Poor Mark Buehrle. Recently, the major league pitcher has had no luck at all when it comes to dog ownership. In the past year, Buehrle has been traded to two teams based in cities where pit pulls are banned. That means that Slater, Mark's adorable two-year-old American Staffordshire terrier, isn't allowed.

When Buehrle played for the Miami Marlins last year, the ban was certainly inconvenient, but still fairly easy to work around. He and his family simply lived in neighboring Broward Country, and the pitcher commuted 30 minutes to work at the ballpark.

But now, things have gotten a whole lot more complicated. At the end of last season, Buehrle was traded to Toronto, the capital of Ontario, and pit bulls are outlawed throughout the entire province. He and his family -- which includes his wife, two kids, and four dogs -- are a tight-knit bunch, and they faced a painful possibility: leaving floppy-eared, belly rub-loving Slater behind.

But, that was never really an option, insists Buehrle. Instead of abandoning Slater, the family reached the collective decision that Mark will live in Toronto by himself and everyone else will live 800 miles away in St. Louis, Missouri.

Regardless of whether or not you feel sorry for Buehrle, him being a highly paid athlete and all, the situation is undeniably unfortunate. Especially when you consider that it's a result of legislation that is predicated on irrational fear and misinformation, not common sense and science.

Pit bulls -- a breed group comprised of American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Staffordshire Bull Terriers -- are outlawed in many municipalities and counties across the United States. The list includes Miami, Denver, and Malden, MA. Until last May, it also included Cincinnati.

Many of these bans were originally put in place as a result of over-hyped media coverage of savage dog attacks accompanied by CDC statistics supposedly showing that pit bulls were the primary perpetrators. One caveat that was left out of those media reports, however, was that the CDC has stated that fatal canine attacks are so rare -- and their reporting so plagued with inconsistencies -- that they are "statistically insignificant in addressing canine aggression." In other words, the reports are not good science.