safety” ordinances. A public safety ordinance would be immune from the prohibition against BSL’s. Unfortunately for those who have attempted this deft sidestepping of the BSL prohibition, none have been found to be anything other than breed specific legislation under a different name and have been overturned when challenged.

Since the HSBC and Reading pit bulls owners prevailed in a battle against one such “public safety” ordinance several years ago, we haven’t had to put much attention to the issue in our little corner of heaven. However, I’ve followed the ups and downs, as well as the ongoing coverage of maulings and deaths by pit bulls, through the various news aggregators and forward lists I receive. BSL may be slumbering in Berks but throughout Pennsylvania and the nation, it has hardly died.

Angel?

Given the ongoing allure of BSL for local governments which genuinely seek a means of protecting their citizens, I thought I’d share again my conversion to the side of those opposed to BSL’s (and with apologies, buckle up, this is going to be a long one with lots of data and graphs). Yes, I was once a sinner, blinded by the virtues of BSL’s. Or more specifically the virtues of what I believed could be a “well crafted, effective public safety ordinance.” I’ve always been a sucker for well crafted, effective things.

When I first arrived at HSBC, the City of Reading was just exiting a period of imposed “safety” regarding pit bulls. The safety involved muzzling all pit bulls in public, requiring that all pit bulls wear giant “dangerous dog” medallions and their homes were required to post a similar notice prominently (no, they weren’t yellow, six pointed stars, but the mind does wander to other populations which have endured wearing similar pieces of flair), and owners were required to buy expensive dangerous dog permits with hugely large sterilization differentials (something like $50 sterilized, $500 unsterilized). The ordinance was implemented in reaction to a spate of dog bites, prominently featuring pit bulls, and would be re-instituted any time the number of reported bites in the city exceeded 40 in a year and if any one breed exceeded 30% of those 40+ bites.

Since as the new executive director I would be in charge of tracking and enforcing the ordinance, should it ever be triggered again, my new employers explained the history and the details of the ordinance to me. Since BSL didn’t come naturally to me, my first reaction was, “Really?” Then I was shown the stunningly precipitous decrease in dog bites following the implementation of the ordinance, so precipitous that the ordinance actually expired and my response was, “Wow, really.” I was sold. There was clear evidence that the ordinance had worked, that it had targeted a discrete population which was causing the problem, and that it had done it so effectively that the problem went away and the target population was no longer under its yoke. This wasn’t BSL; it truly was a well-crafted, effective public safety ordinance! I just had to look at the numbers to see the proof! I went from skeptical to giving interviews in support of this brilliant little ordinance to media around the nation.

It was not the first time I’ve been blinded by a shiny object and sleight of hand and I doubt it will be the last. As it turns out, I was very, very wrong. Not about the effectiveness of the ordinance; it was quite effective. But like torture, which might also extremely effective at getting the information you seek, as would be killing someone’s children one at a time in front of them, it was effective for all the wrong reasons and there were other means which would have been just as effective or more. We don’t measure the rightness of a law or action merely on its effectiveness.

It turned out that the dramatic decreases in bites following the implementation of the ordinance had more to do with actions buried within it- the increased dog law enforcement, on the high dollar incentive to sterilize, and most importantly the high profile enforcement of dog law and licensing across the board. How do we know this? Because the implementation of this ordinance did not just decrease pit bull bites. It also decreased all other dog bites in direct proportion to the decrease in pit bull bites, despite the fact that the ordinance did not apply to any other breed.

Bernese Mountain Dog: Public Enemy Number One?

I can be entertained by sleight of hand and suspend my disbelief a lot, but don’t tell me it was magic that put that quarter in my ear. It’s going to make me start watching what you are doing very closely. That’s exactly what I started doing in 2007 when the number of bites started to increase again and it started to look like the ordinance would be implemented once again. This time I had seen how the bites had started stacking up, and I saw there was more to it than this “safety ordinance” would address.

