On Tuesday, September 27, 2016 Montreal, Quebec, Canada's city council voted in favor of a ban on pit bull and pit bull-type dogs. The vote came in at 37-23. This change comes after a fatal dog attack that claimed Christiane Vadnais' life.
The new law, which goes into effect across all of Montreal on October 3, defines pit bulls as Staffordshire bull terriers, American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, any mix with those breeds, and any dog that presents characteristics of one of those breeds. And if you want to keep your beloved family member? Well you better make sure you acquire a special permit by the end of the year or you'll be surrendering your dog to the authorities.
While it's barely been 24 hours since the law was voted into effect, #EndBSL (BSL is Breed Specific Legislation) has been prominent on social media and dog lovers everywhere are already boycotting Montreal. Petitions are popping up in desperate hopes of reversing the new law and helping the innocent animals who are not the cause of the unfortunate attack.
Don't get me wrong, my heart goes out to Vadnais' family, truly. This is an unfortunate situation all around. But I will speak up when it comes to judging dogs by their breeds. Dogs aren't born aggressive and ready to attack, they are trained (or not trained) to do so. It's no different than training a police or military dog to attack on command or to sniff out explosives or drugs.
We all have likely seen a video at some point of a small dog, like a chihuahua, who was being aggressive toward not just anyone, but toward their owner. 'Blasphemy!' you say. But it's true, this happens quite often, but we think nothing of it or find it funny because these dogs are small, and sometimes we even see this behavior being encouraged because 'it's funny'. But it's not, this is aggressive behavior and it's not okay.
We have to take responsibility for our dogs, and take preventative measures ahead of time so that dogs know right from wrong. We have to put rules into place as dogs need consistency and they need structure, they need training and socialization. The solution starts with us, the owners for all breeds of dogs. The solution is not to eliminate what society has deemed "aggressive breeds" by implementing Breed Specific Legislation and then to start euthanizing what we believe is the problem. This law, that is quite common occurring in upwards of 700 U.S. cities and internationally, is grouping the acts of a few dogs into the description of the entire breed, and that's just not the case.
Laws like this prevent perfectly adoptable dogs from being adopted and rescued from being euthanized in kill shelters because of the negative connotations with their breed. And when implemented in new cities, and when families can't move it takes gentle and harmless, happy dogs out of their happy families and puts them into an unknown and scary shelter, where they have no idea what they've done to be left here by the family that's loved them and puts them on death row for crimes they didn't commit.
Please explain to me how anyone could view that as moral and right?
