Fearsome Dog Still Tolerated
Newcastle Herald
Thursday October 30, 1997
YOU'RE getting new neighbours, moving into the house across the street, and they look like nice people.
They have kids, too, and these will be welcome additions to the after-school throng that clatters up and down the footpath on anything with wheels.
Then, last of all, the dog arrives. It's a mean-looking thing with a huge head, disproportionately heavy in the shoulders, and with a swaggering gait.
It's kept in the yard, although the fence doesn't look as though it would offer any resistance.
That is Bully, one of the kids tells you on Saturday morning, and it emerges then that Bully is an American pit bull terrier.
Your mind will zip to the newspaper photos of adults and children mauled by American pit bulls. There was such a photo in this paper on Saturday.
But mummy says nobody should worry, you're told. Bully wouldn't hurt a flea. It's just that the newspapers write bad stories about dogs like Bully because they've got nothing else to write about.
Later the parents might seek to reassure you by quoting dog-attack statistics that show a low incidence of pit bull attacks.
What these statistics don't disclose is the seriousness of the injuries, the unprovoked nature of the attacks, and the ratio of attacks to dog numbers. And these statistics usually do not draw from the pit bull's most popular base, country towns.
The fact is that Bully is legal, although the NSW Dog Act requires that he and his breed be muzzled at all times when they're not on their owner's property. The same applies to greyhounds, by the way.
Like all other dogs, pit bulls are required to be leashed when they're at large.
Apart from ringing the council each time the dog is out and unleashed or unmuzzled there's nothing you can do about it. Bully is legal.
The Dog Act doesn't offer any relief and nor is it likely that the law due to succeed it soon, the Companion Animals Act, will.
Federal laws prevent American pit bull terriers being brought into Australia, but those that are here already are legal and breeding. The RSPCA estimates there are between 5000 and 10,000 of them in Australia today.
Britain has no such problem. Ten years ago its Government banned the breed and required all of the dogs to be put down, using something like our guns amnesty to bring that about.
In Australia some local government areas list them as a proscribed breed.
Brisbane City Council, for example, imposes special conditions on the keeping of American pit bull terriers. They must be desexed, kept behind special fencing, and signs must warn of their presence.
The sole NSW requirement, that pit bulls be muzzled at all times in a public place, is opposed as inadequate by the RSPCA on the basis that the dogs are so strong they can tear the muzzle off.
One of the problems in forcing restrictions and conditions on American pit bull owners is the absence of formal identification of the breed. It is a registered breed in the United States but not in Australia, and somehow I can't see the dogs and their owners stepping around the show ring.
The dog is believed to be derived from the rottweiler, the doberman and the bull mastiff, and it is about blue heeler size, any colour, with a very big head and a compressed snout.
They are not to be confused with the English bull terrier (the one with the curved snout) or the Staffordshire bull terrier.
American pit bulls are kept often by people who hunt wild pigs, and their biting habit makes them ideal for this. Pit bull terriers bite with powerful jaws that stay clamped on their victim often until the dog or the victim is killed.
They were bred specifically for another purpose, fighting, and the unhappy fact is that they still are.
I hope to write about that tomorrow.
© 1997 Newcastle Herald