For example, since there was a demonstrated enormous increase in the total number of dogs licensed in Reading, as well as the total number of pit bulls, how did a base number of bites (40) continue to make sense? If you have 40 dogs and 40 bites, you have an epidemic. If you have 40 bites and 40,000 dogs, you have a blip. Was it fair to maintain that number basis rather than a bite rate basis?

The ordinance was also triggered when 30% of the 40 reported bites were from a single breed. What if pit bulls accounted for more than 30% of the dog population, as was likely in Reading? Wouldn’t that be holding them to a lower threshold than any other breed? Plus, since this was reported bites, weren’t some bites more likely to be reported? What if bite reports became “lost”, reports which might tally against other breeds (as, in fact, happened).

Even more basic question about the ordinance began to spring up. What if one dog bites several times, as happened. One dog bit multiple people in a single incident. Yet it was counted as several bites, skewing the bite count. Not to mention the whole nebulousness of deciding what was a pit bull or pit bull “mix”, or pit bull “type”. A Labrador with papers is pretty easy to define, but the dogs running around Reading where hardly AKC. Boxer, pit, mastiff, rottie, bulldog; who knows what these things were. We were largely going on looks and supposition. In fact, in all likelihood, the only dogs which would be positively identified were the ones which were self-identified by owners who had licensed them- by definition, the good owners!

1999 and 2007: How can that be the same "epidemic"?

More and more I became concerned with the reality of the ordinance which I had been a booster for, especially as the year went on and the bites started to approach the trigger. I began really digging into the data we had on the bites to try to figure out what was really going on. Were we seeing correlation but not causation when we focused on pits? Why had we seen such a huge rash of bites early in the year? Were there other factors which were more prevalent?

Of course, as the private contractor which was actually written into the ordinance as the enforcer, these questions more than a little disturbed the Reading government and led to some tense meetings. At one, a councilman accused me of “maybe not caring about whether a little girl gets attacked in the streets by a pit bull”. He must have assumed I was in the non-breeder wing of the animal welfare corps and seemed to be genuinely surprised when I took umbrage at that accusation given my own three young daughters. But those meetings were valuable because they exposed that there was virtually no information about the bite trends, just lots of questions.

So I wrote them all down and we set out to answer them in a brief report sent to the City. That report marked the end of the HSBC’s willingness to supervise or endorse the “safety ordinance” and our active opposition to it as BSL in disguise. More than that, we showed that it was actually causing cycles of improvement and decline, leading to a worse public safety outcome.

If that's not a correlation, I don't know what is.

That report answered a lot of questions. Why was the bite count unusually high early in the year? Because we had record high temperatures throughout the winter and spring and the increased bites tracked the increased temperature. Did pits bite disproportionately compared to other dogs by population? No, in fact, they had one of the lowest bite rates based on population, only 4% of licensed population, as opposed to the historical high of 27% in 1999 when this ordinance was crafted. Were pit owners demonstrably worse owners than other breed owners based on specific criteria (sterilization and licensing)? No, they were directly in line with other breeds.

And, drum roll, please: Was the single biggest common denominator in bites the breed or were there other factors which showed greater commonality among all bites? Oh, hell, yes. While it seemed like the biggest group represented in the bite stats was the breed group pit or pit mix, accounting for around 34% of the biting dogs, there were two one factors which had vastly bigger representation on the stat charts: dog license status and sterilization status.

Only 14% of biting dogs were licensed (bites stats at year end) were licensed, a rate probably substantially below the actual licensing rate of all dogs (although we had no direct survey to compare).  Even more stunning was sterilization status.  Of licensed dogs in Reading, 65% were sterilized. But 91% of the all dogs which bit in 2007 were unsterilized. And 100% of the pit bulls which had reported bites were not sterilized! It wasn’t pit bulls which were biting, it was unsterilized pit bulls exclusively and unsterilized dogs of any type more than nine out ten times which were biting.

