The human race has cornered the market on a variety of positive and negative things, but perhaps none more so than the innate ability to be more cruel than any species on Earth. While nature is a vicious place when observed from afar, it is almost exclusively an existence based upon survival of the fittest. In the human world, we find countless ways to be mean and hurtful and wrong for reasons no other than because we can. It’s disgusting, and it will sadly, seemingly, never end.
Look no further than Michigan and the story of Diggy the dog. Diggy was picked up as a stray earlier this year by Detroit Animal Care and Control, which classified the dog as an American bulldog. Detroit Dog Rescue, the only no-kill shelter in the city, pulled Diggy from the facility and put him up for adoption. Dan Tillery, a local musician, adopted the pup saying “”I just bought a new house and my girlfriend and I wanted a dog, so we went down to the rescue and fell in love with him.”
Tillery obtained a Waterford Township dog license for Diggy on Wednesday, indicating that the pooch is an American bulldog. One of the veterinarians at Detroit Dog Rescue classified the dog as the same breed.
Waterford Township Police told Dan Tillery on Thursday that his new dog, Diggy, can’t stay in the township because he looks like a pit bull and thus violates a longstanding ordinance barring pit bulls and pit bull mixes.
Now, let’s stop and look at all of the stupidity involved here.
For starters, we have a dog that has been classified as a bulldog by both a shelter and a vet, yet because he “looks” like a pit bull has to leave the city. This is like banning t-shirts with guns on them because they “look” threatening.
And then we get to the big enchilada and the true cruelty of the human race; these various breed bans that continue to exist across this nation; a confirmation that we refuse to look in the mirror and find honest solutions to problems (which would cause us to change as a human race) and instead blame something else. When mass shootings occur, we scream to ban weapons. When people get fat, we scream to ban soda and fast food, and when dogs attack, we scream to ban various breeds, as opposed to the true culprit: the human.
I have never owned a pit bull but love the breed and have worked with several. I’m on my third German Shepherd, another very “scary” breed of dog if you’re an abject moron. Rottweilers are amazing pups as are Great Danes, Huskies and other allegedly “dangerous breeds,” who show up on asinine Google Searches for “aggressive or dangerous” breeds with no context provided at all.
So here is your context; as we’ve discussed for years, of course large breed dogs cause more deaths when use their mouths because they’re bigger, better, faster, and stronger. However, large “aggressive,” breeds are the least likely to actually bite or attack. That distinction is saved for the smaller, less confident breeds like Chihuahuas, Dachshunds, Terriers, and the like. God forbid we let facts get in the way of a dog lynching.
Furthermore and much, much, more importantly is the fact that it’s not the dog, it’s the human (or in some cases, the lack thereof). If Pits are so dangerous, why are there hundreds of thousands of them across this country making perfect family pets? And what of those numbers? When a few dozen dogs of a certain breed attack people each year in this country, why do we ignore the exponentially larger number that are calm, caring, wonderful companions?
Answer: because we’re cruel and we’re stupid. Period.
Much like we somehow blame guns for terrorist attacks in America, or we blame the internet for our kids seeing things they shouldn’t, or we blame porn for ruining our clearly flawed relationships, we also must blame dog breeds for our own stupidity. It’s 2016 America and it’s awful.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/smiley-dog-lose-forever-home-due-pit-bull/story?id=39780000
