Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Trillium Hollow Pet Policy - Thanks For All The Input

[Sheryl Rapée-Adams (sheryl]

Regan, I'm glad you brought this up.  As cohousing residents, pets and their
people are stakeholders in the human-made decisions that affect them.

As an animal advocate, I have reviewed the effects of breed-specific
legislation (BSL) and ordinances in different parts of the country.  On one
hand, lawmakers want to protect people and pets from dangerous animals.  BSL
is designed to alleviate the fears by communities traumatized by vicious
animal attacks.  Inevitably, however, BSL fails in its intent to protect
people and their animal companions from dog attacks.  Worse, community
members may become complacent and ignore the real issues, erroneously
feeling that the dangerous dogs have been eliminated with the banning of
certain breeds.

Much more promising (and many already successful) ordinances do two things:
1) Place full financial and criminal liability _on the animals' owners_ for
animal attacks; and 2) Approach the dogs themselves from a "blame the deed,
not the breed" perspective.  In other words, regardless of breed, individual
dogs whose behavior proves threatening/dangerous are subject to being banned
or put to death.

Breed-specific legislation is increasingly being rejected as lawmakers
understand the futility.  Here are some references:
http://network.bestfriends.org/News/PostDetail.aspx?np=1971&g=dc17caba-4f8f-
471c-b5df-d7fc2d477fca
http://network.bestfriends.org/News/PostDetail.aspx?np=2143&g=930040ae-b8f9-
4ada-a514-ab4fd2f0f250

In October, Best Friends Animal Society will hold a conference in Denver to
educate people about effective ways to protect communities from dangerous
animals and to advocate for pit bulls, likely the most abused breed today.

Wouldn't it be awesome of cohousing, already the cultural progressive
leading edge in so many ways, embraced the most progressive and effective
solutions in this area as well?

  /\ /\
= ` ` =    Sheryl
Vermont Community Editor, Best Friends Network
http://network.bestfriends.org


-----Original Message-----
From: Regan Conley [mailto:reganconley [at] earthlink.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 8:14 AM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Trillium Hollow Pet Policy - Thanks For All The Input

And why the detailed listing of certain dog breeds?  And how would  
you enforce this outside of an AKC certificate?  I know that some  
municipalities have out-lawed certain breeds in an attempt to deal  
with drug commerce problems, but well-trained dogs are well-trained  
dogs, regardless of breed.

Regan 

-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.5/377 - Release Date: 6/27/2006