by Janet Farricelli CPDT-KA

Created on: November 25, 2008

After moving in a new home and adopting two adorable Rottweiler puppies, I had to go through a long and unjust ordeal in order to get approved by an insurance company. As soon as the question "Do you own dogs?" arose, shortly followed "What type of breed?". As soon as I said the word "Rottweiler" they would turn me down. Welcome to the word of negative stereotyping!

This whole ordeal made me think that this was the exact equivalent of human racial stereotyping. Translated from the dog world to our human world, it was as if these insurance companies where denying coverage for people of a certain race or skin color because they were unjustly thought of committing more crime. Let this happen in the real world and you would see hundreds of protestors rallying down the streets!

But since dogs have no word on this issue, only owners may protest, but very likely a deaf ear will be tended to such issues. Perhaps because utimately, all it takes to ruin a dog breed's reputation is a newsline such as "Child mauled by Rottweiler" or "Senior attacked by Pitbull". However, for some obscure instance, when a Labrador Retriever mauls a toddler, it simply ends up forgotten because Labs are "too nice and friendly".

It is a fact, that all dogs have teeth, and that all dogs have the potential to bite. Insurance companies seem to fail to see that. They simply tend to generalize and go with the flow of thinking that some dog breeds are more vicious than others. It is a shame that these insurance companies do not further investigate. More often than not, behind an aggressive, anti-social dog there is very likely an abusive, irresponsible, owner. Dogs are very often the result of what owners make of them. Itreally does not take much to understand the concept.

Finally, back to my orderal, at last, State Farm approved my dogs and offered coverage. They told me they looked more at the biting history of a dog rather than the breed. I complimented them for being so wise. I also explained them of how biased the other insurance companies were. Other apparently breed friendly policies are All State, Eerie, Liberty Mutual and Travelers. Learn about their policies before asking coverage.

While dog bites seem the make news headlines pretty quickly, we must consider that there are other millions of dogs of the same breed with no aggressive traits. The concept can be somewhat compared to how an airline crash makes news. The fact that an airplane crashes should not make people avoid flying all together.

Also consider that small dogs tend to bite as well, and even quite often. Yet these bites are often not reported because they do little damage. Returning to the airline crash comparison, dog bites from small dogs can be compared to small airplanes crashing. Because a small ultralight aircraft causes 2-3 casualties it does not make it to the top of the media headlines as a crash of a Boeing 767 with 200 or more casualties. So in other words, a Pitbull attack has a bigger impact than a Chihuahua attack. While the intent is the same, it is the amount of damage what ultimately makes the news.

Back to the airline comparison, regardless of airline crashes, people seem to easily overcome their fear of flying because they are aware of the fact that every day milions of planes take off safely. Hopefully one day, the same principle will be applied to dogs.

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