here is a story that was on the front pg of our newspaper thursday. has anyone else seen this? sorry if the topic over these specific laws has already been discussed and i missed it, but i just think this is horrible. it actually goes kind of beyond horrible, to me its rather TERRIFYING. that officials can come to our homes and take our dogs away from us and destroy them based on nothing more than how they LOOK? at an average of THREE A DAY just in DENVER? what on earth is going on??? and more importantly, what can we do about this? and if you want to see a very sad pic of a beautiful but scared looking impounded pit that goes with the story, go to
http://www.lawton-constitution.com/ftpage/072105.pdfDogs in hiding — critics
blast Denver pit bull ban
DENVER (AP) — A few weeks ago, two
police cars and two animal control vehicles
pulled up at the home of Stef’ny Steffan
looking for her beloved 4-year-old pit bull,
Xena. Seven officers hauled the animal off
to the city shelter, putting her on death row.
Xena became an outlaw after Denver won
a court fight and reinstated one of the
toughest pit-bull bans in the nation. Since
May, more than 380 dogs have been impounded
and at least 260 destroyed — an average
of more than three a day.
Dog owners are in a panic. Some are using
an underground railroad of sorts, sending
their pets to live elsewhere or hiding them
from authorities. City officials would not estimate
how many people might be violating
the ordinance.
Some owners, like Steffan, have won a reprieve
for their pets with help from a rescue
group. The group got Xena released by
signing an affidavit stating that the animal
would never return to Denver. The group
took the dog to Mariah’s Promise in Divide,
an animal sanctuary that has accepted more
than three dozen pit bulls from Denver.
For Steffan and her partner, Gina Black,
leaving Xena 60 miles from home was a
lousy option but the only one they had.
“It’s safer than animal control. Safer than
keeping her underground — at least she’ll
be able to play now,” Steffan said. “But
she’ll miss us. We’re her pack.”
Denver is one of three major metropolitan
areas, along with Miami and Cincinnati,
to ban pit bulls, according to Glen Bui, vice
president of the American Canine Foundation.
Pit bull typically describes three kinds of
dogs — the American Pit Bull Terrier,
American Staffordshire Terrier and the
Staffordshire Bull Terrier. But Denver’s
ban applies to any dog that looks like a pit
bull. The animal’s actual behavior does not
matter.
City Councilman Charlie Brown said that
in his judgment, “pit bulls are trained to attack.
They’re bred to do that.”
Critics of the ban use words like “annihilation”
and “genocide,” and the city shelter
has received e-mails likening animal control
officers to Nazis.
“Breed bans are just a knee-jerk reaction
to something that happened in the community,”
Bui said.
Denver banned pit bulls in 1989 after
dogs mauled a minister and killed a boy in
separate attacks. The Legislature passed a
law in 2004 that prohibited breed-specific
bans, but the city sued and a judge ruled in
April the law was an unconstitution
al violation
of local control.
Critics of the ordinance say that a blanket
ban on an entire breed is misguided that the
law should instead target irresponsible
owners and all dangerous dogs.