THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BSL (BREED SPECIFIC LEGISLATION)

       It is only now that experts can prove that Breed Specific Legislation doesn't make communities safer for people or pets. It is costly, ineffective which undermines the human-dog bond. It is also a waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.There are way more important concerns to a community than enforcing BSL which takes away from other precious resources.
        I mean every citizen deserves to be protected from ALL reckless dog owners and everyone needs to be held accountable too. For those families involved, BSL discriminates against certain members of the dog community based on the type of breed of pet they own. Not only that BSL forces families to relocate to other areas of the country in order to keep their beloved pets safe making it difficult to stay connected with other family members. In addition to that BSL discriminates against families on fixed incomes,children, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. Relocation may not be an option for these families, thus a complete healthy loved pet is euthanized, simply because of its breed!
        As for most respectable animal shelters, BSL is a huge financial burden for them. There are increases in owner surrenders, which creates even more work for a shelter.There is more euthanasia which means more care for euthanized surrendered dogs. It hinders adoptions which increases the length of stay by restricting dogs which could have been placed in loving, caring homes. This in turn, limits the pool of adopters and generates fear in all shelter animals. Even if your dog is not currently targeted, BSL is a very terrible alternative, as your dog could be the next target.
        BSL lowers the value of dogs and dog ownership by generating hysteria based on false and misleading claims about dog behavior. It alienates dog owners from each other in the community in which they live. Neighbors turn on each other, simply because of the breed of dog they own.
        As far as the politics of BSL are concerned it has never been effective in reducing dog bites and enhancing public safety. It will definitely not have the results that are promised to constituents. It wastes tax payer dollars that could have been used to fund better projects such as education and road repair. All reckless dog owners need to be held accountable for their actions and their dogs, regardless of breed.
        When it comes to Animal Control Officers, BSL is expensive, time-consuming and nearly impossible to enforce. This takes real resources away from protecting a community from truly dangerous animals, including dangerous dogs not belonging to the targeted breeds. BSL makes animal control officers hated as the enemies of the community by forcing them to seize and destroy well-behaved family pets.
        Why is there not any scientific study or data that supports BSL, reducing dog bites?
         A perfect example was in June 2008, the Netherlands repealed its 15-year-old ban on "pitbull type dogs" because it had not resulted in a decrease in dog bites. The flip side of that was Denver Colorado enacted a breed ban in 1989. The citizens of Denver continued to suffer even a higher rate of hospitalization from dog-related injuries after the BSL ban was put in place. Ironically, the people that lived in breed-neutral areas of Denver had less dog bites. Again, what does that say to these uneducated politicians who want BSL, not very much right?
         The conclusion is laws that deem dogs dangerous based on breed or appearances, rather than behavior, fail to protect people from truly dangerous dogs. BSL fails to reach reckless dog owners as they disregard public safety laws anyway. All dog owners should be held to the same standards of human care, custody, and control of their dogs, regardless of breed or appearance.
         So why do these adol-minded politicians such as Mayor Dennis Coderre of Montreal, Quebec try and enforce such ludicrous legislation, when I am sure they are dense enough to realize it doesn't work. One word, here it comes, you guessed it, money and a great deal of it, in their pockets and into the community as a whole, on the deaths of innocent victims, such as the "Bully Breeds!"
         Don't kid yourself, Coderre and his corrupt style of goverment will make hundreds of thousands of dollars, putting this BS ban in place. About $700.00 per family will be squeezed out of each one, just in proper licensing, spay/neuter, micro-chipping, registrations, and even those "Silence of the Lambs" muzzles. Not to mention the killing shelter, Berger Blanc will make even more money murdering innocent well-behaved large breed dogs. I won't get into this, as you'll have to wait for my next blog on this inhumane, business of killing healthy animals for profit. YOu sure don't want to miss that, but to end this, I will once again, include an excerpt from my second upcoming book "Sidewinder" Have a great week, I know I will!
      That following winter, we acquired a new addition to our family in the form of another dog. Actually, it was the kid's father Hank who managed to get Skyler this cute little puppy. One, she could tell everyone would be her very own; in addition to that, she even picked the little girl out. Thus a Black Lab and Pit Bull mix, named Shadow arrived at our little home in the woods. It was also on December 30^th of that same year that Victoria got hit with unbelievable borage of snow. Now for those of you who don’t know, Victoria is well known for their temperate winters, with virtually none of the white stuff, whatsoever. Carol, the kids and I had just returned from Nanaimo, where we had spent that Christmas with Hank, his girlfriend and her whiny kid Stefan. We had been tracking the snow storm that was coming in from the state of Oregon when we were watching it on TV up at Hank’s house.

      Carol suggested that we leave that morning so we packed up the kids and got an early start. It wasn’t too bad for driving conditions until we arrived in Victoria when it started to snow. However, that was nothing compared to the snow covered roads, on our way through Metchosin, out towards Sooke, where our new little home was situated. When we arrived at the cabin, you could barely see the driveway, let alone our small bungalow. Carol and I quickly got the kids into our snow covered chalet, pulled out all the winter clothing and had everyone put them on. She turned on the TV, where we could see that there were power outages as well as collapsed roofs from the heavy snow all over parts of Victoria and surrounding areas. In fact, there must have been a good five feet of snow on that delicate roof of ours, therefore I knew someone had to go up there the next day and take care of it.

      In the meantime, we had introduced Skyler’s puppy Shadow to my dog Taro, but he really didn`t seem too enthused with the newest arrival to our family. That evening we were all dressed in toques, our long johns and sweaters as we went to bed with a cold howling wind whipping the cabin from all sides. The next day I knew we had to get an enormous amount of snow off the roof, for fear it could cave in on us. I was quickly voted unanimously to do it by the other three members of my family.

