Mia Johnson, co-founder of National Pit Bull Victim Awareness, says yes.
Some types of dogs—pit bulls, in particular—are dangerous enough to merit banning, not on the grounds of potential aggression but because the amount of damage they can do is disproportionate to all other types of dogs combined. Pit bulls, even pit bull “mixes,” rarely snarl, growl or show any other traits that characterize aggression. But they are unpredictable and quickly triggered, and their occasional attacks are typically brutal.
The savagery and scale of pit bull attacks cannot be calculated in “bite counts.” The genetic trademark of pit bulls is to go for the neck, mutilate flesh, tear apart limbs and aim to kill. Simply put, they were bred for bloodsports such as bull- and bear-baiting, and continue to be bred for dogfighting.
An elderly woman tending her garden in Calgary was killed by pit bulls in June 2022. In the following eight weeks, an additional 10 people in the US and Canada were killed by pit bulls. The Calgary woman’s death, though complicated by delayed emergency services, was not a rare and isolated event. Every year, an average of 30 people in the US and Canada are killed by pit-bull-type dogs. This compares to one person killed annually by sharks and four by alligators. Three times as many people are killed by pit bulls every year as by fireworks, despite fireworks being immeasurably more common. Imagine a model of car that randomly exploded on the highway and killed 30 people a year. It would not be tolerated, and we certainly would not take seriously suggestions to send drivers for education to understand their cars better.
The solution has nothing to do with making owners “responsible.” Even with the best intentions, mistakes happen. Owners go away, gates are left open, leashes break. And pit bulls don’t appear to be shaped by their environment or social forces into good or bad personalities. Even victims who loved their pit bull and treated it well for years (before being brutally attacked out of the blue by their own pet) eventually admit it doesn’t matter how you raise these animals; their predatory nature is wired into their brains. It goes against every public safety norm to not only allow these unstable dogs to live in our neighbourhoods but to deliberately import more of them into Alberta from “death row” shelters in the US.
For more than 35 years Calgary and Edmonton have been embroiled in a vicious, heated cycle of arguments about dangerous-dog bans. Thankfully 22 cities and towns in Alberta have had the sense to restrict or ban types of dogs they consider dangerous, with an emphasis on pit-bull-type dogs and their mixes. More than 500 towns and cities in Canada, plus every town and city in Ontario, ban or restrict pit bulls. No town has ever banned dogs they consider dangerous without grandfathering-in the dogs already living there. With the political will, it is possible to stop the carnage.
Brad Nichols, director of operations and enforcement at the Calgary Humane Society, says no.
What is an aggressive dog breed? Surely we’re talking about prohibiting menacing dogs such as chihuahuas and American Eskimos, right? In my 20 years of field experience, intervening on behalf of abused and neglected animals in the community, these are the breeds I’ve found most prone to biting. Actually, forget about dogs entirely. Maybe we should consider banning cats. Tongue removed from cheek, I have often said throughout my career that I’d take an aggressive dog over an aggressive cat any day. The latter have so many weapons, and their bites tend to bring nasty infections.
Calgary has long had a bylaw model that puts the onus of dog behaviour on the owner or person in care and control of that dog, which is the right approach. I challenge you to find a jurisdiction that has enacted breed-specific legislation (BSL) that effectively meets the objective of reducing bite incidents. These measures are ineffective and have been repealed in many municipalities for that very reason.
Reality is that a segment of society does not heed the Criminal Code or the provincial Animal Protection Act, which can levy significant consequences from jail time to ownership prohibition, let alone heed municipal animal control bylaws and associated fines. A ban on specific breeds will just drive those individuals underground, compounding root causes of dog aggression such as undersocialization and lack of training. When you take away a dog’s ability to be in public and exposed to people, other animals and the environment, you create the opposite of BSL’s desired effect. These dogs, deprived of the opportunity to learn appropriate responses during critical developmental stages, are left at a severe disadvantage due to the short-sighted nature of BSL.
The responsibility we have as guardians of these animals is to provide the building blocks of life. Beyond the necessities of life, that means socialization, exercise and enrichment. By driving certain breeds underground with BSL, these dogs are further hidden from the community, depriving them of the aforementioned building blocks. We then create dogs that aren’t well adjusted to cope with the world. Maladjusted dogs become aggressive in the absence of appropriate coping mechanisms if pushed beyond their comfort.
