It Takes a Village

There's an African proverb oft quoted that takes a village to raise a child.   We would like to expand that concept to also keeping them safe, irregardless of their age and to include non-humans into the mix as well.  We are the Village.  

These days, it's not safe to play in the village anymore.  We all used to be able to walk down the street, ride bicycles, and dally with the daffodils with nary a worry, but this is a new world.  No neighborhood is immune to the problem with pit bull attacks, despite what pit bull expert Bronwen Dickey thinks......that it's only elderly whites. Those who favor BSL are a diverse spectrum, you will even find both Democrats and Republicans who support, and yes, oppose the concept of regulating the type of dog involved again and again and again in a serious, difficult to disengage dog attack.    The task of freeing a  human or animal victim out of the grips of their non-locking but nonetheless very strong jaws and even more tenacious brains can take the heroic effort of one or several people.    

There are many of these videos out there, this one happens to be a rather excellent example showing a variety of methods of "try".   How many people and how many means did you witness in the 2:56 minutes of the fight between a stray pit bull and another stray cur mutt this film captured? 

 

Sometimes, it takes the effort of an entire village to make pibble let go.

2013 Saanich, BC  Baseball Bat, Steel Toe Boots, A Can of Pepper Spray and a can of Bear Spray
May 4, 2015 Sharpsburg, PA: Even the pit bull's owner could not get the attacking dog to stand down. Instead, the dog's owner would need a crowbar to pry the dog's jaws open so it would release the 8-year-old girl's arm.


6/06/2016  San Bernardino, CA:  It took several neighbors to finally pull the dog off the woman who suffered a serious bite wound to her leg. Neighbors came to their aid, eventually getting the dog to stop attacking by hitting it with a piece of lumber after using fists, a knife and a stun gun had no effect.

"It took the whole neighborhood to get the dog off," said witness Edgar Ramos.

2/15/2017 Houston, TX:   Woman  uses a plastic chair  and protected the victim until help came.

2/19/2017  Australia:  Woman bites attacking Staffordshire

3/12/2017 Bronx, NY:  I told them ‘I’ve been hitting them with a two-by-four, I’ve been spraying them with mace, and they’re not letting go.’”

4/01/2010 A little tongue in cheek list of ways to defend    oneself from a pit bull attack. The same author created a response entitled  "How to Defeat Someone Made Furious by How to Defeat a Pit Bull with Your Bare Hands.

6/27/2017 Inkster, MI  Chainsaw and 2 X 4s used to ward off dogs mauling handyman in metro Detroit. 

How to Break Up a Dog Fight by Ed Frawley

How to Use a Break Stick

Bear Spray

It is the village who often pays for the medical and emergency team costs after a pit bull attack, especially when the owner of the dog can not be found or can not afford the expenses.   It is the village who pays when an officer in the service of public safety must shoot a pit bull in the line of duty.  There is always an investigation, and very often outage spread on social media.

A fire man was demoted after posting a list of ways to defend oneself from a pit bull attack on a facebook page.   Pit bull advocates quickly rallied outrage that he be fired, taking his suggestions out of the the "if you are attacked by a pit bull" context,  erroneously that he was listing ways to kill pit bulls without the IF. They started a petition that received over 41,000 signatures.   

Through  investigation, it was found that the fireman's descriptive, anti-pit bull comments caused the fire department to “lose pub­lic trust.” The administration also questioned if he could be able to deliver “com­passionate and professional” service to pit bull owners in the city who might someday need the fire department’s help. Additionally, the inves­tigation found, that he posted the comments on Facebook using a fire department com­puter and cell phones when he was supposed to be work­ing.

Notice the post doesn't suggest going out to dispatch neighborhood pit bulls,
only IF they are attacking.

The investigation and sub­sequent discipline for the fireman provide a glimpse into an ac­tive subculture surrounding pit bulls, both for and against the breed. The original com­ments posted on Facebook group pages and a website that pro­mote the opinion that pit bulls are violent and unsafe, in a group discussion on best ways to defend oneself, or to help in the event of an attack. A former administrator of the Facebook page said he thought the fireman's detailed  post was satire.   Unfortunately, the reality of a pit bull attack these days is real.  In this group, there were people who had REAL encounters, and dark humor is always flowing. 


  In the end, the one thing we need to remember in the event of a pit bull attack, or for that matter, an attack from any other being, human or animal, is that we need to use our BRAIN, to keep our wits and use whatever we can to defend ourselves.


Unfortunately, we can't always defend our thoughts, when they seem cruel or politically incorrect in polite society.  Is it something we should HAVE to discuss....ways to defend oneself from an attacking domestic pet?      
 
It is the Village who pays for the cruelty investigations, the warehousing  of the unwanted dogs, and destroying thousands of  them humanely.

It's our collective heart that suffers when another life is horrifically and tragically taken due to dangerous dogs.  

It's OUR VILLAGE!  We must do what we can to convince our civic leaders that we can not afford to give our Village to the dogs.  

“Let the pit bulls come to me, for dogs such as these frolic in the kingdom of heaven!”

Jen Clyde argues in this blog entry for  the Episcopal Cafe that Jesus would probably love pit bulls.   We find it strange she didn't use a single Bible Verse that mentioned dogs specifically, because it seems like the kinds of dogs that are used as metaphors in the Bible, appear to be pit bulls. 

We also find it strange, there is no consideration for the people who have been victims of pit bulls.





The people who hate American Bullies the most, would be the crowd that feels that American Pit Bull Terriers are the only true pit bulls. 
Jesus loves e-coli, fleas and mosquitoes too.