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Its true people incorrectly identify pitbulls but I don't know if that link is really the best resource to make your point.

Out of the 25 dogs pictured, one is a Jack Russell and one is a chocolate Lab. I don't know many people who think either of those are pitbulls. That being said, out of the remaining 23, 13 are not recommended for "the casual dog owner" and have descriptions like, "in the wrong hands this dog can be dangerous" "will fight to the death" "very aggressive to people passing on the street" "be careful when opening the door so they don't get out onto the street" etc. etc.

Pitbulls can be very loyal and loving to their families. However, these dogs MUST have an experienced owner because if they perceive a threat to a member of their pack they will attack and those attacks can be deadly. That's why the public is uncomfortable with these dogs and since it's impossible to know or identify good owners, I'm inclined to agree with those who think a muzzle in public should be required.

HA! The thought of a grown man crossing the street to avoid a dog is too funny. It seems if JC is such a scary place that some of you feel the need to want to pack heat, maybe you just aren't cut out for urban living.

The fact is, one or two ignorant people are not going to get a whole breed banned just because they get scared.

Evolution gave pitbulls their massive jaws, their massive heads, and their massive chests for a reason.

That reason ain't to be cuddly. That reason is to kill their prey, and quickly.

Evolution also gave pitbulls their brains, which are wired for killing.

Having a loving household only blunts that instinct. I'd hate to encounter a pitbull which is pissed off at the moment, or feeling threatened by me for some reason, loving household notwithstanding.

What gets me is not that people are allowed to walk un-muzzled pitbulls in public; it is that it is illegal for me to protect myself by (for example) packing a concealed weapon, or even Mace.

It is the double standard that gets me.

The scary thought is that even a concealed weapon would not protect me from a pissed-off pit. The sucker would bite my head off even before I had a chance to reach.

Designation of pitbulls as a dangerous breed and mandatory muzzling is the only solution that I would accept.

But this will take many more maimed grownups and killed children.

It is fact that when a bite or attack is reported in the media much of the time they incorrectly list the dog as a pit.

The pit breed is a good breed and can live very well with families, children and other pets. You cannot condemn an entire breed based on the misuse by some. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but please look at all sides of the issue before coming to a conclusion.

Find the pitbull:

http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html

it is like freaking groundhog day around here.

you want to keep a pitbull? super. you want a gun in your house? I'm fine with that, too.

but once you bring it out on the street, your "thoughtful" decision affects your community.

and the money and attention that went towards the rehabilitation of Michael Vick's dogs is absolutely criminal when you think of how many non-violent shelter dogs that could have saved. the priorities of the bully breed apologists astound me.

i HATE myself for getting back into this discussion, it's like kicking a dead horse that died 7 times over, but this comment really gets on my tits:

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yeah. you're right. i'm ignorant for decreasing my chances of getting attacked by a potentially vicious dog. the same reason why I avoid dark alleys at night and most parts of Newark and Patterson, NJ.

I can recall a day like it was yesterday, I was jogging down Jersey Ave. and a man and his enormous dog were walking down the street in the opposite direction. i saw the dog, put no trust in whether it would bite me or not, and decided I was going to distance myself from the dog as much as possible while still staying on the sidewalk and not going out onto the road. well, the dog lunged at me and its jaws snapped shut a foot away from my face, thanks to the man being tentative and yanking on the dog's collar just in time to pull it back. needless to say i slowed to a walk after that so that I could give this man a total ration of $hit for owning such a violent dog and walking it without a muzzle.

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i simply do not believe this statement. secondly, if a golden retriever gets pissed off and attacks a child, i can plant a straight right hand into it's ribs and it will yelp and let go. i cannot do the same to a pitbull. it would be the equivalent of tickling its paw.

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................within reason, are completely rational, logically thinking people.

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simple question: if you had a rambunctious 3 year old child, that let's say for arguement's sake that liked to pull dogs' ears, and you could stick the child in a room with a pitbull or a lab, both of which you are unaware of their history, which do you choose?

