Woo-Hoo!

While some communities continue to pass breed bans, others are wising up — Rochester Hills would be the latest.

And for that, I give a big “Woo-Hoo!!”

Rochester Hills has dealt with two attacks this year where pit bulls killed puppies; one in February and one in August. (photos are of the puppies that were killed. You can click on the photo to see our articles about them.)

Generally, that gets folks jumping all over the ban-pit-bulls-bandwagon. Local governments will usually respond by passing shortsighted breed bans to make everyone feel good.

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Breed bans are nothing more than feel-good legislation that is, on its face, a type of discrimination that gives people a false sense of safety.

A moronic and/or irresponsible owner can turn any dog into a dangerous one. And I hear all the time from anti-pit bull crowd, “But you have to admit, pit bulls cause a lot more damage when they bite than a normal dog.”

Tell that to the woman from France whose face was literally torn off by a labrador — she was the first person ever to receive a face transplant. Or tell that to anyone who has been severely injured by a dog that happens to not be a pit bull.

And what about those other breeds — you know, the ones that grow to be double the size or even larger than your average 40-lb. pit bull? What about mastiffs, Rottweilers and other breeds being exploited by bad people, like Cane Corsos, Tosa Inus, the Dogo Argentino, Presa Canarios, etc.?

No pit bull ban is going to stop your neighbor from bringing home a Cane Corso and trust me, if you think pit bulls are scary, you won’t feel safe with a Cane Corso next door either.

But the bottom line is, if your neighbor is a good, responsible dog owner, it doesn’t matter what breed of dog that person brings home — pit bull, Cane Corso or otherwise. And if your neighbor is an idiot, the opposite is true. It doesn’t matter if he brings home a lab or a pit bull, if he’s an idiot, he’ll ruin that dog.

According to our story, Rochester Hills beefs up dog rules, the city had 20 dog bites last year from 15 different breeds. Only three of the incidents involved pit bulls, and there are only 76 registered pit bulls living in the city.

But the incident with the puppy highlighted a problem with the laws already on the books.

I spoke with the reporter who wrote the story. She talked with the owner of one those puppies killed by pit bulls earlier this year.

Of the offending dogs, one was ordered to be put down. The other is still living with its owners. The owners were also ordered to pay restitution, but the puppy’s owner said it hasn’t been paid and nothing is being done to punish them for not paying.

In a way, it’s like the only one who got punished was the dog that was put down. And how fair is that when it’s the owner’s responsibility to ensure their dog is safe? Essentially, the dog is paying the penalty for the owner who didn’t do the right thing.

What Rochester Hills is working on is a way to impose tougher penalties on the owner of any dog who attacks or injures someone or someone’s pet. Kudos.

The city will look at the ordinances in other communities and a draft of the language will come back before the council at a later date.

Personally, I can’t believe the people responsible for the two pit bulls killing a puppy have been allowed to keep one of their dogs.

I’ve said this before too and I’ll say one more time:

If your pit bull or any other dog you own gets loose and kills a puppy or mauls a person, you should be banned from owning dogs — at least for like a 10-year period or something. In my opinion, you had your shot at dog ownership and you did such an incredibly bad job that other people or living beings had to suffer as a result of your stupidity and/or irresponsibility.

Simple stuff.

Dog injures firefighter in blaze

OK folks, I’ve told you all about this before and I’m here to tell you again — dogs don’t see firefighters as saviors. They don’t realize the firefighter is there to save them and in fact, they may not even recognize that the firefighter is a human.

Dressed in a bulky fire suit — the likes of which a dog has probably never seen before — a firefighter may look more like a monster than a human to a dog.

And this is on top of the dog already being incredibly fearful because its house is burning down — something else the dog doesn’t really understand but is definitely cause for intense fear — and it doesn’t have an escape route. See my earlier post about three pit bulls removed from a fire in Pontiac here.

One more thing to remember about dogs: fear drives aggression. There are different types of aggression and different things that motivate a dog to become aggressive, but fearfulness is probably the most common driving force behind aggression in dogs. Sadly, many fearful dogs who react to fear with aggression (fight rather than flight) are viewed simply as aggressive dogs — no one ever connects the dots as to why they’re becoming aggressive.

So, let’s say you have a perfectly friendly and happy-go-lucky lab who has never displayed fearfulness or aggression in his entire life. Despite his fantastic temperament, he could still attack a firefighter. Think about it — even if you are a calm, even-keeled, generally happy and friendly person all the time, wouldn’t you still be scared if your house was burning down and you couldn’t get out?

Humans understand fires and firefighters, though, so you’d have the knowledge to be grateful if you spotted a firefighter breaking through the door to save to you. Dogs don’t have this understanding. They’re scared and they’re most likely to react with aggression in such an extreme situation.

On Saturday, an Oakland County Sheriff’s deputy was bitten on both hands while rescuing a dog from a burning home in Rochester Hills. He received first aid at the scene, drove himself to a clinic for further treatment and is doing fine. Read the full story here.

