Pit bulls at center of vicious dog debate

The breed accounts for a disproportionate number of bites.

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By Margo Rutledge Kissell and Ken McCall
Staff Writers Updated 11:44 AM Sunday, October 31, 2010

State Rep. Barbara Sears wants Ohio to stop defining one breed of dog — the pit bull — as inherently vicious.

“That’s as wrong as discrimination against anything else,” said Sears, the Toledo-area Republican who introduced a bill to remove the pit bull designation from the state’s vicious dog law.

Although the measure passed the Ohio House as part of a larger animal cruelty bill, it’s not clear if it will reach the full Senate before the two-year legislative session ends in December.

Ohio’s vicious dog law has been on the books since 1987, but the Ohio Supreme Court shot a major hole in it in 2004, ruling that the law denied dog owners their day in court. Dog wardens say the ruling tied their hands because of the prospect for endless legal challenges.

“I hear complaints all the time, ‘Why can’t you do anything?’ ” said Ohio County Dog Wardens Association President Barb Knapp, the dog warden in Erie County.

Sears’ bill, local dog wardens say, would remove what little enforcement power they have left. Taking away the pit bull designation “is not helping us unless that’s being replaced with another tool,” said Harold Brown, a veterinarian who serves as Greene County’s Animal Control director.

Sears said the law would still define as vicious any dog that, without provocation, has killed or injured a person or has killed another dog. “The only thing it takes away is the absolute presumption pit bulls are by definition violent and vicious,” she said.

With or without the pit bull designation, however, Ohio’s law has its limitations, as Theresa Shoemaker discovered when she walked her Maltese-Shih Tzu in her Miamisburg neighborhood last May. The 8-pound dog was killed after a 110-pound mastiff-mix broke free from her choke collar and attacked.

The owner, Ronald Donnan, 71, of Miamisburg got to keep the dog but paid a $45 fine for letting her run loose, a minor misdemeanor. If the attack had come from a pit bull, though, Donnan could have faced more serious penalties.

Although he told police the dog had attacked another dog 18 months earlier, there was no documentation and thus no further sanction.

“This is ridiculous this is happening and nobody is doing anything about it,” Shoemaker said.

“You can’t have them here”

Several Miami Valley communities have their own ordinances regulating dogs, but Fairborn has one of the toughest.

The city banned pit bulls in 2008.

The unanimous City Council vote came one year after another Ohio Supreme Court decision, which found Toledo’s enforcement of pit bulls constitutional. In that case, the court ruled that the city had “a legitimate interest in protecting citizens from the dangers associated with pit bulls.”

Fairborn acted as a means of curbing drug activity.

“We’d been having some incidents with pit bulls and vicious dogs,” Fairborn City Manager Deborah McDonnell said. “It’s a very aggressive species, known to be so.

“We know from a policing perspective, there are a large number of people who bring pit bulls in when protecting drug activity.”

Centerville first adopted its dog ordinance in 1994, but amended it after the 2004 Supreme Court case. The ordinance follows state law by categorizing pit bulls as vicious, but the amendment allowed for an appeals process, said Kristen Gopman, an assistant to the city manager. Dogs that kill or cause injury to a person or kill a dog are also deemed vicious.

“Our city attorney worked with the chief of police and the prosecutor to determine an appropriate appeals process for owners,” Gopman said.

The Montgomery County health department, by contrast, does not declare pit bulls vicious as a breed.

Bill Wharton, spokesman for Public Health – Dayton & Montgomery County, said the proposed state amendment removing the pit bull designation is in line with the county regulations.

“Our position is that the actions of the dog is what makes the dog vicious, not the breed line,” Wharton said.

Those regulations, however, don’t help dog wardens, who have to abide by state law, said Mark Kumpf, director of the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center.

“We need a law that addresses all dogs, all breeds that engage in this type of behavior,” he said.

Dog bites  by the numbers

Pit bulls account for less than a half percent of all licensed dogs in Montgomery County, but more than 12 percent of all bites since 2009, a Dayton Daily News analysis of data from the county health department and animal control center has found.

Purebred pit bulls were reported biting people 141 times in the county, far more than any other breed. When pit bull mixes were included — another 54 bites — the pit bull share topped 17 percent of the 1,116 bites where the breed of the biting dog was recorded.

By comparison, purebred German shepherds and boxers were tied for second with 52 bites — just over a third of the pit bull total. Labrador retrievers came in fourth with 50 bites.

The number of registered pit bulls has grown by 72 percent in the county over the last three years, the data show. As of Oct. 15, 583 pit bulls were registered, up from 340 in 2007. Still, that amounted to less than a half percent of the 67,574 dogs licensed in the county with a breed recorded.

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