What Pit Bulls Can Teach us About Profiling
Published on February 19, 2009 by K9 Magazine Web Editor · 2 CommentsBy Malcolm Gladwell.
One afternoon last February, Guy Clairoux picked up his two-and-a half-year-old son, Jayden, from day care and walked him back to their house in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario. They were almost home. Jayden was straggling behind, and, as his father’s back was turned, a pit bull jumped over a back-yard fence and lunged at Jayden. “The dog had his head in its mouth and started to do this shake,” Clairoux’s wife, JoAnn Hartley, said later. As she watched in horror, two more pit bulls jumped over the fence, joining in the assault. She and Clairoux came running, and he punched the first of the dogs in the head, until it dropped Jayden, and then he threw the boy toward his mother. Hartley fell on her son, protecting him with her body. “JoAnn!” Clairoux cried out, as all three dogs descended on his wife. “Cover your neck, cover your neck.” A neighbor, sitting by her window, screamed for help. Her partner and a friend, Mario Gauthier, ran outside. A neighborhood boy grabbed his hockey stick and threw it to Gauthier. He began hitting one of the dogs over the head, until the stick broke. “They wouldn’t stop,” Gauthier said. “As soon as you’d stop, they’d attack again. I’ve never seen a dog go so crazy. They were like Tasmanian devils.” The police came. The dogs were pulled away, and the Clairouxes and one of the rescuers were taken to the hospital. Five days later, the Ontario legislature banned the ownership of pit bulls. “Just as we wouldn’t let a great white shark in a swimming pool,” the province’s attorney general, Michael Bryant, had said, “maybe we shouldn’t have these animals on the civilized streets.”
Copyright Malcolm Gladwell | Published in The New Yorker. 2006. All Rights Reserved.
If you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s books: Blink, The Tipping Point or Outliers – you ARE missing out. I defy anyone to read all three and not come away from the experienced with SERIOUS food for thought. Buy them, buy them all. I can’t recommend them enough!
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Tags: Animal Welfare, what pit bulls can teach us about profiling
WONDERFUL interview. Yay Mia! I agree whole heartedly that we need laws that make it mandatory for people to have some kind of dog training planned for thier future K9 family member no matter the breed. We also need better regulation on who is allowed to sell dogs. We have a local trader magazine here that repeatedly allows KNOWN puppy mills to advertise in their publication. Makes my blood boil! Them & pet stores (the main buyers of brokers and mills) are the contributors along with back yard breeders. its sickening. The CKC & AKC are also horrid controllers of what a breed "standard" should be. it needs to be corrected at the source. I own a beautiful well behaved level 3 obedience trained female doberman from impeccable European working lines. We worked for a CGN (Canine Good Neighbor) equivalent to the American CGC together. I adore her. Pit bulls were banned in Ontario Canada in 2006. Makes me SICK how many were put down & surrendered often NEVER having a bite record in their lives. Just because owners didnt want the hassles involved with owning grandfathered animals. Responsible owners who LOVE their 4 legged family members are effected by blanket rules for the wrong-doers in our society. I believe responsible owners outweigh the bad ones. Ban the DEED not the BREED!!!
fantastically informative article. i have always felt that the blanket ban and murder of pitbulls was more to do with money than any sence. it was the same in england when we had the bse epidemic in cattle. a vaccine existed that could have saved the cattle but it was cheaper to just shoot the lot.