Jeg fandt denne artikkel den er lidt lang og på engelsk , men den er
tiden værd efter min mening . Jeg fik en større forståelse for hvorfor
det mest er børn og åbenbart også gamle det går ud over når hunde
bidder mennesker og hvorfor. Intersant at læse hvor efterspurgt Presa
Canarios blev i usa efter at den have slået et mennesker ihjel "første
gang for racen i usa og om hvorfor. Hvilke hunde der bidder og hvor og
hvorfor mange der er af dem i området o.s.v. hundeagresivitet kontra
menneskeagresivitet . Regler for kamphunde som "desværre" nogle steder
stadig bliver brugt til kampe , regler lavet af hundeejerne , hunde
der bidder mennesker bliver aflivet med det samme og dermed ikke avlet
videre på . Hvornår ser mennesker en hunderace som farlig o.s.v.
Meget spændende læsning syntes jeg.
taget fra :
http://www.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20020728manbitesdog2.asp
Home > Lifestyle
Man's best friend is sometimes -- rarely -- his enemy
Sunday, July 28, 2002
By Bruce Keidan, Post-Gazette Senior Editor
"When a dog bites a man, this is not news, but when a man bites a dog,
that is news."
-- Newspaper editor Charles A. Dana, 1882
On the evening of Jan. 26, 2001, Diane Whipple, 33, a former women's
lacrosse star at Penn State University, was set upon by two large and
ferocious dogs outside the door of her San Francisco apartment. In an
attack that lasted the better part of 10 minutes, the dogs ripped out
her throat.
That fatal attack and the murder trial that followed set one of
American journalism's oldest axioms squarely on its ear, riveting the
attention of newspaper readers and television viewers nationwide.
Whipple's neighbor, lawyer Marjorie Knoller, 45, eventually was
convicted of second-degree murder, amended this month to manslaughter
by the presiding judge. Knoller's live-in lover, a lawyer named Robert
Noel, 59, got off with involuntary manslaughter because, unlike
Knoller, he was not present at the scene of the crime.
The dogs that killed Whipple, a 120-pound male named Bane and a female
named Hera, slightly smaller, were promptly destroyed. Early news
reports described them as English mastiffs or bull mastiffs.
Subsequent stories identified them as Presa Canarios, which translates
to "Dogs of the Canary Islands." Although it is popular in Spain, the
Presa Canario is exceedingly rare in the United States and, like many
rare breeds, cannot be registered with the American Kennel Club.
Reaction to that publicity was immediate. Breeders of Presa Canarios
found themselves deluged with phone calls and e-mail. Not from irate
or frightened people. From people who wanted a Presa pup.
"The interest in this breed went up about 400 percent" within days
after Whipple was killed, said Tracy Hennings, president of the Presa
Canario Club of the United States.
"I went from getting one to five inquiries a week to between 10 and 20
a day. Most of the people who e-mailed did not even sign their name.
It was just 'I want a dog. How much?' "
Few fatal attacks
Part of the fascination with Whipple's death lies in the lurid details
of the case. The dogs belonged to two convicts who had been
represented and then legally adopted by Noel and Knoller. The
convicts' plan was to breed dogs to sell to the Mexican Mafia to guard
illicit but lucrative drug-manufacturing operations.
Noel and Knoller, never palpably remorseful, tried hard to blame the
victim for her own demise. There were whispers, then published
stories, that bestiality and pornography were involved.
Part of the fascination with Whipple's death, perhaps subliminal, has
to do with the horror of the unthinkable. Dogs do not kill people.
Particularly adults, former athletes still in the prime of life.
On average, fewer than 15 people a year are killed as the result of
dog attacks in this country. Some years (1998, for instance), the
number is measured in single digits.
Most of the fatal attacks are on children. Of the few adults involved
in such fatal attacks, the vast majority are elderly.
No one, adult or child, has been killed by a dog in Allegheny County
in the 22 years Dr. Ihsan Chaudry has been the county's public health
veterinarian. "God has been very kind to us," Chaudry said this week.
In the matter of mortal wounds, yes. In the matter of serious but not
fatal attacks, not so kind.
The number of dog bites reported in Allegheny County last year was
1,128, which broke the record of 1,075, set the previous year, which
broke the record of 973 set in 1999.
As of last week, there had been 580 dog bites reported in the county
this year. And summer is dog-bite season. The majority of reported dog
bites take place between late May and early September, when children
are not in school.
"What's reported is the tip of the iceberg," said Kathy Hecker, a
Pennsylvania Humane Society police officer. When the family dog bites
the family's 2-year-old, animal-control officers are rarely informed.
Likewise, a bite that does not require medical treatment is unlikely
to attract official attention.
But even without complete reporting, the number of dog bites recorded
in Allegheny County since 1999 is fast approaching 4,000.
Who's being bitten? Boys between 7 and 13 are at greatest risk,
followed by girls in the same age group. Together, they made up 20
percent of the victims of bites reported from 1999 through 2001.
Another 11 percent were children 6 or under.
Why children? Because they are closer to the dog's eye level than
adults and are therefore more likely to make eye contact, which the
dog may perceive as a threat. Because they are small and they run,
which is characteristic of prey, and they cannot defend themselves as
well as adults can. And because they make childish mistakes. Like the
little girl who dropped or spat a piece of candy onto the fur of the
West Highland white terrier at the home of her baby sitter in Shaler
and tried to pull it out. The result: Wounds that required more than
100 stitches in her face.
What sort of dogs are doing the biting? The answer is more complicated
than you might think.
In a national study reported in the Journal of Veterinary Medicine,
using data collected between 1979 and 1998, pit bulls were held
accountable for 66 of 300 fatal attacks. Rottweilers were a distant
second, with 39 kills.