The likely real reasons for the apparent “success” became starkly evident. When the ordinance was triggered, massive enforcement sweeps began in the city. Licensing rates went up. Pit bulls were sterilized in droves to obtain the lower “dangerous dog” permit fee. The increased awareness and availability of low cost sterilization services led to all other dogs seeing an increase in sterilization. Heavy handed post bite enforcement resulted in better caretaking by good or average owners and relinquishment of dogs by poor or criminal owners. As a result, bites declined among all dogs, with pit bull bites falling in direct proportion, not uniquely.  In fact, the ordinance had a greater impact on dog bites among the non-pit bull biting population (see chart).

The ordinance worked, not because it targeted pits. That was a red herring. In reality, it simply did what we should all know works: imposed better dog law enforcement, better ID standards, heavily incentivized sterilization, and held bad owner accountable.  However, the criminalization of pit bulls also led to a decrease in pit bull licensing as people chose to hide their “contraband” or call them “boxer mixes”.  It was not until the lifting of the ordinance that pit bull licensing exploded (see chart).

And when the ordinance sunset after the bites went down, the expected happened. With no across the board enforcement and no pit bull sterilization incentive, the number of unsterilized dogs increased, the number of unlicensed dogs increased, and the number of bad owners increased. One warm winter to add a few months of prime outside biting weather and, viola, and “epidemic” is born.

This ordinance did not work for the reasons claimed and BSL does not work because it misses the big picture. If we want fewer bites, we need to ensure that dogs are less likely to bite and that owners are less likely to have dogs which are likely to bite. There are obviously ways to accomplish this without criminalizing a particular breed.  Well, obvious to us, but not to everyone.  Our change of heart in the face of facts was one of the reasons we parted ways with Reading as a contractor.

To be clear, I’m no apologist for pit bulls. I’ve been quite blunt in my assessment of people who show more compassion for killer dogs than their dead victims and I personally think there is a large contingent of delusional dilettantes who have no idea what pits, or any dog, are capable of. Most disfiguring bites I’ve seen in my work were inflicted by pits or pit mixes. Just on looks, I’ve more a retriever/setter aesthetic. There’s nothing that obligates me to love pit bulls, nor should we expect special consideration from anyone for any breed.

But the mere fact that I’ve seen a couple nasty pit bull bites or that I think some other breed is prettier doesn’t mean they should get negative consideration either. I once had a very bad experience with tequila and chicken enchiladas. That doesn’t mean they should be banned, let alone banning anything Mexican. And that’s exactly what these BSL’s do. In the face of anecdotal evidence they impose ineffective sanctions against one breed based on isolated, statistically irrelevant examples.

We all know what we would call it if someone referenced crime articles from an inner city newspaper and used them as proof to condemn a single population. Or if an entire religion was held accountable for the actions of a few. Or if we applied a “one drop” heritage rule to a person. But we also know that if an individual does something criminal, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, we should hold that person accountable.

We should also be careful to go after the flavor of the week threat. Remember when it was German Shepherds, and then Doberman Pinschers, and then Rottweilers? Now it is pit bulls. Like drugs, people with a dog problem will just find a new dog to have a problem with. We need to attack the problem, not the dog.

Just as there are ways to combat crime and terrorism without indicting a whole group, there are ways to combat dog bites epidemics without indicting an entire breed and the people which care for that breed. Because people will continue to keep pit bulls and all criminalizing that will do is make people criminals. We only need to look to Prohibition to see how well making something a crime which people are going to continue to do works out. Prohibition effectively created organized crime and made drinking and the nation less safe. BSL’s do the same.

Should there be strong animal control and welfare regulation for all animals? Yes, it’s good for animals as well as our community. Should there be special consideration to some animals which are capable of inflicting more serious damage and injury, such as large powerful dogs? Perhaps, if the additional considerations are fact based and have an actual positive effect. Should we simply select one breed or group of breed for selective prohibition? No, the actual evidence does not support it and the negative impact on a far larger population exceeds the supposed benefits.