You know why we keep having this conversation on JClist??? BECAUSE THE SAME VIOLENT INCIDENTS KEEP HAPPENING!!!

So yeah, you're right Croft, for the mother of 3 avoiding walking her children directly past a pitbull in the park, that's nothing short of ignorant

wow you are really stupid. How does your dog experience matter in this case? Fine you are a responsible and expert dog owner, but like injcsince said how the hell do i know that?!?! when you walk by on the street with a big pitbull, for all i know you could be that idiot with the attack dog. Why would you call someone ignorant for trying to avoid a stranger with a pitbull?

And i agree pitbulls need to be muzzled in public. Debate all you want about how it's the owner's fault etc..., bottomline is they do attack people under certain conditions(or randomly) more than any other type of common pet dogs.

There have been so many cases of pitbull attack, just in jersey city alone. Even if ALL of them are the fault of the owners, if the dogs were muzzled, it could've have prevented the tragedies. Why dont some of you pitbull owners think of the victims next time instead of just the dog.


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anyone else notice the similarities between Pit Bull apologists and NRA gun nuts? It's always pilot error, never the fact that a loaded weapon lying around (sleeping on the sofa) is more dangerous than there not being one.

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+1 to that!

Pits were actually bred to be extremely friendly and docile around humans. Obviously that's not the case with all of them but keep in mind that aggressive pits are the exception and not the rule.

With that being said, hopefully this will result in better enforcement of leash laws in this city.

I thought this was a sweet and positive article about the breed. And one that has a happy ending.
http://news.aol.com/article/pit-bull- ... bullets-for-family/274901


Pit Bull Takes Bullets for Family
(Dec. 11) - An Oklahoma City family is
calling a beloved pit bull a hero after the
dog took three bullets while fending off an
intruder, KWTV reports.
Roberta Trawick said she was sitting in
her living room when a man came
through the front door, holding a gun. The
family?s pit bull, D-Boy, raced in from
another room, ready to attack. The
intruder then began shooting, hitting the
dog three times before fleeing the home.
D-Boy is back with his family, having
recovered from his bullet wounds.
?I?m sorry my dog got shot, but I still got
my family and we still got our dog,? family
member Angelic Shoemaker told KWTV.
Police have not caught the intruder.
Get the full story at KWTV.

I've met GreenevilleChick, kudos to you for being a RESPONSIBLE dog owner.

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Handle as many aggressive dogs as I have, then call me a joke, otherwise, google the drama llama. He's calling for you.

Well said!

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brewster wrote:

I can't believe we are doomed to have the same exchanges again and again. It goes like this:

Even if a pit bull is no more likely to bite than any other dog, when they do they're far capable of inflicting severe and mortal damage on people and other dogs than most other breeds. A vicious chihuahua can't tear your throat out, no matter how much he may want to. "Accidents" happen with all dogs, as they do with all knives, but is your dog a butter knife or a razor sharp samurai sword on 4 legs?

As for locking jaws, or what is a "pit bull" for that matter, the proof is physical, not in definitions. I once saw a video of a pit leap up at a tree, grab a 2 inch branch, and dangle and twist it's body till it ripped the branch off the tree. Who gives a damn whether it's jaws "locked"?

let's see maybe ignorance?
I own a pit.... I also how a lab/chow mix who is about 20 pounds smaller then my pit and a whole lot shorter.... she beats up on this pit, provokes him, bites him, snaps at him... and he does nothing but run away from her and cry like a little baby. It's all about how these animals are raised from day one... various dogs have various behavioral issues from A-Z. The dog you mentioned clearly had a lot of issues and it was never nipped in the bud because it was continued to be put in situations he should not have been in considering his past. Owning a dog is about being a RESPONSIBLE dog owner. My pitbull was attacked about a month ago by an unleashed pitbull while walking down my own block. Not a very responsible owner. My lab/chow is very aggressive but is very smart and listens well. She is a dream to let off the leash up in the country, but because of the proximity of people and other dogs in JC I would never DREAM of letting her or any of my dogs off leash anywhere in the public like that.

