Relief

In a way, I am relieved that this story ended the way it did.

When a pit bull kills a child, "all of us want to find a person who is responsible and to hold them accountable," Hennepin County District Judge Kevin Burke said Friday.
But Burke decided that Zachary King Sr. was not guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of his son "Zack Jr." from a pit bull attack in the family home last August.

I say in a way because I am torn. What Mr. King Sr. did (keeping a dog he knew to be dangerous around his kids) was so excruciatingly stupid...but to put a man on trial for manslaughter for this....I just think losing his child and then going on trial for it was probably punishment enough. Keeping an unsocialized intact male dog with no training of any size or breed in the same home with small children and a breeding female is a recipe for disaster.

Last summer, we brought Captain Jack home. Jack is a mini-Australian Shepard - a herding breed. His instinct is to chase his "sheep" and nip them in the heels in order to get them moving. He nip, people react, the action is reinforced. Because he is an "intact" dog, he has that aggressive male nature that is necessary for survival of the species if he were in the wild. We are not, so we are working very hard to train that instinct out of him! We do NOT lock him up in a damp dark basement with no contact other than at meal time...and that is exactly what Mr. King did to his dog.

Which in a way speaks back to what I had been saying during the initial course of the BSL debate here in Minnesota....ANY breed can become "mean" given the proper set of circumstances. No training and no socialization is a guarantee for a bad dog....whether it is a little ankle biter or a 200 pound Great Dane.