Not content with stereotyping the breed, now they must stereotype the owners:

Pit bull owners are mostly young, brash males with an attitude, who strut like they own the sidewalks, say some dog owners who feel terrorized by pit bulls in the area of Isabella and Church Sts.

The underlying message, they say, is: Don’t mess with me or my pit bull.

Yes, because every pit bull owner has something to prove.

Dog owners interviewed yesterday in the area where a savage pit bull attack occurred in a back alley early Saturday morning — in which a 25-year-old man who was walking two pit bulls for their out-of-town owner was mauled by the dogs and sent to hospital with extensive leg, back and arm wounds — weren’t mourning the loss of the two dogs, who were destroyed by police.

Dog owners, along with experts in animal training and safety, said that, as dangerous as pit bulls can be, the owners are sometimes the main problem. “Guys who want to look tough and want a macho-type dog sometimes get a pit bull, and they have no idea what they have,” said Liz White of Animal Alliance, an organization committed to the protection of animals through political action and education.

As dog owner and an expert in animal training and safety myself, the owners are almost always the problem. Yes, there are some bad apples who give the breed a bad name but a lot of us don’t. It has nothing to do with being macho for me. It’s that I like certain breeds of dogs. Don’t lump me and other responsible owners into the same category.

Posted in uncategorized on August 30th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |