This is the kind of stuff that reminds me why I don't like animals.
Tyler's friend, Ian Carmichael, heard screams, rushed from his apartment and jumped on the dog's back. He tried pulling Tango off by its collar. At the same time, Nathan Lezniewicz, ran to the scene with a machete and kitchen knives.People who keep animals that are capable of harming humans should be fully responsible if their pet does harm a human. The owner of this dog should be punished exactly the same as if he'd attacked these boys himself.The men furiously stabbed the dog while its teeth were clenched on Tyler's arm, Maynard said.
The dog, bloodied and with a knife in its torso, released Tyler's arm and ran up to the third floor. But it immediately came back downstairs, cornered Troup and bit his arm.
And no, pets aren't the same as say, guns. Guns don't have to be constantly monitored to make sure they don't kill people, whereas animals do. Guns act predictably, whereas animals don't. If you carry a gun, lose it somewhere, and the the person who finds it then uses it to kill someone, well, you're an idiot but you shouldn't be criminally liable. If you walk your dog and it runs away and kills someone, you should be prosecuted for second degree murder.
I can all but guarantee there is more to this story than meets the eye. Contrary to their reputation, pit bulls are not particularly prone to turn on humans, including intruders (as such, they make crappy watchdogs). Then again, they don't normally weigh 70 pounds, either, so I'm skeptical as to whether this "pit bull" really was a pit bull. Like "assault rifle," the word often gets thrown around a bit.
Regardless of what the breed is, the smart money says that his owner did a horrible job of socializing his dog, and may have even trained it to attack people. We'll see.
I disagree with your view that every loose dog that kills someone should automatically be regarded as murder. If my dog gets loose and sniffs a woman's crotch, am I guilty of sexual assault? Regardless, I do agree that owning a dog is a huge responsiblity, which this owner apparently did not live up to.
X: Re: crotch sniffing, sure, I wouldn't have a problem prosecuting for that. I hate it when dogs out for a walk bark at me and their owners don't do anything. It's incredibly disrespectful to impose that kind of behavior on other people.
There may be more to this story than meets the eye, but I don't think 70 lbs is uncommon for a pit. I have friends with pits that weighed between 70 and 90 lbs. They're huge, muscular dogs.
You're wrong about pits generally. They are muscular indeed, but they are generally medium-sized, not huge, or even particularly large. Mine is about 42 pounds. My other dog weighs 70 lb. She's half-pit, but the other half is Rottweiler, and rotties are generally much larger than that (upwards of 100 lbs. typically).
Your friends 70-90 lb. "pits" almost certainly are't. They may be American Bulldogs, though, which are very closely related to pits but are much larger. For that breed, 70-90 lbs. would not be unusual. Or, like my pit/rott mix, they could be part pit bull and part something else. Ditto for the dog in this story; whatever it was before it attacked somebody, once it did it became a "pit bull."
X: I'm not dog expert, certainly, but my friends have papered pit bulls with full pedigrees. They intend to breed them for money and enter them in shows, so they know their lineage and how much they weigh. Perhaps they're unusual specimins. I really don't know much about it other than what they've told me, so it's also possible I misunderstood.
Maybe. Not saying it can't happen, but like an 8 foot tall man, it's far from typical. The AKC doesn't specify an ideal weight, but does say the ideal height is 18 to 19 inches for dogs, or 17 to 18 for bitches. The UKC, which was the first registry to recognize the breed, says dogs should weigh between 35-60 pounds, with bitches ranging from 30-50. However, they also say that "Dogs over these weights are not to be penalized unless they are disproportionately massive or rangy," so I guess the dog in this story wasn't quite as far out as I thought.
OTOH, your friends' dogs are well within the normal range for American Bulldogs. I'll bet that's what they are. ABs are, for all intents and purposes, oversized pit bulls.
> I hate it when dogs out for a walk bark at me and their owners
> don't do anything. It's incredibly disrespectful
That sums it up very well. I'm willing to put up with a certain (small) amount of noise from dogs, as I am from people, but a few dog owners take it for granted that passers-by should put up with as much noise as their dogs and they feel like making. Kind of like smokers thinking they have a God-given right to drop their butts on the ground.
This is why we, proud keepers of a canine with an intersting ancestry, spent several hundred dollars on a training class, and spend time every day working with her on discipline and socialization.
It's pretty sad that you don't like animals. Doesn't say very much about you as a person. The fact that there are some animals that are more viscious than others is a pretty sorry reason to dislike animals.
There are a lot of reasons why someone might not like animals. Except for the extraordinary, none of them are good.
Dog owners are mostly noisy, rude, selfish lout's. Dogs mual thousands and kill scores of people every year, not much is done because Dog's the sacred cows of American culture- and are worshipped with a kind of servile fevor by their "Guardians".
If you have a dog and it attacks your child or some one else you are guilty of child abuse- not the dog- you.
Dog noise pollution torments hundreds of thousands of people destroy's their quality of life and property values.
Its simple- you have every right to have a shit eating dog. You do not have the right to subject others to noise pollution, envirionmental pollution or physical risk.
The rare few responsible dog owners will understand this, the vast majority of noisy, rude, dog owning louts won't have a clue, that is why dogs kill scores, mual thousands and subject hundreds of thousands to toxic levels of dog noise polution every year.