I feel awful for the attacked jogger. I hope she recovers and that owner of the dogs is caught and prosecuted.

Reading this thread I was reminded of a good article from couple years ago about pits their bad reputation. Even after reading it, I'm still a bit more apprehensive when I see pits than other dogs, to be perfectly honest.

Here's the first couple paragraphs:

One afternoon last February, Guy Clairoux picked up his two-and-a half-year-old son, Jayden, from day care and walked him back to their house in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario. They were almost home. Jayden was straggling behind, and, as his father?s back was turned, a pit bull jumped over a back-yard fence and lunged at Jayden. ?The dog had his head in its mouth and started to do this shake,? Clairoux?s wife, JoAnn Hartley, said later. As she watched in horror, two more pit bulls jumped over the fence, joining in the assault. She and Clairoux came running, and he punched the first of the dogs in the head, until it dropped Jayden, and then he threw the boy toward his mother. Hartley fell on her son, protecting him with her body. ?JoAnn!? Clairoux cried out, as all three dogs descended on his wife. ?Cover your neck, cover your neck.? A neighbor, sitting by her window, screamed for help. Her partner and a friend, Mario Gauthier, ran outside. A neighborhood boy grabbed his hockey stick and threw it to Gauthier. He began hitting one of the dogs over the head, until the stick broke. ?They wouldn?t stop,? Gauthier said. ?As soon as you?d stop, they?d attack again. I?ve never seen a dog go so crazy. They were like Tasmanian devils.? The police came. The dogs were pulled away, and the Clairouxes and one of the rescuers were taken to the hospital. Five days later, the Ontario legislature banned the ownership of pit bulls. ?Just as we wouldn?t let a great white shark in a swimming pool,? the province?s attorney general, Michael Bryant, had said, ?maybe we shouldn?t have these animals on the civilized streets.?

Pit bulls, descendants of the bulldogs used in the nineteenth century for bull baiting and dogfighting, have been bred for ?gameness,? and thus a lowered inhibition to aggression. Most dogs fight as a last resort, when staring and growling fail. A pit bull is willing to fight with little or no provocation. Pit bulls seem to have a high tolerance for pain, making it possible for them to fight to the point of exhaustion. Whereas guard dogs like German shepherds usually attempt to restrain those they perceive to be threats by biting and holding, pit bulls try to inflict the maximum amount of damage on an opponent. They bite, hold, shake, and tear. They don?t growl or assume an aggressive facial expression as warning. They just attack. ?They are often insensitive to behaviors that usually stop aggression,? one scientific review of the breed states. ?For example, dogs not bred for fighting usually display defeat in combat by rolling over and exposing a light underside. On several occasions, pit bulls have been reported to disembowel dogs offering this signal of submission.? In epidemiological studies of dog bites, the pit bull is overrepresented among dogs known to have seriously injured or killed human beings, and, as a result, pit bulls have been banned or restricted in several Western European countries, China, and numerous cities and municipalities across North America. Pit bulls are dangerous.

Of course, not all pit bulls are dangerous. Most don?t bite anyone. Meanwhile, Dobermans and Great Danes and German shepherds and Rottweilers are frequent biters as well, and the dog that recently mauled a Frenchwoman so badly that she was given the world?s first face transplant was, of all things, a Labrador retriever. When we say that pit bulls are dangerous, we are making a generalization, just as insurance companies use generalizations when they charge young men more for car insurance than the rest of us (even though many young men are perfectly good drivers), and doctors use generalizations when they tell overweight middle-aged men to get their cholesterol checked (even though many overweight middle-aged men won?t experience heart trouble). Because we don?t know which dog will bite someone or who will have a heart attack or which drivers will get in an accident, we can make predictions only by generalizing. As the legal scholar Frederick Schauer has observed, ?painting with a broad brush? is ?an often inevitable and frequently desirable dimension of our decision-making lives.?