It’s another example of why I keep asking you guys, “What do you think your dog would do in a fire?”

Because it would probably do just like that dog did on Saturday and bite its rescuer.

We’re lucky to have a fireman interning with us right now, so I took a few moments to chat with him about the issue.

He said firefighters are generally aware that dogs in need of rescue may be aggressive. Beware of dog signs are helpful indicators for firefighters, as are those little stickers you can buy for your window to let firefighters know a pet is inside the home.

Crating your pets while you’re away can be very helpful for firefighters. Think about it — rather than trying to pull a dog out from its hiding spot under the bed or searching for it in all corners of a smoky, dark house, they can just pick up the crate and carry it out.

A bigger issue for fireman, he said, is one that they face a lot more often than pulling pets out of fires — dealing with dogs at the scene of medical emergencies.

This is another situation where your dog is not going to be him- or herself. Even a great dog can become nervous and anxious when their owner has a medical emergency (they know something is terribly wrong) and then a bunch of strange people in strange suits with strange gear come rushing into their home.

“It’s a safety issue for us,” he told me. “We basically think, every dog is vicious and ask to have the dog put away.”

So before they start giving medical care, they make sure the homeowner has the pet secured in a different room or in its crate. Do them a favor and take care of this before the emergency medical response team arrives — they’ll get to you or your loved one a few seconds earlier and you’ll help them do that all-important job of saving lives.

I asked if he felt his department would be open to pet owners stopping by with their dog and he said he thought his fellow firefighters would be happy to accommodate someone looking to introduce their dog to firefighters.

Call ahead, arrange a time, ask for a hat or coat to be worn and most important, bring some treats for the firefighter to give to your dog! It’ll show your dog that firefighters aren’t so scary and if the day ever comes that your dog needs to be rescued, he’ll be less likely to be aggressive toward the firefighter.

Whatever we can do to make a firefighters’ life easier and less dangerous, we should. They’re the ones with the toughest job of all.

Get a free sticker for your windows from the ASPCA by clicking here.

Food trials: will it ever end?

Since the beginning of this year, Brent and I have been trying to get Sensi’s allergies under control. Since he is allergic to many types of foods, we are doing food trials to figure just what he can have and what he can’t.

A food trial is basically a process of elimination way to figure out what your dog is allergic to.

To start, you get your dog on a diet that doesn’t bother him. For us, it’s a prescription kibble we get from our veterinarian. Once the dog has been looking healthy with no signs of allergies for a while, you start a food trial by adding a specific protein — like beef, chicken, pork, etc. — and other types of foods, like grains, for one week.

The second week, you remove the additive and get the dog back to his strict prescription diet.

You watch for signs of allergies — rashes, eye discharge, increased itchiness or licking, etc.

If the dog reacts, you can safely assume that the additive caused the reaction.

Some veterinarians would prefer you pay for expensive allergy tests, which from my understanding, aren’t entirely reliable. When the skin specialists at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services recommended food trials to us years ago, I trusted them. And if I’d done a better job going through it the first time, I probably wouldn’t be doing it all over again.

But I am.

Veterinarians who prefer allergy testing will point out that it can take many, many weeks for a food product to leave your dog’s system. This is true. And because of it, if your dog does react to an additive, it can be a month or more until you can start another trial. Basically, you wait until the dog has no symptoms of allergies before starting back up.

We’re currently in waiting mode. In fact, I feel like we’ve spent so much time this year in waiting mode.

Sensi reacted to beef back in August. He cleared up by September, but around the end of September, broke out again — swollen, scratched up armpits, rash on his belly, leaky eyes and itchy to the touch.

I could not reason why he broke out. There were no adds to his diet.

For the past couple of weeks, he’s been back on antibiotics and Benadryl — antibiotics to clear up any secondary infections that moved in when the allergies brought down his immune system and Benadryl to try and stop him from scratching himself into misery.

We saw our veterinarian for Sensi’s annual visit on Friday. I finally gave in and realized Sensi would have to be permanently medicated.

“It’s been a really bad allergy season,” our veterinarian told me. “More than likely, Sensi has environmental allergies in addition to food allergies.”

I’ve tried to avoid recognizing this for a long time. I’ve tried to tell myself that the environmental stuff we can deal with through medicated shampoos and keeping him clean.

It’s not that I’m anti-medication. Medications are good to take when you need them. I just don’t love the idea of needing a medication every day.

But that’s what we’ll be doing from here on out.

It’ll be over-the-counter Loratadine, which is the main ingredient in Claritin. For my dog’s body weight, he gets two daily.

He’s doing better and our veterinarian even complimented us on how healthy he looks given the circumstances. But it’ll be a while before we can get back to food trials.

I’m really hoping the first frost dampens those outdoor allergies so we can start moving forward again. I have ground lamb in the freezer just waiting for the dog to clear up.

At the rate we’re going right now, food trials seem like a never-ending task!