Under BSL, law-abiding citizens would comply to surrender or euthanize their dogs regardless of the animal’s temperament or good standing with animal control. Shelters like mine would fill beyond capacity with no live-release outlet. The targeted breeds would not be eliminated, but the percentage of good ambassadors for those breeds would diminish. At the same time, offending owners would lose the ability to raise their dogs properly, creating undersocialized, fearful dogs whose only learned stress response is to aggress. Does this sound like a law worth trying to you?
Mia Johnson responds to Brad Nichols.
Breed-specific legislation is not intended to reduce “bite incidents.” The goal is to reduce the number of serious injuries and deaths. When certain breeds of dogs are repeatedly responsible for maiming, extreme blood loss, amputations, decapitations and deaths, the damage must be characterized as something other than “bites.” Trauma centres and hospitals across North America have published more than 40 articles in journals on the disproportionate damage of pit bull attacks, including in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine. Compared to attacks by all other types of dogs combined, data suggests pit bull attacks require more extensive medical intervention and incur substantially higher costs to healthcare systems. Breed is known to be a significant predictor of bite severity and wounds requiring surgery, and in every case, pit bulls are implicated.
BSL seeks to reduce or eliminate potential danger to a community by reducing the number of dangerous breeds. It addresses the potential for attacks before they happen. Most attacks by pit-bull-type dogs are unprovoked and unforeseen, and therefore aren’t preventable, even by their owners. Putting the onus on owners of dangerous dogs to control them is short-sighted and doesn’t prevent tragedies. Not every type of dog labelled as “dangerous” will injure someone, but enough do. The damages are so extensive that hundreds of towns in Canada have restricted or banned certain breeds. Existing dogs aren’t surrendered or euthanized—they are grandfathered-in.
Such legislation certainly doesn’t cause shelters to fill to capacity. In fact, the opposite is occurring. Many shelters are already filled with pit bulls that have been abandoned for aggression or picked up as strays. The shelters themselves have created this disaster. They have endorsed “no kill” policies, refused to co-operate with municipalities seeking restrictions or outright bans, and insisted that dangerous dogs be returned to the community for “socialization.” Volunteer organizations have been forced to cope with their rescue and rehabilitation.
Most attacks by pit-bull-type dogs are unprovoked and unforeseen, therefore not preventable.
In Alberta the onus is conveniently on victims to prove the owner of an attacking dog knew the dog was dangerous and didn’t take steps to control it. Current laws, without breed-specific legislation, make it almost impossible for victims in Alberta to seek recourse. To claim that a segment of society will not heed the law is certainly not grounds for refusing to ban certain breeds. The claim does, however, protect dangerous dogs.
It should seriously concern Canadians that powerful American lobby groups finance BSL repeals. The pressure tactics of this influential and pervasive lobby have barely been acknowledged outside of CBC’s Fifth Estate, which investigated the US pit bull lobby in a 2019 documentary titled “Pit Bulls Unleashed” and in a five-part investigative report in French by Marie-Claude Malboeuf for Montreal’s La Presse in 2017. In partnership with major corporations, these lobby groups are systematically attempting to repeal BSL across Canada and the US. Representatives conduct letter campaigns, write petitions, pressure politicians, promote pit bull welfare and raise tens of millions of dollars for these “misunderstood” animals. In Alberta, legislators and animal welfare organizations have been persuaded to portray pit bulls as victims of poor ownership.
BSL has been repealed in some communities after lobbyists’ own studies convinced councillors and animal welfare associations that pit bulls are safe and deserve a chance. Such misleading information was submitted to the Quebec legislature when it considered BSL in 2018 and was used to support Calgary’s breed-neutral policy, which blames owners rather than setting limits on dangerous dogs. Other tactics include asking council members to identify pit bulls from photos without having the benefit of seeing the dogs’ characteristic stance and movement. Lobbyists go so far as to claim pit bulls can’t be identified—despite pit bulls easily being found for sale by breeders or advertised for adoption by their own rescue groups.
Quebec did not pass breed-specific legislation, because lobbyists convinced legislators that pit bull bans are too difficult and expensive to enforce. But every dog owner in Calgary has been registered and licensed since 2012, demonstrating our capacity to enforce BSL.
