Description:

There are violent pit-bulls. There are pit-bulls that are trained and beaten and abused into a normalcy of vicious behavior that is advantageous to their owners. There are violent dogs of every breed, in every corner of our country. We have plucked our family companions from nature dating back to the Late Pleistocene age, approximately 15,000 years ago. Territorially protective carnivores brought into metropolitan fenced yards, fed incongruous diets of store-bought corn and meal based dried kibble replacing what was once the self-caught flesh of another mammal, cooped up in a kennel or tether replacing what was once tens of thousands of acres of open domain, and lattes and iPhone in hand, offer them a social escape on the weekends- a communal dog-park; an idea that at one point in the evolutionary history of a canine would have looked much more like a gladiatorial coliseum with territory and resources on the line. As those responsible for the ripping of these animals from their nature and environment, we must also be responsible for tending to their care and raising in a way that understands their history and nurtures them to become successful members of the society we brought them into. Because of these facts, legislation must be focused on the responsibilities of dog owners, and the crack-down on dogs as weapons of violence across the country. Why are citizens not held as accessories to crimes their canines commit? Why has a dialogue blaming breed been constructed to subvert owner’s responsibilities, affecting responsible dog owners on a much larger scale than it affects those with negative intentions of raising or using their dog?