BlackJaq

Yes, after I finally found the photo (lol) I also thought it looked like a cattle x more than anything? Seems breed identification in the media is not all that reliable after-all....... Hmmmm

Found the "Next" button, my bad

Um is it just me or did they edit the article? No more mention of that "vicious attack"? I think a dog can and will take the chance to attack another dog (or in this case the owner) if that person or dog is already being attacked (in this case by the mate). Maybe the dog did have a beef with his owner? We don't know. Not being able to read your own dog and realize that something like this is imminent does not indicate to me that the owner was particularly dog savvy..... Many people really need more education in regards to their dog, a lot of owners are completely oblivious to what their dog's body language is telling them... ETA: Just found the "Next" button, my bad. There is a picture of the "vicious" attacker..

No, they attract the Black Beauty loving crowd of teenage girls (and sometimes older women) who are scared of their 500 kg animal and use carrot sticks to poke it to death from the ground or who mercilessly overestimate their own skills and become trainers of 2 year old barrel racers because nobody but themselves can ride those wild stallions. They have a BOND I tells ya. No seriously, you must be moving in the very upper circles of dressage or eventing or whatever to not be meeting those yahoos. Or your boarding stable costs more than they can afford even though they are making amaaaaazin' monies with their training skillz And if you don't think there are men out there who use horses as a penis extension you have obviously not met the Western crowd. Some of those dudes beat the piss out of their horses and keep them prancing everywhere (and everything has nuts of course) to demonstrate how manly they are by "taming" that wild beast. The same dicks are attracted to all sorts of different walks of life.

Haha you seem to have not had much experience with the world of horses. People do stupid shit and buy horses WAY beyond their skill set ALL THE TIME. Most Horses are contained much easier than dogs though and they don't usually run around biting strangers. Generally it is the owners or their friends who get hurt.

Why? Dog ownership is a privilege not a right. People have demonstrated time and again that they can't exercise responsibility for the dogs they own. So if you have to demonstrate some knowledge and your licence is conditional on you exercising responsibility for your dog, what's the issue? We already restrict the dogs people can own anyway. Where is the "like" button. Pets in general should be a privilege. They depend on us totally.

Yes, it is breed specific legislation, but import restrictions and culling of dogs of a certain look are two pairs of shoes. It is not the restrictions I have so much of an issue with, but rather the fact that they provide an excuse to kill dogs that have done nothing wrong. Not to mention the laws that are in place now are poorly enforced and obviously not making the public any safer. If I reported a dangerous dog in my area and the dog had long fur I can guarantee that dog will not be acted upon until it seriously injures somebody. If I call up about a "pit bull" the ranger will be knocking on that door SO FAST you'd see his hair blowing in the wind, even if the complaint was about barking and not menacing people or animals.

I agree with this as well. I actually think some people should start off with something in a cage, small and relatively harmless, like maybe a rabbit. Some people should never progress to dogs at all. Sea monkeys might be a viable alternative for them :p

Just a question: Would you support the "softening of laws" so that certain dogs could only be owned by people who had passed some sort of assessment and the dog had a (reliable) temp test? similar to what happens in NSW with regards to the temp test. The reason I ask is that I can't see BSL being overturned any time soon, especially in Vic (where I live). I would prefer a system that didn't kill all dogs of a certain look. It would be better if dogs of a certain power/weight were temp tested and owners would need to prove that they had the resources to care for them. Something similar to the greyhound scheme would suffice. I would like to see a "responsible owner" system apply for all dogs, but I can't see it flying because of the cost/political backlash. At least this way, dogs and owners have an out. FWIW, I don't support BSL in its current form, but I'm glad that some breeds are banned from importation (which is different to killing dogs that are already here that haven't committed any offences). If all laws regarding breed were suddenly lifted and anyone could breed and sell any dog they wanted I don't see an improvement happening. When we talk about BSL the focus is always on pitbulls, but it applies to greyhounds and Argentinian fighting dogs etc too. It would depend what the criteria is for passing. I think we have all heard of the RSPCA test that sees dogs gather a huge number of points for things liek chasing cats. There are many, many registered breeds that will react to a small animal running past them. I definitely think that an appropriate temp test (such as is being used in the US for good canine citizen certification or whatever it is called) has its place. So does responsible breeding. Those dogs are already here now and exterminating any dog of a certain look will not reduce dog bite deaths. Yes I am glad some other "macho" breeds are not allowed to be imported as I believe many people would be attracted to them for the wrong reasons, just like what has happened to many bull breeds. As I said before, I think owners should be licensed as dogs are potentially dangerous. More so if their owners are uneducated/ignorant/stupid. At least this approach would target everybody equally, rather than a certain look of dog for looks alone. Its not like dogs were seized, subjected to a temp test and destroyed because they were dangerous. They are being destroyed because of their looks alone.

