by Regina Reavis

Created on: July 18, 2010

Vicious Dog’s

In Mississippi an 18 month old girl was attacked by a pit bull causing serious injury to her face that required stitches. This was a dog she was familiar with and was only trying to pet the dog when she was attacked. Due to incidents such as this restriction or banning of certain dog breeds like pit-bull and Rottweiler cannot happen soon enough in my opinion. Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson says that “Having a dog ordinance would be beneficial when trying to protect the public”. Unfortunately it is already too late for victims of previous vicious dog attacks. Being a pet owner I understand both sides of this debate. While I do not own a big dog, pit-bull, or any vicious dog, my heart goes out to pet owners this may affect should this law pass. But the history of these animals leaves society no other choice other than making changes to protect us.

Because of these vicious dogs I am fearful when I walk my dogs. In my neighborhood in Charlotte NC, not unlike many neighborhoods there are a lot of homes without fences. So when I am out walking the dogs I am afraid that a vicious dog may attack us. And it has happened before. Even at dog parks your dog can be attacked by these vicious dogs, we have all heard about these attacks on the evening news.

While there is a leash law in the State of North Carolina, not everyone obeys the law. This would work if people put a leash on their dog when outdoors. As we all know this is not the case. So many people have been attacked by vicious dogs that in my opinion there should already be laws in place to protect us. We should not even have to debate this. There are incident after incident of vicious dog attacks. Usually society reacts to situations that involve the harming of a child, so why is it taking so long to do something about this issue. How many more kids or people will be injured until something is done. Soon this may result in lawsuits against the State’s where this happens because people are getting fed up and no one is doing anything about it.

 Pet owners are also supposed to be pet lovers. How can you love pets and allow them to continuously be slaughtered by other vicious pets. Just like humans when you break the rules there are consequences. For humans those consequences are usually jail, or some form of punishment, you don’t just get away with it. This is exactly what vicious dogs have done, and not only to other dogs but to humans as well.  In North Carolina at Camp Legeune a military base where a child was mauled to death by a visitor of one of his neighbors pit-bull, the military has banned vicious dog breeds from anyone’s home based on military grounds, this will begin in the year 2012. For now only approved dog breeds are allowed on the base. In my opinion the rest of North Carolina should follow suit with this law, until then. What do we do? We separate them. We cannot continue to allow these dogs around in everyday society. One thing is for sure if we do we are all at risk.

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