Pit bulls: vicious or victims?

Sara Meehan has seen the reports of pit bull attacks and calls in some areas for pit bull bans.

She thinks the breed has gotten a bad rap.

“They’re great family pets,” she says. “I have never had a problem.”

She backs up her talk with action. Meehan operates the nonprofit Misunderstood Pit Bull Rescue, which takes in “ambassadors” of the breed from shelters and adopts them out. And, the single mother with a 1-year-old son currently shares her Richmond home with 13 pit bulls. Three of them are hers; the others are orphans, several of them puppies from a recent litter.

Meehan brings orphan pit bulls to the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA every third Sunday in an effort to put them into good homes. She also conducts a “parenting” class for owners of pit bulls. Recent attendance has petered out, though, she says.

And that’s not good, she says, as she and others believe the problem is not with pit bulls, or any other particular breed of dog, but with the owners and the public’s perception.

“Our dogs obviously have a bad name,” she says. But “they’re just like any other dog; it’s just them being in the wrong hands. … What we think is crucial to changing the image is educating owners on how to be responsible pit bull owners.”

Albemarle Sgt. Pete Mainzer, who oversees the police department’s animal control office, agrees with Meehan.

“Is there any correlation between dog attacks and a particular breed? We have not been able to show that,” he says. “We tend to think that the pit bulls do get a bad rap. A lot of what happens is because of the owner. … Any dog can be aggressive if you don’t treat it properly.”

Meehan wants to bring the pit bull back to what she says is its rightful place as a beloved American pet. In the early days of this country, she says pit bulls were used to herd cattle and kept as “nanny dogs,” because they could withstand the poking and prodding of children. She says pit bulls were even put on posters touting them as America’s dogs.

“Now, when people look at them, they’re scared,” she says.

Her quest to repair the pit bull name is a tall order.

The city of Denver has a pit bull ban, for instance. Locally, statewide and nationally their reputation as vicious dogs has snowballed in recent years, and the Michael Vick dog-fighting saga took it to a new level. Other incidents have taken a toll, too.

In the Charlottesville area there have been incidents involving pit bulls. In February 2007, two pit bulls attacked and seriously injured a Charlottesville woman as she walked along a Nelson County road. The owner of the dogs, Eric F. Johnson, pleaded guilty to a felony and was sentenced to six months in jail. He also was ordered to pay $8,400 in medical expenses and faces a $1 million lawsuit. In May, an elderly woman’s Pomeranian was killed by what witnesses said was a pit bull in the Woodlake neighborhood in Albemarle. The attacking dog could not be identified, so no charges were filed, said Mainzer.

After three pit bulls killed an elderly Spotsylvania County woman and her dog in 2005, legislators passed a vicious dog bill, which significantly increased punishment for owners of dogs that attack people. The state also has created a dangerous dog registry. Currently there are only three dogs listed on the registry in the Charlottesville area — all of them are pit bulls.

Perhaps most damning is an extensive list compiled by Merritt Clifton of Animal People, an anti-animal cruelty publication in Clinton, Wash. In his list, which used media accounts of dog attacks in the United States from 1982 to 2006, pit bulls were the culprits in more than half of the 2,209 incidents, at 1,110. Rottweilers were a distant second, at 409 attacks.

Meehan says media coverage, misidentification of attacking dogs and skewed bite reports have played a role in how pit bulls are seen.

She points out a Web site (http://www.atts.org) that lists dog breed temperament from specific testing, and pit bulls passed at an 84.3 percent clip, better than Chihuahuas (70.3 percent), Jack Russell terriers (82.1 percent) and miniature poodles (76.6 percent).

While pit bulls obviously can do much more damage than any of those smaller dogs, Meehan believes many attacks or bites by other dog breeds aren’t reported, whereas a pit bull bite will garner a report every time.

On top of that, she and Mainzer think a small portion of pit bull owners, who raise them to be vicious, give the majority a bad name.

The bad dog owners are similar to a saying in law enforcement, Mainzer says: “Ninety percent of crime is committed by 10 percent of the people.”

Meehan hopes her work will change perception and reality. So far she has adopted out 103 pit bulls, all of which she and other volunteers “temperament test.” But she has some extra pit bulls at home she’d like to move.

The next local SPCA pit bull adoption event and class is scheduled for 1 to 4 p.m. July 20.