Anyways, I need to go do some chores but I hope the BSL defenders and bully haters read some of the links and information supplied in this thread (once again.. there are plenty of educational threads on DOL) and I don't think that any true dog lover could support BSL in good conscience. Almost everybody will meet a dog/dogs of a certain look or breed at some stage and find them less than friendly or even outright dangerous. That doesn't mean that all dogs that look similar should be killed or even targeted. As I said, I would welcome it if all dogs and owners were managed/monitored, rather than just certain individuals.

Were the dogs you speak of papered APBT? If they were not, how can you be sure of the breed when experts everywhere admit that they cannot reliably identify breeds by visual inspection?

Luke GSP: ALL dogs need to be managed. They can all be dangerous. Statements like yours make people believe that one breed or another is safe and does NOT need to be managed correctly. To illustrate my point some more, with a bitch on heat present, almost any unrestrained dog of almost any breed would have been capable of biting this victims leg, causing him to bend down and hold his leg. Almost any breed would then have been able to grasp him by the ear (pretty normal dog behaviour) and chances are when he stood up the ear would have come off if the dog continued to hold on. It did not take a bully to do this kind of damage. A GSP, beagle, dachshund or wolfhound could have done the same damage. His leg injures did not look horrific from what I saw in the videos. Going for the ear, in my opinion, seems to demonstrate that the dogs may not have been intent on causing him serious damage. Had they gone for the neck or face this whole story could have ended very differently.

Yea, my OH once went to buy a BYB puppy. They were feeding this litter of 13 WHEAT BIX and cow's milk. That was it. They were weaned early because the bitch did not have enough milk. Little wonder if that is what they fed her, too!

I agree with licensing. It would be in the best interest of all dogs. So many people get a dog because their backyard looks empty and they used to have one living on a chain next to the shed when they wee little. 99% of Joe Public dog owners have no clue about dogs. None.

Let loose, I'd say the Whippet zoomies could be lethal to bystanders. My dog warms up for the ring by wrestling his half brother or it's owners Bedlington Terrier. All are entire adolescent males. Some dogs simply aren't that interested in fighting. That's how they've been selectively bred. You can't have two hyper aroused coursing dogs let loose on prey to have them turn on each other before OR after catching it. Ditto scent hounds - bred to run as a pack of entire dogs. Then maybe irresponsible owners of other breeds should be given a safer breed of dog, like Whippets or other coursing hounds. That should drastically reduce dog bite incidents. Cat fatalities shall be ignored in this scenario.

I have to agree on the bitches on heat being shown. It is fairly common. I do however maintain my position that handlers are controlling their dogs to avoid fights. Let loose I doubt the picture would be the same.

I don't think a dog needs to be equipped with "gameness" to kill somebody. One single bite in the right spot will make you bleed to death within minutes. Dogs do not need overly strong jaws to deliver such a bite. Somebody posted a link with graphic dog bite pictures which showed a dachshund's fatal bite next to a pitbull's fatal bite on two separate peoples necks and they looked nearly identical. A dachshund is hardly a large or strong dog by most peoples definitions.

umm greyhounds are nothing like a bull breed and Australia is one of only 2 countries in the whole world that require greyhounds to be muzzled. Greyhounds who are not cat safe can pass. I think that entire post was pretty badly informed. Why should bull breeds have to pass a character test but not other breeds that are high (or higher) on the list of offenders like GSDs, Rotts, Labs and pretty much any other medium to large breed that can inflict serious damage on people and animals? There are bunches of breeds that have guarding tendencies or high prey drive, including Border Collies. Why should they be exempt?