It’s not only short-sighted but criminally negligent to deny the danger of these dogs, much less promote them. It’s time to see dangerous-dog advocacy for what it is: a wealthy and self-serving industry. If the pit bull problem were solved, the biggest losers would include dog fighters, the massive “dog aggression behaviour modification” industry of trainers, and organizations that make a fortune from donations for promoting pit bulls. The wins would include safer communities, legal recourse for victims and millions of dollars of resources for helping other animals. These tradeoffs seem reasonable.
Brad Nichols responds to Mia Johnson.
Banning pit bulls and pit bull mixes does not decrease aggression or the number of dog bites. This is the rationale behind decisions to repeal BSL in many jurisdictions, including Denver, Colorado. In fact, 74 jurisdictions in the US alone have repealed pit bull bans in the past five years.
One might ask why these laws are repealed so frequently. BSL, which restricts constitutionally protected rights of people and leads to the euthanasia of well-behaved, non-offending pets, is knee-jerk and generally unpopular. Like it or not, political decisions are just that: political. The opposing argument states “no town banning dangerous dogs has ever done so without grandfathering existing dogs.” While I’m not sure if that declaration is even true, the reality is these banned breeds in BSL jurisdictions end up in shelters through no fault of their own—whether that be the victimization of animal cruelty or changes in the family lifestyle necessitating relinquishment. Shelters have no legal outlet for prohibited dogs, so the euthanasia of healthy and behaviorally sound dogs becomes inevitable. This creates a bottleneck on the constant demand for shelters’ services and causes an incredible strain on the mental health of shelter staff.
I can tell you from experience how the euthanasia of healthy but behaviorally unsound dogs affects the mental health of shelter staff, who bond with these dogs by the nature of their positions, feeding and cleaning them and enriching their lives during their stressful stay, only to see the dogs euthanized. Now add healthy, well-behaved dogs slated for euthanasia due solely to their appearance, and compassion fatigue gets compounded. The guilt, grief and mental health impacts of compassion fatigue, at their worst, are a suicide risk and a factor contributing to the fact that veterinarians carrying out medically unnecessary euthanasia have one of the highest occupational suicide risks in the industry.
To induce panic over a false epidemic affecting a minuscule fraction of the population is unwarranted.
Pit bull bites, as with all dogs’ bites, can in fact be assessed both by measurement (pounds per square inch) and by severity (the Dunbar dog-bite scale quantifies damage). A comparison to shark- or alligator-related deaths—making pit bull dogs, in general, sound more dangerous than these apex predators—is ludicrous. My speculation is that if sharks or alligators were living in homes and handled with the same frequency as the dogs in question, we would likely see a sharp increase in bites and deaths associated with attacks from these wild animals. And pit bull dogs do, in fact, show body language indicating fear or aggression, just like any other breed.
To induce panic over a false epidemic affecting a minuscule fraction of the population of Canada and the US is unwarranted. The argument that “randomly exploding cars” or fireworks are immeasurably more common than pit bulls yet cause only one-third of the deaths is speculative and unsupported.
A closer comparison when considering the role an owner plays in the risk factor of an inanimate object may actually be firearms. Despite an epidemic of mass shootings in the US, legislators there haven’t been able to find the political will to address even the lowest-hanging fruit—assault rifles. A gun in the wrong hands can be lethal. A large dog in the wrong care and control can also be dangerous. I’m not suggesting that dogs are not, in some cases, a public safety hazard, but I would argue that any large-breed dog has that potential, deprived of adequate social and mental enrichment.
I have been bitten twice in my field career, both times by German shepherds, despite the disproportionate amount of pit bull abuse and neglect calls we investigate. Yes, pit bulls are strong and athletic and do need special care to ensure they’re adequately socialized, trained and treated. I’m suggesting, with some significant practical experience in the field, that in the event of a pit bull ban compliant owners will pivot to a different breed that will be just as problematic if deprived of proper care.
Worse, non-compliant owners will go underground, refusing to register their dogs and limiting the animals’ exposure to the outside world to avoid detection.
In short, breed-specific legislation simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t eliminate the targeted breed. It doesn’t reduce bite or attack frequency. It results in the shelter euthanasia of innumerable innocent dogs. It is simply an ineffective policy. The City of Calgary has been celebrated in the animal-control industry for decades for its approach of putting the onus of responsible pet ownership on those in care and control of these animals. Dogs that maul or kill should be considered for euthanasia—that is, individual offending dogs, not every dog with a passing physical resemblance to a pit bull.
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