So please, municipalities which are looking for a solution to bite cases, don’t be fooled by shiny objects.  Use hard data to figure out what the real problem is and come up with targeted ways to address those problems.  To those in sheltering who harbor a silent mistrust because of what you have seen done by pit bulls in your career but won’t say it out loud because you know it’s bad sheltering politics (you know who you are), remember that your experience is not representative of the whole world.  Just as a vice cop shouldn’t think everyone is a skeevy pimp because he hangs out with skeevy pimps all day, remember that we often see the worst of a species, not necessarily the best.  And to all those pit bull apologists out there who want to pretend that every pit bull was sent from heaven and just forgot their wings, wake up.  These animals have a unique potential for harm just because of how they are built and just because you love your bow legged love bug doesn’t mean that everyone else has to or that the one which just killed a child shouldn’t be euthanized.

Let’s treat dog bites like the public health problem they are and approach it in ways which work. Bites won’t go away but they’ll go down. And at the same time the lives of animals will improve, without breed round ups. Americans won’t give up their their dogs any more than they’ll give up their booze or their guns. If you don’t believe it, ask yourself what you’ll do when they make your dog illegal and send the truck to cart your dog off.  You’ll probably be glad the NRA has made sure you still have a gun.

With the number of self-professed saints and prophets working in animal welfare, I’d expect more miracles. But while the seven deadly sins are as well represented among those working in animal welfare as any industry, the pre-eminent one must be pride and its sub-sin, vainglory or vanity.

Chances are you’ve met a few of these saints who don’t hesitate to remind you of how tirelessly they work for animals, how passionately they feel, how many animals have died in their arms, or how knee deep in dog crap they have waded. But it’s not about them, it’s about the animals. Actually, it’s often about vanity as far as I can discern.

And you can tell because all too often these protestations of animal loving piety are broken out as soon as the person is criticized or challenged for their actions and for saying something stupid (and don’t look at me- I will readily admit I say stupid things routinely, I lay no claim to saintliness, and I avoid dog crap whenever I can). One might think the go-to response to a challenge would be a defense of the rightness of the action or the soundness of the statement. But it isn’t. So many times it goes straight to something along the lines of, “I work so hard, I love so much”. Unstated: And you don’t, now screw off.

I think they do this because when they are challenged on actions or statements it causes a fluttering in the self-absorbed mirror into which they gaze. When so many in animal welfare look into their mirror they see themselves through a Vaseline filtered, rosy lens, in a slow-motion montage in which they whisk grateful animals to safety amidst a soundtrack of Sarah McLachlan. When they speak they hear soothing sounds emanating from that heart-felt internal video, with McLachlan softly playing beneath their narration, words which are supposed to inspire us to melt and say, “Ohhhhhh, that person is wonderful and right and I wish I could be like him/her.”

So when someone actually says to them, “What are you talking about? That makes no sense at all, it is totally unsupported by evidence, it is factually untrue,” their mirror goes all green smoky and a scary face tells them they are not the most fair and compassionate of all.

That is not to say that many of these saintly folks don’t truly care about animals, aren’t compassionate, aren’t dedicated and devoted. I truly believe most are and that they really believe in what they do and what they spout off, even if it’s patently wrong at times. But they have fallen victim to vanity and they have learned that the animal loving piety card trumps most hands. It is a magic dagger which, when plunged into the hearts of others, both wins acolytes and vanquishes opponents. But like all magic weapons, its power is an illusion and its spell broken as quickly as someone can say, “Yeah, I get you work tirelessly and you smell like dog poop but what you just said is wrong and I’ll prove it.”

We can’t all be saints; otherwise, what is the point of having them? If everyone was a miracle worker we wouldn’t all be saints, we’d all be gods. Not that some animal welfare workers wouldn’t lay claim to that but it’s a harder slog since if they were gods they’d just snap their fingers and actually solve all these problems facing animals or make that voodoo math add up. As far as I know, two plus two still equals four. No one has made it equal “all the pit bulls get adopted”.