Talking to a coworker the other day, I reminisced about researching pit bulls before we brought Sensi home and how I was happy to discover that pit bulls didn’t have many health problems.

“Just some potential skin issues and allergies — I thought it’d be no big deal,” I said. “Boy was I wrong.”

Another good reason to keep your dog in your yard

I spoke with the very shaken owner of an 8-year-old, 8-pound Maltese named Sunshine who was attacked by a coyote on Sunday night in the backyard of her Troy home.

I’m always a bit nervous when talking with folks about stuff that happens to their dogs.

My biggest fear is that they’ll tell me something they did as a dog owner that I’ll disagree with — like letting their dog outside without a leash because “he always sticks around” or letting their dog off-leash on a walk because “he always sticks around.”

And let me tell you something about your dogs folks — they don’t always stick around. They aren’t going to stick around when another dog walks by, they aren’t going to stick around if a rabbit runs through the yard and they may even wander off for no good reason at all. I hate the term “always sticks around.” Why not replace “always” with the truth, which is “usually, if the circumstances are right.”

Start telling people your dog “usually sticks around, if the circumstances are right” and see what kind of looks you get then. It might change your habit.

But I digress.

So here I am, talking on the phone with Patricia — she’s near tears as soon as I identify myself and the last thing I want to do is upset her by questioning her dog ownership practices. I remind myself to keep my mouth shut.

Luckily, I didn’t have to. There wasn’t a single thing Patricia was doing that didn’t get my stamp of approval.

From the video, it looks like Patricia has a pretty large, non-fenced yard. But Patricia doesn’t practice the “always sticks around” mentality and actually makes sure her dog sticks around.

She has a little chain that snaps on to the collar of her 8-pound precious pooch and keeps her tied to the house while she wanders off to piddle on the grass. Good girls — both of them.

Not only that, but Patricia stands by the doorwall to keep an eye on Sunshine while she does her business.

Such a vigilant dog owner and yet, what happened Sunday night couldn’t be prevented by all Patricia’s responsible dog ownership practices.

A coyote leapt out of the darkness just after Sunshine finished piddling, grabbed poor Sunshine around the back of her neck and — if I know canines right — probably tried doing the infamous canine death shake.

Patricia opened the doorwall, screaming in terror and the frightened coyote dropped the terrified Maltese and ran back off into the darkness. Patricia then took her injured dog to the emergency vet, where five stitches on each side of her neck were needed to seal the bite wounds.

Read the full story here and check out video below.

At this point, you’ve got to be wondering why I titled this blog the way I did since even this responsible dog owner, keeping her dog in her yard via the use of a chain, couldn’t stop a coyote attack.

Well, Patricia pointed out the first reason to me during our interview:

“Luckily, she was on a chain, because if she wasn’t, he could’ve just picked her up and brought her back into the woods,” she said.

Reason one, nailed.

Reason two — if your yard can be a dangerous place for your dog, what do you think about the rest of the world? Think it’s safer?

I’d argue that your dog’s chance of running into a coyote or another predator, like a cougar, is far greater outside of your yard than in it. After all, what is outside of your yard is pretty much their yard, right?

And if you live in an urban area and it’s nothing but a bunch of paved streets and buildings, then it may not be a cougar’s playground but it could very well be a coyote’s, and even if it’s not, then there’s still cars to worry about.

So once again, I implore everyone to keep their dogs in their yards. If you have a small dog or a cat, you should not let your pet outside unsupervised. Coyotes are all over Oakland County and they are a genuine threat to small pets.

Dogs that are about 70 pounds and bigger will ward off coyotes. In fact, I’ve been told a coyote won’t even come into a yard if it smells of a big dog.

Coyotes are generally between 25 and 35 pounds, so they’re not going to get themselves into a fight they can’t win.

Last but not least, I want to point out another thing that Patricia did right — screaming and making a commotion. If your pet or child is being attacked by a coyote, don’t just stand there and cry. Scream, yell, run toward it — it doesn’t take a whole lot to scare off a coyote, at least a normal one.

Now, if the coyote is out in the middle of the day and behaving oddly, you do have reason to stay away — rabies. Rabid animals are, well, rabid and you don’t want to get near them.

Otherwise, though, it often takes little more than your presence to scare off a coyote.

Kudos to Patricia for being such a good dog owner and here’s to hoping she and Sunshine enjoy many more happy, healthy years together!

Auburn Hills woman wins book giveaway

Congratulations to Laura from Auburn Hills, whose name was selected at random yesterday to win a free copy of the new book, "The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption" by Jim Gorant.

Thanks to everyone who read my review of the book and emailed in to be part of the giveaway.

For the rest of you, here's some information on how to purchase the book:

Buy it now
Can't wait until September 30th to find out if you won a copy of the book? I don't blame you one bit. The hardcover cost is $26. Click here to be taken to the official website. On the left hand side, find a bunch of buttons linking you to multiple websites selling the book (Amazon.com, Borders, etc.) so you can shop around and get the best deal.