#dogs2

[thejoshwardworld-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2po2Rc2EESg)

[alliwantinmylife]

Underwater Dog Photography by Little Friends, Seth Casteel

[alliwantinmylife]

MAX, a young and handsome American pit bull, sits on death row in Miami-Dade County's Animal Services, a victim of possibly the world’s toughest breed-specific dog laws.

The paperwork on his cage labels him "aggressive", but it’s more out of caution. He’s never bitten anyone.  Max has got 24 hours for a reprieve. His owner is a soldier on duty in Afghanistan who left the dog with his family. They became panicked that they would be fined for harbouring an outlawed breed and handed him to the Animal Services pound. Miami-Dade County - which takes in the greater Miami city area - totally banned American pit bulls, Staffordshire terriers and Staffordshire bull terriers in 1989, after a seven-year-old girl was badly savaged. But the laws have not worked. With Australian states in various stages of having passed or considering laws severely restricting dogs by breed, Miami-Dade’s Head of Enforcement at Animal Services, Kathy Labrada, concedes the dangerous breed ban has been a failure.

"No, it has not been effective," Ms Labrada says. "To target a specific breed I don’t think is logical. Any dog can bite.  "Some of the nicest dogs I’ve ever met have been pit bulls. Certainly, the bites can be more severe but the bites could be avoided if owners were responsible. The solution is not to ban a specific breed. It’s not the dog’s fault." Miami-Dade is the only county in Florida with a specific breed law but the state legislature is expected to repeal it within a matter of weeks. This will end two decades of pit bulls being sent into exile over county lines or living in the shadows within the county. "If you have a pit bull in Miami, you have to walk it at 5am or midnight, and always looking over your shoulder,” says Dahlia Canes, who heads the Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation. Ms Canes and her allies in the pro—pit bull network have heard some wildly exaggerated stories of what one described as "a bloodbath Down Under", whereby animal officers in all states are engaging in a wholesale slaughtering pit bulls. The strongest Australian laws are in Victoria, following the death last year of four—year—old Ayen Chol, where any dog classified as a restricted breed can be destroyed if it is not registered. But those laws are nowhere near as tough of those in Denver, Colorado, or Miami-Dade, or where the breeds are outright banned.  Officers visually assess the breeds by ticking off characteristics on a form. Owners are issued $500 fines and given 48 hours to destroy the dogs, or they’ll do it for you. "If you’re lucky, you get the body bag back," says Ms Canes. Ms Canes and her coalition have a surprisingly healthy relationship with the county’s sympathetic Animal Services officers, who alert her when they capture a pit bull and allow her total access to their facility. As Ms Labrada explains, they don’t like the enacting the law "but as long as it’s on the books in we are obliged to enforce it". One of Ms Canes key weapons has been to argue that a lot of the dogs they have seized are not in fact pit bulls, but similar looking dogs such as mastiffs or terrier mixes.  Still, she estimates 800 pit-bull mixes or wrongly identified pit bulls were destroyed in Miami—Dade last year.  Ledy Vankavage, lawyer for "Best Friends", an animal advocacy service, says: "The problem is, what is a pit bull? The animal controllers are wrong in 75 per cent of the cases. They use visual ID. It’s akin to racial profiling. "The trend in Europe and the US is to repeal these laws, whereas Australia seems for some bizarre reason to be going opposite way.  "We believe responsible owners should be able to own any dog they choose, and reckless owners should be prevented from owning any dogs whatsoever." As far as Ms Labrada is concerned, there’s a long list of big dogs that are capable of doing as much damage as a pit bull yet are not on the banned list. She hopes the Florida legislators strike the law down. "If the ban is repealed, it would be beneficial to the county," she says. While it is often impossible to pick a pit bull by sight, there’s no doubt about Max.  He’s pit bull through and through. The law’s repeal will not come in time for him. His only hope is that a saviour from across county lines comes and throws him a rope.

[alliwantinmylife]

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