A recent pit bull attack that sent a child to hospital has some residents calling on the City of Flin Flon to ban that breed of dog within municipal limits.
Police said a pit bull and another dog attacked an eight-year-old girl on Queen Street last month, requiring her to be flown to Winnipeg for treatment. She has since returned.
“I’m finding that because [pit bulls] are so unpredictable, is it reasonable that they should be within the city limits?” said Flin Flon resident Angela Simpson, herself the victim of a dog attack.
Simpson, who was hospitalized by a different breed of dog last year, said there is local support for a pit bull ban.
“Lots of people can’t understand why owners want them. I’ve heard that comment more often than not,” she said. “It’s just such an unpredictable thing when [an attack] happens and I don’t know how you can tell when and if it’s going to happen. I don’t know how anybody can gauge that. That’s the scary part.”
On Queen Street, where last month’s attack occurred, two parents unrelated to the victim told The Reminder they would strongly support a pit bull ban. Neither parent wanted their name published for fear of being ostracized by animal lovers.
“It appears that the dog attacks I read about involve pit bulls mostly,” said one of the parents. “I think they should be banned… I think there’s no need for that breed in Flin Flon.”
Mayor Cal Huntley said city council has not considered a breed-specific dog ban. He urges residents with any type of animal to take ownership requirements seriously.
“It becomes abundantly clear that the requirements regarding dog ownership are a very real and significant responsibility,” Huntley said.
“Pets need to be managed,” Huntley said. “They need to be leashed when walking and properly constrained when on their own property to eliminate any opportunity for this kind of incident to happen.”
One of the Queen Street parents said the problem with dogs in Flin Flon goes beyond any one breed.
“There’s huge dogs and even small dogs roaming all hours of the day and night,” said the parent. “Owners need to be held responsible.”
That sentiment is not uncommon. Though unscientific, an online Reminder poll conducted earlier this month asked residents whether aggressive, free-roaming dogs are a problem in Flin Flon. Of 49 respondents, more than half, 53 per cent, agreed they are.
That said, reported dog attacks are rare in the community – and those involving pit bulls are ever rarer.
Flin Flon RCMP say that for the period of Jan. 1, 2011 to April 12, 2016, three dog attacks were reported. Of those, only last month’s incident on Queen Street involved a pit bull.
The 2015 attack against Simpson involved a bulldog on Centennial Crescent. In 2014, a German shepherd was involved in an attack at Aspen Grove.
Nevertheless, pit bulls are behind a large percentage of dog attacks. In a pro-pit-bull ban editorial last year, the National Post’s Barbara Kay wrote that 70 per cent of dogbite-related fatalities and “extreme damage to humans” involve pit bull type dogs.
Banpitbulls.org advocates the breed be banned across Canada and the US. The website lists a number of Canadian communities that ban pit bulls, including The Pas, Winnipeg and, with some exceptions, the entire province of Ontario.
Are breed-specific bans effective in reducing dog attacks? The answer is not clear.
The Calgary Herald cites a 2012 University of Manitoba study that found a decrease in hospitalizations caused by dog bites in 16 regions of the province that had enacted breed-specific legislation.
But a 2010 Toronto Humane Society study showed Ontario’s pit bull ban did not significantly decrease the number of reported dog bites in the province, according to a Toronto Star opinion piece by pit-bull advocate Cheri DiNovo.
She further wrote that the White House came out against breed-specific legislation in 2013, citing 20 years of research from the Centres for Disease Control showing that bans based on breeds are largely useless.
DiNovo concluded her commentary with a quote from the man known as the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan: “First it was the German shepherd, then the Doberman, and then the Rottweiler – when will we start looking at the human owner’s behaviour?”
Asked what she would say to pit bull owners who view a breed-specific ban as discriminatory, Simpson said it comes down to risk.
“Do you want to take the risk and have [an attack] happen to any individual?” she said. “Is it worth the risk of having anybody go through that? To me as an individual, is it worth me loving that breed so much that I’m willing to take that risk?”
Simpson said that while she was in hospital recovering from her attack last year, she learned of a pit bull attack in another community that proved fatal.
“People should be regarded first,” she said.
