MANSFIELD — Missy Houghton, executive director of the Humane Society of Richland County, is happy to hear the Mansfield law department is revising the city’s dog ordinance. But she disagreed with some of the language law director John Spon used in explaining the issue.
In a previous article, Spon, Mansfield law director, said the state legislature has removed pit bulls as a breed specific ‘vicious’ animal. The city will have to follow suit and consider pit bulls like any other dog, as opposed to automatically categorizing them as “vicious.”
The state law defines “vicious,” “dangerous” and “nuisance” dogs without regard to breed. Instead, there are behaviors that elevate a dog into one of those three categories.
Spon went onto say that Ohio statute provides less protection for citizens “because it’s indisputable that pit bull dogs as a breed are absolutely potentially vicious,” he said.
However, that’s where Houghton disagrees.
“Obviously, the breed-specific legislation is not working,” she said. “If it worked, there wouldn’t be dog bites.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a study on fatal dog bites, listing the breeds involved in fatal attacks in the U.S. from 1979 to 1998.
According to a statement issued by the CDC, “(The study) does not identify specific breeds that are most likely to bite or kill, and thus is not appropriate for policy-making decisions related to the topic … There is currently no accurate way to identify the number of dogs of a particular breed, and consequently no measure to determine which breeds are more likely to bite or kill.”
Houghton gave two suggestions she believes would help mitigate dog attacks: promoting responsible ownership, regardless of the dog breed, and teaching people how to behave around dogs (and vice versa), especially children since they’re bitten more frequently than other age groups.
Pit bulls, she noted, is not a dog breed, rather a type of dog. The term pit bull is sometimes used to identify the American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier and Staffordshire bull terrier.
But identifying pit bulls is not as easy as it may seem, she indicated.
“What you may call a pit bull, I may call something else,” she said.
She added that pit bulls are one of the most popular dog types in the U.S., so odds are there will be more incidents involving pit bulls than other types of dogs.
In 2014, the U.S. National Safety Council showed the chances of dying by a dog bite are 1 in 116,448. The chances of dying by legal execution are similar: 1 in 127,717.
Houghton said it’s horrible when dog attacks occur, but such incidents are often sensationalized, causing people to think they happen more frequently than they do.
“Regardless of how often it happens, it’s still horrible, but it’s also not fair to blame one specific type of dog,” she said.
Houghton urges people not to discriminate against a dog based on its breed.
“We’ve had dogs (at the humane society) that have been aggressive that are golden retrievers, St. Bernards, Chihuahuas … it’s not that we don’t see pit bulls, but there is no one breed that sticks out as being more aggressive than the other,” she said.
What typically dictates how a dog behaves is the environment that they live in and whether they’re socialized or not. Dogs that are tied up are typically more aggressive than those that aren’t, she said.
“We can remove a dog from a property and have to use extreme caution, but once they get to the shelter, they’re fine,” she said.
