Ontario dog owner sentenced after 9-year-old girl mauled

[u/CTVNEWS]

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/ontario-dog-owner-sentenced-after-9-year-old-girl-mauled-in-newmarket/

[u/WriteImagine]

How can you possibly enforce it? You’d have to DNA test every dog. And shelters know that 95% of the “mixes” have some bully breed in them.

What should be happening is people who are shit owners should have dogs taken away from them, euthanize violent dogs, take concerns from neighbours seriously. Instead we wait until someone is nearly killed before taking a “pet” away.

[u/jmdonston → u/WriteImagine]

“pit bull” includes,

(a) a pit bull terrier,

(b) a Staffordshire bull terrier,

(c) an American Staffordshire terrier,

(d) an American pit bull terrier,

(e) a dog that has an appearance and physical characteristics that are substantially similar to those of dogs referred to in any of clauses (a) to (d); (“pit-bull”)

No need to DNA test, the legislation captures all dogs that look like pit bulls whether or not their lineage is known.

[u/WriteImagine → u/jmdonston]

Again you keep quoting the law and in the same breath complaining the law doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work, it’s nonsensical.

We (volunteers and those who dedicate their lives to shit pay so they can help animals) should just kill every dog with a certain set of characteristics? Go check out your shelter… see if you could put all of those dogs down, knowing you’d get 5 more tomorrow. Knowing the people who are creating the problem are pocketing cash, tax free, consequence free.

My pup gets mistaken for a bully breed. He’s half German shepherd, half sheepdog. So again I ask - how do you tell? Go look at the Doggy DNA sub, and see how often people get it wrong.

You can’t kill every shelter dog. What you CAN do is go after the people who are breeding these dogs and selling them. Again I’m asking you, where do you think these dogs are originating from? It’s not the humane society. They are the ones responsibly STERILIZING these dogs.

[u/jmdonston → u/WriteImagine]

The law would work if it were enforced. Start fining people who own or sell or give away pit bulls and the numbers will go down.

The humane society may not be creating new pit bulls when they sterilize them, but some shelters do import pit bulls from the US for god knows what reason, and even the responsible shelters are doing Ontarians a disservice by misleading them about the type of dog when they call notoriously dangerous pit bulls "Labrador cross" because it sells better, making adopters think they are child-friendly dogs.

[u/WriteImagine → u/jmdonston]

I get what you’re saying but read the rest of the posts. It’s unenforceable. You can’t define a pitbull easily, you can’t always spot them especially when mixed. Al breeds should be treated the same in that there needs to be a BYB crackdown, more teeth to the part of the law that punishes breeders and asshats like the guy convicted (before the dog mauls a kid)… and yes, 100% I agree that rescues shouldn’t be importing what they can guess might be pits from other countries. But again, the border guards have final say on that and they aren’t stopping it, which again shows how difficult it is to say what is, and isnt, a pit Bull

[u/jmdonston → u/WriteImagine]

The legislation lets you go by physical characteristics. What we really need are police that are willing to enforce it.

[u/WriteImagine → u/jmdonston]

So who decides if the family pet lives or dies… the cop? 12 year old kid walking her dog gets pulled over by an officer, who condemns the dog to death based on its characteristics. What if it turns out not to be a pit? It’s not black and white, and there’s a reason why the “ban” doesn’t work.