Killing Dogs at Battersea

At Battersea Dogs and Cats Home outside of London, they are killing bull-staffie crosses left and right.  

Watch the whole video, above.  It's important and worth it.

Why is the Battersea "shelter" killing so many pit-bull type dogs? 

The short answer is because people continue to breed these dogs indiscriminately, and no one wants them in the number they are being bred.  That's as true in the U.K. as it is in the U.S.

Of course, this is not the story the Panorama TV crew started off to film!  They started off to say that these dogs were being put down because of the Dangerous Dogs Act.  And yes, they did find a few dogs that were put down merely for what they looked like.  On the main, however, they found something different:  that bull staffie crosses (i.e. pit bulls) and butcher dogs of other types (Rottweiler- and Boxer-crosses) were being bred and dumped indiscriminately in the U.K.,  same as they are in the U.S.  The dogs being put down are healthy and available, but no one wants them, and at Battersea perfectly fine dogs are coded "aggressive" just to make the whole thing a little easier to deal with

What's going on? 

What's going on is SILENCE in the pit bull and staffie community, and in the dog community in general, when it comes to the wholesale slaughter of these dogs.

Silence.  No one is talking about the FAILURE of the Pit Bull and staffie communities to spay-neuter their dogs, and as a consequence no breed is being killed as often.  Let me say it plain:

 
Silence = Death 

Look at the numbers above, which show how few Pit Bulls are neutered.  There's the Pit Bull problem -- both for the the dogs and for people.

San Francisco, which has mandatory spay-neuter for Pit Bulls has seen a steep decline in the number of Pit Bulls that are coming in to their shelters, and the numbers they are having to put down.

San Francisco appears to have found a solution. Since 2005, when the city adopted a mandatory spay-neuter law for pit bulls in the wake of the mauling death of 12-year-old Nicholas Faibish, the number of pit bulls impounded and euthanized has dropped dramatically, according to animal control officials.

"It's absolutely made a difference," said Capt. Vicky Guldbech of San Francisco's animal control department. "When I started this job, pit bulls were feared. We were afraid of them. Now when I see pit bulls in the field, they have cute wagging tails."

The shelter has seen a 25 percent decline in seized pit bulls at the shelter, and a 33 percent drop in pit bulls that are euthanized, according to animal control Director Rebecca Katz.

That's a story that the property-rights Pit Bull crowd do not mention too often.

Nor do the property-rights Pit Bull crowd talk about what happened outside of San Francisco with an un-neutered Pit Bull owned by a vocal supporter of BadRap.   Anyone want to guess what happened there?   No, it was not pretty.

But of course, the Wall of Silence remains.

We cannot talk about the nearly one million dead Pit Bulls that are killed every year in this country.

We cannot talk about the failure of the Pit Bull community to spay-neuter.

We cannot talk about the success of mandatory spay-neuter with this dog.

All we can do is bury the dead in silence, dog and human alike.

.