I have to totally disagree with this statement. Entire male dogs are shown week in week out, all around the country, along side each other and bitches in season and there is very rarely any problem with aggression despite large numbers of dogs being confined to a small area. If what you said was true, every dogshow would be one big dogfight. If all of those dogs were off leash and left to their own devices with a bitch on heat present, you don't believe those dogs would begin to fight amongst each other? What do you believe the reaction would be? Peaceful interaction? Are the handlers not managing any potential aggression by handling their dog appropriately? ETA: I have personally been to dog shows where fights have broken out between entires when they were too close to each other and owners had to separate their dogs. Are you saying this never happens and is quite out of the ordinary?

If by the same type of dogs you mean "entires" then yes, you are correct. Something really needs to be done about that.

That's a big assumption, isn't it? Lots of people, myself included, love the look of those sort of dogs .. and being a male , he probably did what so many human males do .. left the dogs intact ... cos that's the 'man' thing! he certainly is not alone in keeping tough looking entire male dogs!! :) AS to why he didn't have secure lockups, I cannot comment, as I didn't see inside his house/yard One of the dogs was female, not male. Anybody knows that entire female + entire male = puppies. If he did not want puppies I presume he would have taken steps to avoid them? Do you keep your entire males and females unsupervised in a backyard? :) If so, I find that situation a little dangerous.

I would think anybody who saw the footage might have noticed the same thing as Steve, there was a clear view of the bitch's hind end and her personal area seems to have some swelling, indicating an imminent or very recent heat. So this would surely make any further discussion of breed specific aggression obsolete since the most likely reason for the aggression was 2 x entire dogs (the two red dogs) on the loose. As soon as this young man walked his dog past it was ON and would have been on no matter the breed. Of course there might not have been as much damage if they were Maltese instead of large bully bred dogs but my point is, they might not otherwise have shown ANY AGGRESSION at all. It also occurs to me that their owner was most likely a BYB himself, why else would you keep two entires that look this similar in a backyard without secure kennels/runs/whatever? I think the owner needs to have the book thrown at him and I don't think he should be allowed to own any more entires. Many bite stats that do not focus on breed seem to indicate that entire males are the number one offender, regardless of breed and size. Maybe this is, indeed where legislation should be aimed, rather than breeds? Can anybody imagine what the outcome would have been if these were 2 entire LGDs instead of comparatively small bull breds? And yet we see no attempts made to introduce BSL covering breeds other than bullies? The whole name calling scenario is less than helpful and detracts from the actual issue, which is two entires loose without any kind of supervision. This was a disaster in the making as soon as those dogs were left unattended in anything less than a fully enclosed run. ETA: If this was, indeed a sexually induced incident then this is in fact EXACTLY what dogs do. I don't know why people argue that this is not typical of dogs. It is. A bitch on heat can and will induce aggression in almost any dog, even dogs of the same sex! If that makes them monsters then 99% of entire dogs are monsters. It is up to their humans to manage this part of their nature!

I am very confused by this statement in one of the articles: http://m.smh.com.au/nsw/teen-has-ear-bitten-off-by-dogs-20121031-28ife.html Is that not a direct contradiction? How does this make sense? Or does this person just not have a clue at all?

Foxy unfortunately never learns her lesson. We have been to the vet about three times now to get antibiotics for ulcerating stings inside her mouth... Pretty sure the first one was a bee, after that it was likely some kind of wasps.... And yet she still keeps trying to catch them in her mouth every time.. :p

Do veggies have to be artificially broken down to help the dogs digestive tract digest them? It seems many veggies that my dogs like to eat come out the way they went in as the dogs don't (or can't) chew them enough. What about their teeth? Many people seem to be of the opinion that only large meaty bones will thoroughly clean a dogs teeth? I realize there are denta chews and things like that but they seem to go down awfully quickly. Antlers are also animal products? Not sure about doggie tooth paste but most seem to be flavoured (i.e. chicken etc) so probably also contain animal products?