Another word for generalization, though, is ?stereotype,? and stereotypes are usually not considered desirable dimensions of our decision-making lives. The process of moving from the specific to the general is both necessary and perilous. A doctor could, with some statistical support, generalize about men of a certain age and weight. But what if generalizing from other traits?such as high blood pressure, family history, and smoking?saved more lives? Behind each generalization is a choice of what factors to leave in and what factors to leave out, and those choices can prove surprisingly complicated. After the attack on Jayden Clairoux, the Ontario government chose to make a generalization about pit bulls. But it could also have chosen to generalize about powerful dogs, or about the kinds of people who own powerful dogs, or about small children, or about back-yard fences?or, indeed, about any number of other things to do with dogs and people and places. How do we know when we?ve made the right generalization?

...

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I don't have any problems with the dogs. It's the irresponsible owners that are the menace.

This is a really sad and terrible thing to happen to this poor woman. Let's not forgot the real victim here.

I want to start by saying I don't think pitt bulls in general are bad dogs but I think they have issues.


That being said, I have spent a lot of time with pit bulls. My best friend had one for years but the dog for some reason attacked her little brother breaking his hand (among other things) so they put him down. He had some behavioral issues and so did his father. The father dog was my roommates dog. He attacked my dog (1/2 chow 1/2 german) and my dog had to have have major surgery on his leg. He almost had to have it amputated. This same pit also killed at least 7 cats over time and tore himself free from a chain to attack a husky dog that was also chained up.

One question also. If there are a lot of other kinds of dogs that can do this type of damage, why does it seem like people are only useing pits for this? Just a question.

Do you think a pit-bull is the only dog capable of this violence.. comparing a pit-bull to a chi is really dumb. A golden Retriever is capable of the same damage as a Pit-Bull, Chow, Lab, etc. etc.

Anyone who makes anti-pitbull remarks has never owned or spent their share of time at the shelter, don't be misinformed as Croft said go and see for yourself. Just because some people make bad mistakes don't let your mind be made up without you trying it out for yourself. Thats what makes people leaders and followers...

I agree with Brewster.

I am a HUGE animal lover and love big dogs but pitt bulls have so many problems. From the irresponsible owners, to their huge jaws to their brute strength and to some bad breeders.

It is just a simple fact that pitts are one of the dogs (there are quite a few) that are able to cause the most damage to another dog or a person. The strength they have in their jaws and necks makes it so they can really tear a person or another dog apart. Are their other dogs that can do this? Yes, but they aren't nearly as popular as pitts are.

Just take a look at the shelters. Why are so many people abandoning their dogs. I would say a great majority of shelters are full of pitts.

It is a very sad thing, but some breeds really shouldn't be legal in busy cities/areas where there are so many people.

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I can't believe we are doomed to have the same exchanges again and again. It goes like this:

Even if a pit bull is no more likely to bite than any other dog, when they do they're far capable of inflicting severe and mortal damage on people and other dogs than most other breeds. A vicious chihuahua can't tear your throat out, no matter how much he may want to. "Accidents" happen with all dogs, as they do with all knives, but is your dog a butter knife or a razor sharp samurai sword on 4 legs?

As for locking jaws, or what is a "pit bull" for that matter, the proof is physical, not in definitions. I once saw a video of a pit leap up at a tree, grab a 2 inch branch, and dangle and twist it's body till it ripped the branch off the tree. Who gives a damn whether it's jaws "locked"?

The sheriff's office needs to be much more aggressive about enforcing dog-related laws in Lincoln Park. Besides off leash issues, dogs are not allowed in the playgrounds and are not allowed to be walked by children (and combinations thereof, like the ~5 year old I once saw walking a pit bull in the playground).

If you see any of this going on while you're in the park, please call the Hudson County Sheriff's Office at 201-915-1300. Program this number into your cell phone and use it. Thank you.