Presa Canarios? Zero. Whipple's death was the first ever attributed to
the breed in the United States.
Well-bred Presa Canarios, Hennings said, are by nature "very stable,
very level-headed, very secure, not a breed that attacks." But
Hennings, who operates a small kennel west of Cleveland, knows very
well that not all Presas are well-bred.
Bane, the male that killed Whipple, came from a line developed by a
man named Tobin Jackson at a kennel in Frenchtown, N.J., in the 1980s.
What no one knew at the time was that Jackson wasn't importing
purebreds from Spain. He was concocting his own line, crossing various
mastiff breeds with pit bulls.
"This breed has always attracted undesirables," Hennings said, "Our
breed is absolutely flooded with backyard breeders. We have people who
would be driven out of AKC breeds, so they move along to [a breed
that] has no controls."
Bites and fights
Of the dog bites reported in Allegheny County between 1999 and 2001,
pit bulls were identified as the culprit in 15 percent of the
incidents, followed by German shepherds, 14 percent, and mixed-breed
dogs, 13 percent.
But pit bulls, like art and pornography, are in the eye of the
beholder. The breed is not recognized by the AKC and is commonly
confused with the American Staffordshire terrier. Most people, cops
included, can't tell them apart.
Furthermore, the raw numbers are a reflection of the pit bull's rising
popularity as much as its inclination to bite. "They are part of the
urban environment more and more," said Lamar Barnes, Pittsburgh's
assistant director of environmental control.
The larger the pit bull population, the more likely you are to be
bitten by a pit bull. But is the average pit bull more prone to bite
people than the average chow chow, Akita or Rottweiler? Probably not.
What about pit bulls bred and trained to fight? Dog fighting, once
merely a misdemeanor in Pennsylvania, now is a felony punishable by
long prison terms and stiff fines. But it continues to take place in
Allegheny County in garages, basements and the back rooms of bars.
"I consider dog fighters the scum of the earth and the epitome of
evil," said Debbie Jugan, an assistant Allegheny County district
attorney known to colleagues as The Doggie DA. "But it's a myth that
dog fighters' dogs maul people."
Here's why: Individual wagers on dog fights can reach $100,000. If a
dog shows aggression toward a human, it is disqualified. If you
wagered on the dog, you lose your bet.
"Dog fighters have a term for dogs that show aggression to people,"
said Jugan, who conducted the state's first successful felony
dog-fighting prosecution in 1998. "They call them 'man-eaters.' And
they [kill] them."
Dan Sharp, now a Forest Hills police officer, was a member of the East
Pittsburgh force in the mid-1990s when he responded to a call that two
pit bulls, running loose, had ambushed a woman walking her pet beagle.
Sharp arrived to find the beagle dead, the woman on the pavement,
where she had fallen during the attack, and the larger of the two pit
bulls, mouth bloody, still on the scene. After getting that animal
under control, he was able to track the dogs to a gutted house in
North Braddock from which animal-control officers eventually removed
13 pit bulls.
What struck Sharp was this: While the woman had become entangled in
her leash and had been dragged by the pit bulls as they savaged her
pet, she had suffered only scrapes and bruises. Even in their killing
frenzy, the pit bulls had not bitten her.
Documenting the danger
The pit bulls involved in that attack in East Pittsburgh are among 187
dogs registered in Pennsylvania as dangerous dogs under Section 502-A
of the state's Dog Law. Of that number, 87 are registered in Allegheny
County. It is by far the largest total of any county in the
commonwealth.
"There are more dangerous dogs in Philadelphia than Pittsburgh beyond
any doubt," said Jim Brush, the state dog warden responsible for
Allegheny County. "It's just that enforcement is more active here."
A dangerous dog is one that attacks and injures a human being or a
domestic animal without provocation. What constitutes provocation is
up to a magistrate to decide.
Once a guilty verdict is final, the dog's owner must either destroy
the animal or take elaborate steps that include keeping the dog in an
escape-proof enclosure and never taking it out, except on a leash and
in a muzzle.
The owner also is compelled, in theory, to post a $50,000 bond, to be
forfeited if the dog bites again. In reality, though, such a bond is
almost never posted.
The dog is required to wear a tag that declares it a dangerous dog.
But like the bumper sticker on the back of the big truck says, "If you
can read this, you're too damned close already."
Within 30 to 60 days after a dog hereabouts is declared dangerous
under the law, Brush pays the owner a visit. One of his jobs is to
make sure the owner has taken the required steps to avert another
attack.
"In most cases, the owner destroys the dog," Brush said. "Or tells you
he has.
"He's got a death certificate that says Rex was put down. Rex could be
sitting right next to him. How would you know? He might have destroyed
Rex or some other dog. Unless there's a nose print or a microchip,
which there rarely is, you really have no way of knowing."
Some owners go to the trouble of building a virtual Alcatraz for their
dangerous dog. Some simply give them away to someone in some other
state, making them someone else's time bomb.
What type of dogs will you find on the list of dangerous dogs around
here? Pit bulls and Rottweilers, Akitas and shepherds, just as you
would expect. And a mishmash of mixed breeds.
There isn't a Presa Canario on Allegheny County's list; which could be
because there is not a Presa, dangerous or otherwise, anywhere in the
county.
There is a beagle, though. And a Weimaraner. And a pair of exuberant
briard pups. There is a golden retriever, too, and a springer spaniel.
"Usually, it's the owner," Brush said. "If the owner is nice, usually
the dog is nice, regardless of what breed it is. But not always. You
have some dogs that are mentally ill, just like people."
In a life spent approaching strange dogs, some of them stressed out
and some scared half to death, Kathy Hecker, the Humane Society cop,
has been bitten once, but seriously enough to sever an artery.
A Chihuahua did it.
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