     While the kids were getting warm inside, and Carol was fixing up one of her infamous coffees, I ventured where no man had gone before. Well, I was definitely some good entertainment for the kids that afternoon as I decided to do a header right off that snow blanket of a roof. You couldn't have pictured it better, as out your kitchen window, you see your guy fall off the crown of the cabin into the snow head first.

     I guess it must have looked pretty comical, as Jack and Skyler reminded me how funny it was. One thing’s for certain, there was never a dull moment with me in the house. It took a good week for all that amount of snow to melt, but eventually life returned to normal.

    It was now the spring of 1997 and tragedy had befallen my stepson’s much-loved pet cockatiel, Maverick. Unfortunately Jack’s little friend had caught a cold from the damp winter we had, and it ended his life. It tore me apart, to see that little guy, so distraught over the passing of his beloved friend. He ended up burying Maverick under a tree, near the house, and for a time thereafter, Jack would sit under that tree quite regularly after school.

     There wasn’t much I could do to comfort his grief, so on the weekends, I would play in the river with Jack, we had out in the backyard. That seemed to console him, some but it was obvious that he truly missed his little buddy Maverick.

     Skyler was completely wrapped up with her new buddy Shadow; plus they would even fish together in the stream quite a bit in those days. Taro had moved out into the garage, as Shadow seemed to be crowding his space. That’s where he spent most of his time in the day, but we still brought him in at nights when we went to bed. Carol had let her good friend Dody know of Maverick’s passing, so she came up with a new pet Cockatiel for Jack. She had told Jack this one’s name was Apache, and at first, he seemed overjoyed with his new found friend. Still, after about a month of trying to teach the bird all the tricks that Maverick had known, he had given up on Apache. Dody ended up taking him back, and Jack didn’t seem so stressed out anymore.

        In the month of May, I was keeping very busy with the usual Spring Tradeshows, at various arenas throughout Victoria. It was there you would find me with the “Cookware Gang“ of would be sales associates. Usually,the group was led by our fearless leader JD, along with his gal Raelene, Shane and his girlfriend, Saul, my recruit Freda and some other of our new hired cooks. We had a booth and table showcasing our shiny Cookware, plus of course that Food Processer. All of us would be wearing white colorful aprons with the Pacific Health Systems Logo on them and whatnot. JD would be reeling in the “would be customers” with free coleslaw salads he had just made with the Food Processor. Mostly everyone that sampled the salad would put their name in the draw for a free food processor or whatever JD wanted to give away at the time. After the trade show had finished, we would call up the qualified leads that had the most pertinent information on the draw slips. I mean if they divulged their occupation, the number in their family they were cooking for as well plus their household income, then of course, we called them first. We would tell them they hadn’t won the food processor but had one a free dinner-show instead. It was a slam dunk, which mostly everyone said yes to that, and we would ask them to invite two other couples as well. Afterall, JD knew that one out of every three couples were purchasing our cookware after the dinner show was over. We stayed busy for a good three to four months of putting on dinner shows, well after a trade show had ended too.

          It was around the following month of April tragedy again visited our household, this time, it was our dog Shadow! Skyler had been walking her little buddy with Carol to go out to get the latest mail. They were walking together by the side of the road when some guy had intentionally gone out of his lane to hit the dog with his van. He didn’t even stop and kept on going, as it was quite obvious that he had some sort of deranged mind to do such a mindless act.

         Nonetheless, the damage had been done, and little Shadow’s right back leg, hip as well as most of her back end had been shattered in many places. Shadow was still a six-month-old pup when she got hit by some uncaring individual driving that vehicle and her injuries were going to be very expensive. When it happened, Carol and I certainly did not have the financial means to pay for Shadow’s operation to have her hip reconstructed. I knew we would have been forced to put Shadow down, but my Skyler pleaded with me with tears in her eyes to save Shadow that evening. What could I do, but try and find a way to financially pay for her dog’s operation? So I went to a source of income I knew would be able to help me and that was my boss and good friend JD Cantry.

           I told him my dilemma; furthermore, I told him I would work it off , selling sets of cookware in the coming months. JD was no dummy! It was a simple plain fact this young man knew that he could keep his number one cookware salesman working for him, for quite some time. All he had to was to lend me the money for Shadow’s operation because he knew he was getting paid back in more than just money.

           So to save and prolong Skyler’s dog’s life, I put myself in the hole for about $2,000.00 and you’re probably saying to yourself “I would never do that” right?

           I would agree with you somewhat, but until a member of your family has to go through such an ordeal; I still say you would have done what I did. Just think about it, what would you do if your son or daughter came to you with tears in their eyes asking you to save their beloved pet?

          You bet your ass, you would save that pet, no questions asked, so that’s why I did it. Now, I was doing more dinner shows that even thought possible to whittle down some of the $2000.00 debt I owed to JD. I kind of went into a bit of a depression due to the new huge debt that had been forced upon me somewhat. Instead of talking this over with Carol whom I should have done instead, I got back to my computer. You guessed it, I continued playing my NHL 2000 Video game and again till about 5am the next morning. I was becoming more and more moody in the coming weeks, as I wasn’t getting the proper amount of sleep due to playing that dam game! Despite this alarming fact though I was now performing breakfast, dinner and supper shows on some days even, just for the opportunity to sell even more cookware.

          At one point Carol had joked that I was feeding most of Victoria on occasion. It may sound crazy but she wasn’t too far off in her assumption, as I was spending an enormous amount of money to feed the “well to do” of Victoria’s society.

          Shadow had arrived home the next week with the back part of her right and left hip all shaven, where her operation had taken place. Her right back leg was completely bandaged in a red covering, as well as she had medication for some of her pain and discomfort.

          Skyler was never more grateful to see her Shadow come home and even relished the idea of playing nurse maid to her pet.