The Owner or The Dog?

Whenever any breed of dog kills someone, it will make the news. But deaths by dogs aren’t as likely as you may think they are.  The National Safety Council created some statistics of deaths here in the US. These stats state that you are 226 times more likely to be killed while walking down the street than you are to be killed by a dog. Cars carry an even worse statistic; you are 650 times more likely to be killed in an accident than you are to be killed by a dog.

There have been laws created, Breed Specific Legislation, that ban ownership of specific dogs. These laws ban pit bulls, Rottweilers  German shepherds, and other dogs that we view as power breeds. Cesar Milan made an excellent point on this, “On the surface, there might appear to statistical logic behind this, but it would be no different than banning only BMWs because more people are hit by them per year.”

Pit bulls got their bad rap because us humans gave it to them. In fact, 100 years ago, people loved pit bulls. Their job was to guard the house and watch other the children, even babies. They often did these tasks unsupervised because people had trust in them. Pit bulls carried a great reputation as nanny dogs. The stories you hear today about pit bulls attacking humans were unheard of. It wasn’t until the 80s when the pit bull attacks became more and more frequent. This is when dog fighting and gangs were becoming more popular. The dogs of choice for these gangs and the dog fight were the power breads such as pit bulls, German shepherds, Rottweilers, and even mastiffs.  These dogs were trained to be attack and guard dogs.

            Cesar Milan says “The reputation has nothing to do with the breed. These same people could have easily decided on St. Bernards or Labrador retrievers or Great Danes as attack or fighting dogs, and could have trained those breeds to do exactly the same thing. For that matter, Yorkies or Chihuahuas could be trained to show all the same aggression”.  But people won’t use the smaller dogs because of course the bigger the dog, the more fatal the bite can be.  But it isn’t just big dogs that kill people; some people have even been killed by beagles, dachshunds, and Pomeranians. Any dog can become aggressive, just as any dog can be calm. The main reason that dogs are aggressive is not their breed or their past. The human training them is the problem.

Works Cited

Milan, Cesar. "The Most Dangerous Dog" CesarsWay. Cesar’s Way Inc., n.d. Web. 29 Nov 2015.