Tuesday, May 22, 2007

More messiness in Mass.

This article mentions Ontario's BS-L and the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, but not that Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant was unable to identify the American Pit Bull Terrier in a series of pictures of purebred dogs.

It also doesn't mention that Ontario's law was challenged on a constitutional basis spearheaded by the Banned Aid Coalition, nor that the judge has issued her decision on the constitutional challenge and as I understand it (I'm not a lawyer), the judge threw out the generic term "pit bull" and also threw out the "reverse onus" provision as a violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As I see it, this decision blew a rather large hole in Ontario's "pit bull" ban and is only one of the successful challenges of breed specific legislation.

Eletta Purdy's remarks about the number of bites seeming to go down should be tempered by the fact that it has been cold in Toronto until now, and dogs are not out in the cold as much as in warmer weather. Dog bite numbers always drop in the colder weather. That has nothing to do with the law.

Massachusetts State Rep Vincent Pedone sounds to me like he's yet another ambitious politician looking to make his rep on the backs and rights of responsible dog owners and dead dogs. Charming. Apparently he's been asking people if they'd rather be bitten by a "pit bull" or a fox terrier. Sounds like Pedone is copping his playlist from the Ontario committee hearings, I remember a twitty question like that. Pedone would do much better if he paid attention to the evidence presented at those hearings, since it will eventually bite him in his sensitive parts if he doesn't.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, dog bites overall are up in Ontario, not down, which is typical when a ban is brought in. 'Pit bull' attributed bites remain stable, ie, a few now and then. There were never many to begin with.

Maybe Ontario has fudged its numbers like Winnipeg did for the Ontario hearings to make it look as though there is some improvement overall.

Here's hoping the Ontario law gets turfed into the garbage, not recycled, when the final ruling comes in.

Pedone is cut from the same moron-cloth as many other politicos. Or he's an AR freak. Or both.

Anonymous said...

Boy,I wonder if I should feel like a failure as a dog parent.Mac isn`t quite cutting it as a "Pitbull".

"These dogs were ... made to fight, bite, pull, shake, rip, crush and tear."

He needs to bone up on these qualities or he`s going to flunk the "Pitbull" test.He prefers to snuggle with a 4 lb cat on the couch.
I sent this reporter the Cochrane v. Ontario decision along with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.I thought she might like to do another article on the fact that not much(if any) of this Ban is intact.