The newspaper headlines read Dangerous Dogs Act. I know about Lassie and Rin Tin Tin but, I thought, this is ridiculous. When I was growing up the cinema was divided into three seating areas – “pit” or the section in front the screen where the worst behaved patrons sat; “house” for those of us on an elevated plane and separated by a barrier from the roughnecks in “pit”; and then “balcony”, where you took your girlfriend if you had the dough or promised to take her if you wanted mo’.
Could they be speaking about “pit” bulls in a cinematic sense? I asked myself.
But it couldn’t be, so I figured that maybe because several governments in the region were threatening to take action against pit bulls, their owners were teaching them how to act as if they were loving and playful.
Some politicians can act even better than pit bulls. In several Caribbean countries where rampaging pit bulls were (and are) attacking people, the governments developed pieces of legislation to deal with “dangerous dogs” but never put them into effect.
One of my friends says that in this context the term “act” is entirely appropriate. It is an act.
There might be other dangerous dogs, but throughout the world increasingly the pit bull is recognized as truly dangerous. One point of view is that pit bulls are a public safety issue that merits actions such as banning ownership, mandatory spay/neuter for all pit bulls, mandatory microchip implants and liability insurance, or prohibiting people convicted of a felony from owning pit bulls.
In a 2012 ruling involving the mauling of a child, Maryland’s highest court held that pit bulls are “inherently dangerous”, making pit bull owners and landlords renting to tenants who own a pit bull strictly liable for any injuries caused during an attack by said pit bull.
An old friend from Trinidad sat in a bus shelter and was killed by pit bulls. He was a soft-spoken sportsman from my hometown, and I don’t think anything ever happened to the dogs or their more vicious owner.
The first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Eric Williams, once said, “When I talk, let no damn dog bark.”
All well and good for his time and for what one of my friends termed his “pothound” sycophants, but now dogs like pit bulls are bred to be silent when attacking. Fortunately, I am not. But, even so, no amount of shouting can come between a pit bull and his dinner, especially when you’re the dinner.
Recently I heard a story about something worse than the worst pit bull and I asked, “You talking Rott?” It was not a Rottweiler. According to the story, after realizing that the arms race would end the world, the United States and Russia decided to settle the Cold War with a dogfight.
Each team had five years to breed the best fighting dog in the world, and whichever side’s dog won would be entitled to dominate the world. The losing country would have to lay down its arms. The Russians found the biggest, meanest pit bull bitches in the world and bred them with the most vicious Siberian wolves.
They selected only the largest and strongest puppy from each litter and gave him all the milk. They used steroids and after five years came up with the most fearsome dog the world had ever seen. Its cage needed steel bars that were five inches thick.
Nobody could get near it. When the day came for the fight, the Americans showed up with a strange animal. It was a nine-foot long Dachshund. Everyone felt sorry for the Americans because they knew there was no way that this dog could possibly last ten seconds with the Russian dog. When the cages were opened up, the dachshund came out and wrapped itself around the outside of the ring. It had the Russian dog almost completely surrounded.
When the Russian dog leaned over to bite the dachshund’s neck, the dachshund leaned up and consumed the Russian dog in one bite. There was nothing left of the Russian dog. The Russian president came up to the Americans shaking his head in disbelief.
“We don’t understand how this could have happened. We had our best people working for five years with the meanest dogs in the world.”
“That’s nothing,” the American president replied. “We had our best plastic surgeons working for five years trying to make an alligator look like a dachshund.”