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Because Obama might try to maul you?

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The owner should be charged the same way a motorist would for a hit and run or leaving the scene of an accident.

And yes, unfortunately the dog should be put down and any other dogs be removed from the owner and be banned from any direct or indirect ownership of any dogs.

the owner should be JAILED and the pit dog, sadly, should be put down. I feel sorry for the lady.

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+1, Croft! What these folks don't understand it is the OWNERS and not a particular breed that is the problem. Place the blame where it belongs!





Many of Vick's dogs have been rehabilitated:

Saving Michael Vick's Dogs
Pit Bulls Rescued From the Football Player's Fighting Ring Show Progress in an Unprecedented Rehabilitation Effort

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 7, 2008; A01

When football superstar Michael Vick pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to run a dogfighting operation, we knew he had kept about 50 pit bulls on his 15-acre property in rural Surry County, Va., on a road named Moonlight. We knew the dogs were chained to car axles near wooden hovels for shelter. And we knew the dogs that didn't fight were beaten, shot, hanged, electrocuted or drowned.

But we didn't know their names. Headlines described the nameless dogs as "menacing." Some animal rights groups called for the "ticking time bombs" to be euthanized as soon as Vick's case was closed and they were no longer valuable as evidence. That's what typically happens after a dogfighting bust.

Instead, the court gave Vick's dogs a second chance. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson ordered each dog to be evaluated individually, not judged by the stereotype of the breed. And he ordered Vick to pony up close to $1 million to pay for the lifelong care of those that could be saved.

Of the 49 pit bulls animal behavior experts evaluated in the fall, only one was deemed too vicious to warrant saving and was euthanized. (Another was euthanized because it was sick and in pain.)

More than a year after being confiscated from Vick's property, Leo, a tan, muscular pit bull, dons a colorful clown collar and visits cancer patients as a certified therapy dog in California. Hector, who bears deep scars on his chest and legs, recently was adopted and is about to start training for national flying disc competitions in Minnesota. Teddles takes orders from a 2-year-old. Gracie is a couch potato in Richmond who lives with cats and sleeps with four other dogs.

Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes, and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to move on to foster care and eventual adoption.

How can this be? Reports of gruesome pit bull maulings make international news. Pit bulls are one of the few canine breeds thought to be so dangerous that they are banned in some places.

The answer, says Frank McMillan, a veterinarian who is studying the recovery of some of the Vick dogs, is that we don't know. "We've assumed all pits are the same, and we've never let this many fighting dogs live long enough to find out. There are hardly ever studies, because these animals don't survive," he said.

Classic fighting pit bulls, part bulldog and part terrier, were bred to be friendly to people and aggressive with other dogs. Their ability to withstand great pain and keep fighting is a quality prized as "gameness."

But with an explosion in urban street fighting, some pit bulls are being trained to go after animals and people. Evaluators said that when they walked into the kennels where the Vick dogs were being held in the fall, they weren't sure what to expect.

"I thought, if we see four or five dogs that we can save, I'll be happy," said Randy Lockwood, an animal behaviorist with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "If we had to euthanize the majority, then we could at least say we'd tried."

Instead, they found dogs with behaviors that ran the gamut. Some would lick human hands but lunge at other dogs. Some almost immediately went into play mode with other dogs, wagging their tails and crouching down on their front legs in a play bow. "Some actually perked up and developed more confidence only around other dogs," said Rebecca Huss, a law professor and animal law expert who was appointed by the court to oversee the evaluations and determine the dogs' fates. "They actually seemed happier around other dogs."

Some of the dogs were scarred. All were sick and malnourished. Once it became clear that the dogs might be allowed to live, evaluators gave them names.

Iggy, Zippy, Cherry Garcia, Hazel, Little Red, Uba, Squeaker, Big Fella, Handsome Dan, Ginger, Ernie, Alf.

