August 14th – Is it Time for Legal Pit Bull Ownership in Miami? The Countdown is On.
Hi everyone! Kim here; I’d like to piggy back on Michelle’s
posting from last week about the impending Breed Specific Legislation question
that is on the Miami-Dade ballot for August 14th.
Let’s cut to the chase: Breed-specific legislation improves
nothing within the community. It does not save people from being bitten;
mauled; or maimed by dogs – pit bulls or otherwise. If anything, it lulls
residents into a false sense of security. The truth of the matter is you need
to exercise caution around any dog, regardless of breed. Anything with teeth
has the ability to bite. Of course, a larger dog can inflict more damage, but a
dog’s larger size is not automatically indicative of an increased propensity to
bite over a small dog.
Truth be told, pit bull-type dogs have never been eradicated
from Miami-Dade county. Today, there are an estimated 60,000 “pit bulls” in
Miami-Dade’s almost-2,000 square miles, or a population density of
approximately 30 pit bulls per square mile. Take a look at PetHarbor.com, the
website that Animal Services uses to log all of the dogs taken into the
facility, stray or otherwise. You’ll see MANY dogs who look to be ‘pit
bull-type’ labeled as other things, most commonly “terrier mix” or “American
Bulldog mix” and other dogs who look nothing like a ‘pit bull-type’ labeled as
a pit bull mix; it’s solely up to the discretion of the staff on duty who label
the dogs at intake, of which most have zero training in breed identification.
And to further muddy things, those who have been trained in breed
identification, the so-called “pit bull investigators” each have their own
opinion of what constitutes a pit bull “type”.
Are you aware of the annual cost to our county to keep this
law on the books? $3,000,000! Nope, that isn’t a misplaced comma or an
extra zero - $3 MILLION to enforce a law that is solely based on opinion
that differs from person to person. This is a huge waste of our taxpayer
dollars that could instead be put toward something important – like our
education system.
In place of the pit bull ban in Miami, we need to implement
stricter dangerous dog laws for ALL breeds – ones that have been proven
effective in other municipalities nationwide. We’ve had 25 years for this
law to make us “safer” – and it hasn’t. I think it’s time to throw in the towel
and go with proven methods and get rid of the frivolous expense of enforcing
this antiquated piece of legislation, don’t you?
<3
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