The first thing they should do is admit they have a problem. Maybe what they need is a twelve step program. Wait, that won’t work, it requires acknowledging that there’s a power greater than them and they’ve pretty firmly established their personal primacy in the universe. Perhaps we just need to tell them that we appreciate what they do, even if we won’t worship what they do. They don’t have to be a saint. They don’t have to be infallible. They don’t even have to be right. And we don’t have to be wrong just because we disagree with them.

So to the self-sainted I say: Allow me to welcome you back to the ranks of the normal, hardworking, animal welfare community. Back to the ranks of the mere human. Join us, join me. I truly care about animals and work hard to help them. But I still go home to the kids at night and try to enjoy my weekends. I think I have some pretty damn good ideas on how to fix things and I think some of yours are pretty stupid. But I’ve been wrong before and I’m willing to hear you out. I’ve been doing this a long, long time but maybe you’ve been doing it longer- and even if you’re new to it, it doesn’t mean you might not have something to teach me. I’ll dish it out but I’ll try to take, too, and with as much good humor as I can muster, if you’ll do the same. After all, we’re only human.

I’m no sinner but I sure as hell am not a saint, nor a prophet. And neither are you. We don’t have to work miracles together, we just have to work together.

It’s not always nice to have certainty and continuity in our lives.  Especially when it’s the certainty that the deadly farce that is animal/dog control in Pennsylvania will continue in the New Year.

It’s the same story: Government won’t pay for the service it is required by law to provide, forcing an animal shelter to choose between closing the doors to some or going bankrupt and closing the doors to all.

I'm shocked to hear that the police may legally shoot dogs! Now go round up the usual suspects!

It’s the same response: The dog law brain trust in Harrisburg acts shocked and dismayed that to hear that police are euthanizing strays dogs with guns.  You know, instead of shipping them off to an animal control facility to have it done for them quietly behind doors.  Their shock is about as genuine as Claude Rains’ was in Casablanca when he announces he is shocked to learn that there is gambling in Rick’s establishment- as he is slipped his previous night’s winnings.  Either some of those on the Dog Law Advisory Board are ignorant of the very law they “advise” on or they are liars.  Take your pick, there’s no good choice.

And it’s the same victims:  Dogs with no place to go, a public who thinks that when their government passes a law that requires strays to be picked up and housed by its police it will actually obey itself, and charitable animal shelters who get lectured for not “doing their job” by a government whose big accomplishment in 2011 was not passing a budget an entire year late.  I’m pretty sure we all managed that, too.  And did we mention all the cats and other animals which are ignored entirely because they aren’t covered under the “dog” law?

I guess we should just count our blessings that we don’t live in that town where they let your house burn if you didn’t pay your fire tax.  Shhhhhh….I don’t want to give them any ideas.

Happy New Year!

The maniacs did it; they finally really did it!  This week the mad scientists at the National Institutes of Health announced that they would no longer fund the use of apes in scientific testing.  That means that the chimpanzees, which you and I bought and paid for with our tax dollars will spend the rest of their lives just lazing away their time like simian welfare queens.

I say to the government: Take your stinking paws off my damn dirty apes!  I don’t know who gave those elitists with their advanced scientific doctoral degrees the right to tell us what makes for good science.  I may not be able to tell you what good science is but I know it when I see it.  And smoking chimps look like good science to me.  They tell us that we can’t learn anything from testing on apes and then in the next breath tell us we shouldn’t experiment on them because they are so similar to us.  Make up your minds!

I’ve never bought that we had much in common with monkeys- except maybe for those Occupy hippies. It’s probably all their idea to “redistribute” our monkeys.  Sounds like the Soviet Union to me.  What kind of San Francisco “equality” do they have planned for these monkeys, acting like they are just our hairy brothers?  I bet the 99% think that the fact that chimps are 98% the same as us means we shouldn’t use them however we want.

