It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's ... Not a Rottie
Breed bias and BSL are not limited to uninformed politicians. Alas, they can raise their ugly heads in some pretty surprising, and disturbing, places in the private sector as well. Apartment complexes, campgrounds, insurance companies, examples of excluding owners of certain breeds have cropped up in all of these. But imagine the shock felt in the dog world when, back in August, American Airlines suddenly announced that it would shortly be implementing a major ban on the dog breeds that it would transport.
As of September 16, 2002, the airline has refused to carry Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, American Staffordshire Terriers, Bull Terriers, American Pit Bull Terriers, and any dog deemed to be a mix of one of these breeds. The only exceptions to the ban are service dogs, documented search and rescue dogs, documented bomb or drug detection dogs, or puppies between 8 and 12 weeks of age.
The "reasoning" for such a sweeping ban apparently lies in an incident, which happened earlier in the year. During a routine flight, a half grown APBT pup somehow escaped from its crate and caused quite a bit of damage. It managed to even chew through wires that controlled the plane's air temperature. Although the company says the plane was never in any actual danger of crashing, it did make an emergency landing to find out what was causing the problem.
The airline decided to act, citing the protection of both their workers and the traveling public as their goal. However, instead of researching how the pet crate involved failed to contain the dog, the airline chose instead to initiate a sweeping breed ban.
Now I certainly am not trying to make light of the issue of making travel safer. In fact, I find it very scary that a dog loose in the cargo hold could possibly do enough damage to the workings of a plane to cause that plane to make an emergency landing. But what I do take issue with is American Airlines' way of addressing the incident. In fact, AA's approach to the problem is a classic example of how useless and discriminatory breed bans can be.
In the first place, if AA wants to target the breed of dog that caused the incident, then why include four other breeds and their mixes in the ban? What do all the Rotties or Dobermans in the country have to do with an APBT puppy getting loose on a plane? Surely American Airlines doesn't believe the incident was some type of canine master plot.
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