"One of the things that struck us immediately was that these dogs were more like the dogs we see rescued from animal hoarding situations," Lockwood said. "Their main problem was not aggressiveness but isolation." Loud noises startled them. A light coming on made them jump.

All that the dogs seemed to know about people was that they were to be feared.

Witness Sweet Pea, a compact cinnamon-colored dog with a pleat of wrinkles above her eyes who was hiding under the desk of the Frederick animal acupuncturist trying to treat her for anxiety. Fred Wolfson dimmed the office lights. Soft Native American flute music wafted through wall speakers. Wolfson held out his hand for Sweet Pea to sniff. When she would not budge, he sat on the floor and took his bowl of needles to her.

Sweet Pea began to pant.

"She pants when she's nervous," said Stacy Leipold, who volunteers with the Baltimore-based animal rescue organization Recycled Love and is fostering Sweet Pea in her home. "I thought for a very long time she was just a hot dog."

As Wolfson rubbed the dog's head and felt along her spine for the proper relaxation points, Leipold explained that Sweet Pea was little more than a lump when she came to her home in December. She rarely left her crate. If she did, it was to hide under a desk. She had to be carried outside to do her business. Over time, with Leipold meticulously tracking her behavior, Sweet Pea began to pace in a circle and wag her tail when she realized it was time for a walk. And she seemed to take comfort in Leipold's other dogs, a Jack Russell terrier and a Great Dane. Still, one of her favorite places is the landing on the basement stairs. That way, up or down, she has two routes of escape.

Five needles and 12 minutes later, Sweet Pea stopped trembling.

* * *

Jane, Homicide, Jade, Bandit, Miami, Mike-Mike, Big Boy, Magic, Tiny, Too Short, Seal, Chico.

Sweet Pea is not what Vick, who is serving a 23-month prison sentence in Leavenworth, Kan., called this dog. We don't know what he called her, or whether he had a name for her at all. One of the few names that appeared in court papers was Jane, one of the first pit bulls Vick bought in 2001 to start Bad Newz Kennels. The Humane Society of the United States found results for some of Bad Newz's dogfights in underground magazines. They show that Vick's Homicide lost to Maniac. Vick's Bandit lost to Red Rover. And Vick's Mike-Mike lost, after fighting for three hours and five minutes, to Dragon. Out of 10 fights recorded, Vick's dogs lost seven.

But no one knows who most of these dogs are, or whether they are even alive. Jane is. She is now called Georgia. Her jaw is crooked, having been broken at least once, and her tongue sticks out. She is covered in scars, and her teeth have all been pulled. By court order, she will live out her days in Dogtown, at the Best Friends Animal Society's 3,700-acre sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. So will Lucas, a tail-wagging, 60-pound dog who evaluators suspect was Vick's grand champion fighter.

They are two of 22 dogs who were deemed worth saving but who showed enough animal aggression that they could be held only in a tightly controlled sanctuary. At Best Friends', McMillan, the veterinarian, has developed a "personalized emotional rehabilitation plan" for each dog and measures how they exhibit such traits as aggression, fearfulness, calmness or friendliness. True to their "people soft" nature, all but two of the Vick dogs are on "green collar," meaning they are open and friendly to human visitors. About nine have begun to have supervised play dates with other Vick dogs.

The remaining 25 Vick dogs were given to seven animal rescue organizations across the country, which placed them in experienced foster homes. A number have since passed the American Kennel Club's 10-part Canine Good Citizenship test. Many are in the process of being adopted.

Sharon Cornett, a member of the Richmond Animal League's board, agreed to foster Gracie and is now adopting her. "I adore this dog. She is just a love bucket. She loves people and animals unconditionally," Cornett said. She has four other dogs. All of them sleep together at night. "Gracie is not what the public perception has been of a fighting pit bull."

Still, Cornett and other pit bull rescuers say that they never leave the dogs unsupervised with other animals. And rehabilitating a fighting pit is not for everyone: You have to know what you're doing, they say.