Who cares that we are 98% the same genetic make up.  I don’t even know what a gene is!  But since when did something being like something else count and us being completely unqualified to make an informed decision stop us from making them? Things are like other things all the time.  I have a Sage Green fleece jacket.  I’m not going to grind it up and put in my turkey stuffing this Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I’m not even sure those monkeys are Christian.  I think this is all another front of the war on Christmas.  You know where those chimps come from, don’t you?  Africa.  I bet they can’t even come up with long form birth certificates.

Let’s be honest, we all know that monkeys are good for only one thing other than testing toxins on- chimp hand ashtrays.  And since we know from all the reputable tobacco research done on them that smoking isn’t really bad for us (that’s just a scam perpetrated by the Nanny State), I want me one of those things for all my butts.  Besides, you can’t trust these chimps.  I know because I read that story, The Monkey’s Paw.  One minute someone’s giving you some awesome monkey paw you might make into an ashtray, the next you’ve found yourself wishing corpses back to life.  Nothing good about those monkey hands, I tell you.

Don’t call me inconsistent! I can be inconsistent all I want. It’s my right as an American and we have a proud tradition of complete inconsistency.  I’ll covet and cringe from monkey hands all I want. I’m not a slave to your logic!

The real thing we should all be afraid of, though, is the clear sinister machinations of the HSUS and that vegan George Clooney, Wayne Pacelle.  We all know what his agenda is.  It’s to serve under the yoke of our monkey overlords, eating tofu.  In his vegan nirvana we’ll all be footmen to those bears he’s keeping us from shooting in Maine who will be armed with all the guns he wants to take from us along with our foie gras, while we feed peeled grapes to all the pigeons that he wants to keep legitimate sportsmen from shooting by the thousands in Pennsylvania.  Do you know how fast pigeons reproduce?  Two pigeons turn into four million in just sixteen months.  Hand to God, it’s true.  If we weren’t shooting them we’d be waste deep in them.  Sounds like Pacelle heaven to me.

Well, I want my monkeys in shackles, like God intended.  Maybe Wayne “Ape Apologist” Pacelle wants us going down the slippery path to the Planet of the Apes, but not me.  Even if the picture of an orangutan riding a horse seems pretty funny, we all know who came up with Planet of the Apes.  A French guy, that’s who.  ‘Nuff said. Like we needed any more proof that setting these chimps free so that they can take away our jobs and undertake massive voter fraud was a bad idea.

You may think this is all crazy talk, that there’s no proof of any of this and I’m just making up weird unsupportable claims intended to frighten the uninformed and maintain the political status quo.  Goes to show what you know- I am the uniformed!  I couldn’t come up with this stuff on my own!  I get it from patriotic sounding organizations created and funded by a tiny handful of stinking rich guys and corporations who know best what I should believe and aren’t afraid to tell me or take me down at the knees if I disagree.  And if they tell me that anything the HSUS or scientists do is bad, I’m going to believe it.  And I’m not going to let reality get in my way.  Or let you have it get in your way, either.

p.s. Thanks to whoever the blog commenter I swiped that Clooney line from is! K

That’s right, you heard me. It’s time to legalize pigeon shoots.

After yet another aborted attempt to ban pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania, an attempt which was met by the full force of the NRA and its lobbyist in their crusade to save that “proud tradition”, we are in the same limbo we have been in for years. Representative John Maher, who offered the amendment to SB 71 which would have enacted the explicit ban on shoots, was reported to have said, perhaps tongue in cheek, that the legislature itself has a proud tradition from running from the issue.

It’s not like anyone gets a benefit from advocating for an end to pigeon shoots. Maher certainly doesn’t and our organization gets our share of people wondering why we “care about vermin” instead of cats and dogs or people. The fact that we can do both seems to elude some.

And the fact is HSBC did not gleefully jump into this fight. For years we bought the line that pigeons shoots were legal, that there was decided case law. Our response was always that it fell in the realm of hunting and organizationally we have a position of taking no position on issues of lawful hunting, agricultural practice, etc. We may not have liked pigeon shoots- and we didn’t- but it wasn’t a matter of cruelty law. Or so we thought.

