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History of Fear

© Wendy Smith

When I was a college freshman, one of my English assignments was to write a persuasive essay. The topic of the essay could be anything we wanted, but the goal was to use logic and research to try to persuade the reader to agree with our opinion on that particular issue. Since my heart had been stolen by a three-month-old fluff-ball named Chelsea, it really didn’t take me very long to settle on an issue that I felt strongly about – breed specific legislation.

Breed specific legislation (BSL) is exactly what it sounds like: a law that targets specific breeds of dogs. It can be anything from declaring that all dogs of the target breed are required to wear muzzles when out in public, to demanding that owners have a certain amount of liability insurance, to even an out and out ban on the ownership of that particular breed of dog. The most common breeds targeted by BSL are “pit bull” type breeds and Rottweilers. And while the purpose of these laws is to protect the public from a perceived danger, the laws themselves are extremely misguided.

So I went digging through books and back issues of Dog Fancy magazine as I collected my data. The end result was an essay that pointed out several of the flaws in targeting specific breeds for dangerous dog legislation. The essay made quite an impact on my English professor. Before reading it, he didn’t see a problem in outlawing certain breeds of dogs. I changed his mind. While he might not have suddenly become an overnight fan of the targeted breeds, he now saw how BSL would not solve any problems and agreed.

Alas, that was in my pre-computer days, so I do not have a copy of that handwritten essay (some strange school policy that the English department had to keep all freshmen papers). I could kick myself for not making a photocopy for myself. I probably should have framed it and hung it on the wall as the most persuasive thing I’d ever written.

But all kidding aside, BSL is as much a threat now as it was back then. So perhaps it’s time that I got a little serious and started looking at that issue again. Breed specific legislature is a big topic. There is no way that I can squeeze it into one article and do it justice, unless that article was the size of “Gone With the Wind.” So let's take things one-step at a time, shall we? For the next few articles I will point out some of the main weaknesses with BSL and try to go a little into depth with them. I know that I’m basically “preaching to the choir” with most of my readers, but perhaps I can give you a few things to think about and maybe even give a few points to make if you ever have to defend your choice of dog to anyone.

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