John Goodwin, a dogfighting expert with the Humane Society and a proponent of euthanizing fight dogs, is skeptical of the emerging reports of the Vick dog recoveries. Fighting is in their blood, he said. Retrievers retrieve. Shepherds herd. And fighting pit bulls fight. "The behavior is bred into them," he said. "These groups are not rehabilitating these dogs. They're training them to behave in a more socialized manner. But these pit bulls should never be left alone with other dogs, because you never know when that instinct to fight another dog is going to surface."

Tim Racer, one of the founders of Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pit bulls (BAD RAP), who, before taking in 10 Vick dogs, had evaluated and retrained 400 pit bulls over the past 10 years, disagrees. Yes, there are pit bulls who have fought, attacked and mauled other animals and people. But so have other breeds. And incidents almost always have been traced to negligent or abusive owners, he said.

Racer said it is not surprising that many of the dogs get along so well with other dogs. Just as the urge to fight is in their blood, so, too, is the need to get along. "You have 150 years of man trying to produce an aggressive dog. But you have tens of thousands of years of Mother Nature preceding that," he said. "Dogs are pack animals. They survived because of their pack. . . . It's hard-wired into their genes that they do no harm to each other."

Indeed, long before a glowering pit bull came to symbolize tough guy vogue, pit bulls, or American Staffordshire terriers, were the all-American dog. In the Civil War era, they were known as nurse dogs because they were so good with children. Pit bulls sold war bonds, earned medals in World War I and starred in such TV shows as "The Little Rascals."

All the more reason, Racer and other rescuers say, to look at each dog individually. "Every thoroughbred is not a great racehorse. Every pit bull, even if it's of fighting stock, is not an aggressive dogfighter," said Steve Zawistowski, an animal behaviorist with the ASPCA who helped assess the Vick dogs. "There are no simple answers."

* * *

As with any celebrity case, the legacy of the Vick bust has been far-reaching. Dogfighting raids across the country have tripled in the past year. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been trained to detect the signs of underground rings. And, in some cases, officials have asked pit bull behavior experts to evaluate seized fighting dogs rather than automatically euthanizing them. But most dogfighters don't have the kind of money that Vick did. So even those deemed worthy of a second chance don't always get one.

Charlie, Denzel, Halle, Oscar, Sox, Ray, Frodo, Aretha.

They, it turns out, are the lucky ones.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ ... 6/AR2008070602351_pf.html

The behavior of any dog depends on its owner. All of you who are saying its just the breed that is responsible, you are the walking talking definition of ignorant. If you think I am insulting you, you clearly do not know the definition of the word. You are generalizing because pitbull attacks get more news then any other breed. So saying its the dog's fault is like blaming glocks for killing people instead of the idiots who are pulling the trigger. Bad owners are the problem here. Most pitbulls are loving, caring dogs.

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I don't think people cross the street when they see pitbulls because the people are ignorant. For every responsible owner of a pit, such as yourself, there's another owner who isn't, like the guy in the article. Since you can never be sure who is and isn't a responsible owner, it's just common sense to stay out of the way.

It really is too bad.

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What nerve!

I am certainly one of those people. How DARE you call me ignorant!!!

How do I know what's in your damn pitbull's head?

I prefer to cross the street to make sure I am safe.

For that, I am being called ignorant.

You, sir, are a joke.

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This is why it is important to have your dog up to date on shots (especially rabies!) and also to be licensed with Jersey City Animal Control.

Quote: Why don't you open your mind before you open your mouth? Come down to Liberty Humane Society this Sunday and meet my dog and some of our great Pit Bulls, ones deserving of good homes? I, along with my coworkers and most of our adopters at the shelter, take EXCELLENT care of our pit bulls. Don't buy into the stigma, not every pit is the typical thug owned nasty street dog. There are no such thing as "locking jaws." http://www.badrap.org http://baddogs.libertyhumane.org/ http://www.pitbulllovers.com/