Deputy Dawg-
I have read, with rapt attention, all comments posted until you mentioned Clifton’s study. Oh God – please explain to everyone that this is not research – I am a research professional and Clifton is nothing short of a quack. In his self-analysis of his ‘research’, he does nothing short of anthropomorphise the behavior of GSD’s that were involved in bite incidents – citing that, in his opinion, in every case they did not want to bite. Geez. Either he can read their minds or they can speak to him. Funny – it only applies to GSD’s. By the way, I LOVE PIT BULL TERRIERS. Though I own a rottie, I still love them. They, in ideal living situations and even less-than-ideal situations, are simply joyous!
BTW, my son lives in the now-infamous Lakewood, OH where the pit ban recently passed. That was a fight fought long and hard by its citizens. The fight is not over. They will not lie down and take it, for they know it does not end with the pit. This is the result of an alliance of mainly the city council members with law enforcement. They feel the ban is the easy way to ‘keep the city safe.’ OK.
Your readers should know of the recent case of a Lakewood police officer who was responding to a domestic argument. The woman who lived next door to where the argument was taking place saw what was happening and went to her back yard to bring her pit inside. For reasons unknown and unexplainable by the police department, the police officer went into her yard. As he did, her pit ran up to him to greet him, when she called her dog to her, the dog was shot five times – the last shot was to the back of her head. The woman instinctively lay down and covered her dog with her body – the entire time the cop had his revolver drawn on the woman, who pled to give her dog mouth-to-mouth. The cop told her if she did, he’d shoot her. She lay over her dog while she died. Today, the woman suffers tremendously from PTSD. This is information obtained directly from the woman, who related this occurrence in one of the MANY Lakewood city council meetings. The only people who were visibly upset by her experience were the folks in the audience and maybe ONE city council member. Now please tell me why THAT had to happen. No matter how you feel about a certain breed, when a dog is not posing a threat and is doing exactly what it was asked to do, why would you hate something that much?
Those who are able to, are moving out of Lakewood in great numbers. Best way to hurt a city is through its wallet!
I digress, Merritt Clifton is a quack.
