All bark and no bite
First, dogs; now roosters: It's turning out to be a tough summer for unpopular animals in Massachusetts.
The West Stockbridge Planning Board voted Monday night to banish Hawk, a Rhode Island Red rooster, from Amy Loveless's backyard. The neighbors say the rooster just makes too much noise.
You might think that people who choose to live in a rural town would be familiar with the natural vocal habits of roosters, but the keeping of poultry does require a special permit, and board members do want to be responsive to their constituents, so Hawk will have to go.
The ruling followed less than a week after the Boston City Council voted to muzzle all pit bulls within the city limits. The councilors say the dogs are just too aggressive.
You might think that people who choose to let their dogs roam and bite passersby would be prosecuted for violating existing state laws and municipal ordinances, but politicians know how to exploit hysteria, so yesterday Mayor Thomas M. Menino signed a new law for pit bull owners to ignore.
Silencing roosters and muzzling dogs are not the most important public policy decisions that local elected officials will make this summer. They might even be the silliest.
It is easy enough to mock opponents of Boston's new pit bull ordinance, including the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as antidiscrimination zealots ranting about "breed profiling."
But it is the supporters of this ordinance who are responding to a serious public safety issue with a knee-jerk solution that is guaranteed to fail.
The information distributed by the animal control office charged with enforcing the law contradicts its very premise, that pit bulls are inherently dangerous. "In general," says the website of Boston Animal Control, "pit bulls can make wonderful companions to people. Pit bulls are very loyal animals and, if trained properly, can have wonderful temperaments and even make wonderful family pets. It is when they fall into the wrong hands that they can be turned into killing machines."
Do we think that drug dealers who use pit bulls to menace delinquent customers and so-called sportsmen who train them to kill in illegal dog fights dutifully license and vaccinate their pets, walk them on a leash, and clean up after them in compliance with the city's pooper-scooper law?
Why, then, should we assume that they will follow new rules requiring them to neuter their dogs, muzzle them in public, and post notice of the presence of a pit bull on their property? Why shouldn't we assume, instead, that they will ignore these regulations, too, or simply transfer their loyalty to equally trainable German shepherds, Rottweilers, or Doberman pinschers?
In recent incidents involving threatening pit pulls that led to the ordinance, none involved an animal that was being restrained properly by its owner.
In Boston on Monday, police shot and killed a dog that charged at them from a porch.
In Leominster, on the same day, police shot and killed a pit bull that lunged at them from a parked car. Police had stopped the car to arrest the driver for operating under the influence of alcohol. Think he was a responsible pet owner?
Pit bulls trained to be aggressive by lax or criminally minded owners are responsible for too many dog bites. So are all dogs that were not socialized in their first 14 weeks of life, unneutered males, and family pets that have never been trained to obey. Let's muzzle them all.
My own 9-year-old mini schnauzer lost his eyesight to diabetes a few weeks ago. He is a menace to small children -- he walks into them -- and a fright to dinner guests -- he barks loudly at anyone who makes noise.
I could keep him on a leash and out of the dining room. Or, maybe, there ought to be a law.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