Then some people opposed to the shoots started putting some eye-opening information in front of me. Settled case law? No. It turns out that the single case which pro-shoot advocates point to settled nothing. In fact it opened the door for a number of ways in which shoots could violate the cruelty law even if they were legal. Pigeon shoots as hunting? No. It turned out that those in charge of deciding what was hunting and what wasn’t, the PA Game Commission, were quite clear that pigeon shoots were not hunting in their eyes. There was no “season” for pigeons. The letter of the game code and the federal laws it defers to seems to entirely contradict the use of pigeons for any sort of sport.

So if it wasn’t hunting and it wasn’t settled law, there was only one more place to turn to: the PA Cruelty Code. Pennsylvania’s own state cruelty prosecutors train officers like ours that there are only four affirmative defenses against a cruelty charge. They are standard agricultural practice, self-defense, pest control, and game code protection. Each of these has explicit and detailed definitions and pigeon shoots did not fall within any of them.

I remember the moment when I came, dumbfounded, to the realization that pigeon shoots were actually already illegal. That they weren’t protected under any statute, law or code. Because they aren’t exempt from the animal cruelty law, they are subject to them by definition, just as launching cats or dogs and shooting at them would be. Or pouring lava down a cow’s throat would be. That’s not explicitly banned under law either. But it doesn’t make it legal.

The only problem is that we have not been permitted to pursue what I believe would be very strong and persuasive cruelty charges because the ability to file these charges are subject to the will of county district attorneys. And pretty much to a one, they just don’t want to pursue these cases for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that they say the shoots are legal, although they can’t point to the law which makes it so, and I have no reason to doubt the genuiness of their belief.

So when people ask why HSBC stepped into this fray, it’s because we didn’t have any other choice. By policy we don’t get involved in activities protected by law. But shoots aren’t protected by law. By mission we prosecute cruelty. But we aren’t permitted to prosecute the case of pigeon shoots as cruelty.

The only option is to advocate for a crystal clear clarification of the law to make the shoots expressly illegal. It’s what the majority of people want, as far as I can tell. Even hunters, even the ones who say they defend the shoots, quickly back pedal and say, “Well, I think they are disgraceful and wouldn’t participate, but….” No buts. Let’s do what the majority of people want and pass a simple law which outlaws pigeon shoots.

We’ve been advocating exactly that and there have been perfect, not merely good, but perfect bills which explicitly protect hunting, guns rights, even pheasant releases. But we can’t even get these bills or similar amendments to a vote. Case in point, the Maher Amendment of SB 71 which was sent back to committee for reconsideration (killed).

Elected officials have asked me what we need to just go away. I always say the same thing. A simple up or down vote. Go on the record. If legislators think these shoots are legal and want to keep them that way, just vote the bill or amendment down. No procedural shenanigans, no double talk, no “studying of the complex issue” and all the other things which make voters distrust their elected officials. Just vote on the record, once and for all.

And if these pigeon shoots have such support among the people that their elected officials feel the need to block any attempt at clarity, I will suggest something else: Please, someone, introduce a law explicitly legalizing pigeon shoots and vote that one up or down. Legislators, you want to make HSBC go away on this issue? Make these shoots legal, just like deer hunting or agricultural meat production. As I’ve said earlier, we have an organizational policy of taking no position on legally protected activities like these. We leave that to other groups.  And then I can stop annoying our friends who like the NRA.

Do you even have the courage to do that? Is this really about anything other than avoiding a public vote? A vote which will anger animal welfare folks on one side or the NRA on the other? Do you not have the courage of your convictions? John Maher has stood up and taken a public position. The many sponsors of the various pigeon shoot bills have taken a public position. What is your position?

Ban the shoots. Legalize the shoots. Just do something. Inaction is cowardice.