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.  

Damn to the Good Samaritain

The owner of the unlicensed pit bull that had recently whelped a litter of puppies, grieves in his idyllic suburban garden.    He is outraged at the gross negligence of the police who responded to a plea to help a seventy-two year old woman who was being dragged by the dog.  The police shot the dog when it turned on one of them.  The owner plans to press charges. 
"Those officers committed a serious crime here.  They deserve to be punished."

It seems these days, the intentions of helping in the line of duty can bite peace officers in the behind.  

B.S.L. advocates don't want to regulate the kind of people who can own pit bulls.  This is their collateral damage....there's a litter of puppies and plenty more where that came from, in plenty more idyllic suburban gardens like this one.  The cycle continues ad nauseam.




 

The Plague

Just when you thought the menace of pit bull genetics was enough of a plague, we learn that the BUBONIC PLAGUE  has returned to the U.S.A, the first case of a canine transporting infected fleas to humans in 90 years.  GUESS WHAT KIND OF DOG TRANSMITTED THE DISEASE?  TA DAH!



MOOD MUSIC


An outbreak of plague that affected four people and a dog in Colorado might be the first instance of person-to-person transmission of plague in the United States in 90 years, officials said Thursday.

It started with a sick pit bull, and its owner, two vet techs and a close personal contact of the dog's owner all ended up infected. The dog died but all four people were treated with antibiotics and are okay.

And while the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes plague is usually passed along in flea bites, the pneumonic form that infects the lungs can be transmitted by little droplets in a cough or through other close contact.

"We know that he got it from the dog."

"Although human plague is rare in North America, it remains a public health concern in the western United States where Y. pestis circulates among wild rodent populations," the researchers wrote in a report circulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The dog got sick last summer, and was euthanized at a veterinary office after it coughed up blood and became very weak. No one suspected plague until its owner got sick too. He was initially diagnosed with another bacterial infection, but later tests showed he was infected by Yersinia pestis -- the same bacteria that wiped out 25 million people in the year 541 and tens of millions more throughout the Middle Ages.

It's still seen from time to time around the world and in Western states -- about eight human cases a year, on average. "Plague is virtually always confined in this day and age to rural regions in the West," Dr. John Douglas, director of Colorado's Tri-County Health Department, told NBC News. "That is because the vector of plague is typically the prairie dog although there are other rodents that can transmit as well."

The last documented case of human-to-human transmission of plague in the U.S. was during an outbreak in Los Angeles in 1924.

When the Colorado health officials got the report of plague, they started investigating. The first human patient was very ill, in the hospital and intubated, so he couldn't talk. But officials learned the dog had been sick. They tested tissue samples at the vet's and found plague.

"We know that he got it from the dog," Tri-County's Janine Runfola said. "He was coughing up blood. That is likely when some of the cases got infected, including the index patient." When patients with pneumonic plague cough, particles of infected blood and mucus spread and other people and animals nearby can breathe them in and become infected.

It's the most dangerous form of plague because it can spread this way, and it's the only way plague is transmitted from human to human.

Separately, two veterinary technicians who treated the dog got respiratory infections. They treated themselves with antibiotics. After the dog owner was diagnosed with plague, they were checked and put on extra intravenous antibiotics to be certain they were cured of the infection.

But the two technicians never became seriously ill -- something else that's new and good to know, said Douglas. Doctors usually assumed that pneumonic plague patients become very seriously ill. That could suggest that sometimes people get infected and don't know it, Douglas said.
       

But the most troubling case is the fourth one, a close female contact of the dog owner. Health officials are trying hard not to identify any of the people involved to protect their privacy.

"She also had contact with the dog and also had more intensive contact with the patient when he got sick," Douglas said. Both the man and the dog were coughing up blood, so either could have infected her. But the timeline makes it look more likely that the man infected her.

"There's no way to be sure that she also didn't get it from the dog," Douglas notes.

"Don't let your dog run around where the prairie dogs are."

Either way, the case is unusual and serves as a warning to doctors and vets alike to be on the lookout for plague when animals or people have unusual respiratory symptoms and have been in possible contact with rodents such as prairie dogs or squirrels.

In 2012, a 7-year-old Denver girl caught bubonic plague from a dead squirrel.

The good news is that all forms of plague can be treated with antibiotics. But it must be diagnosed properly.

"If you live in the West and you live in places where there are rodents or you are hiking … you need to be generally aware," Douglas said. Pets should get flea treatments and be kept away from wild animals.

   

"Don't let your dog run around where the prairie dogs are. Wear insect repellant and socks," he advised. 

And of course, if you own a pit bull, wear Kevlar and keep the break stick handy.  Flea bites are bad, but so are pit bull bites.  The CDC is very concerned about this outbreak which has thus far caused the death of four people.  The 30 or so deaths caused by pit bulls, not so much.  In fact, they don't track the breeds that cause canine related fatalities any longer, and they claim there is no such thing as a pit bull.   

Time Report

Washington Post

NPR

ABC News

CDC