Pit Bulls -- A Damaged Breed

Three Days, Two New York Attacks

Last Sunday, a dog-loving Long Island family rescued a two-year-old male pit bull from a shelter in Harlem.  They had followed reports on the dog and rushed to adopt him 22 minutes before his scheduled euthanasia.  

The couple and their three children drove the dog to their home.  The father took it out for a walk and then a run in the backyard.  Then he opened the back door to let the dog into the kitchen. 

"He ran inside, slid across the floor, turned around, saw my daughter and jumped for her throat," the man later told authorities.  

The father leaped to protect his teenage daughter.  He grabbed the pit bull from behind and held it in a tight chokehold. 

Believing the chokehold had rendered the dog unconscious, the man took the dog back outside and released him.  The dog attacked again. A neighbor who had heard the family's screams rushed out and opened the back gate, allowing the man to escape. 

The daughter, with bite marks on her face, throat and elbow, was taken to a hospital; her mauled lip required plastic surgery. 

Between the attack and the time police arrived, the dog rolled in the grass and responded when called -- as if the attack never happened, the father said later.

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On Tuesday, a Brooklyn homeless man was attacked by a pit bull that observers identified as the pet of another homeless man who lived in the area.  (Maybe if you're homeless, having a pit bull offers a feeling of security.)

At about 1 p.m., the dog sank its teeth into the vagrant and wouldn’t let go.

“He was bleeding a lot and screaming,” said the off-duty Correction Department officer who rushed in to help.  “I tried to get (the dog) off the guy by pushing the dog and kicking him, but he wouldn’t let go. He had a tight lock on the guy’s chin and he wouldn’t let go.”

After trying futilely to fight off the dog for about a minute, the officer shot the dog in the head with his personal (and legally carried) 9mm pistol.  Even after the shooting killed the dog, it took several minutes to pry apart its jaws and help the bleeding man. 

Pit Bulls in the City

Many people say pit bulls are wonderful, caring dogs, ideal for family life.  My guess is that these are dogs raised lovingly from birth, instilled with trust and affectionate toward their owners.

Then there are the other pit bulls.

The ASPCA says this:  "Pit bulls can attract the worst kind of dog owners—people who are only interested in these dogs for fighting or protection. While pit bulls were once considered especially non-aggressive to people, their reputation has changed, thanks to unscrupulous breeders and irresponsible owners. And because the pit bull population has increased so rapidly, shelters now struggle to deal with an overflow of image-plagued, hard-to-place dogs."

An international organization dedicated to the breed has a chapter whose website (pitbull.rescueme.org/NewYork) currently advertises 200 pit bulls available for adoption around the state.

What has been revealed this summer is that a certain number of homeless people in New York City own pit bulls.  My guess is that their dogs were worn out or injured animals that fight-dog breeders no longer wanted.  Can you imagine an animal rescue group giving a pit bull to a vagrant who has no home, no steady access to dog food and no leash?

In the last year, police have shut down feral dog-breeding operations in New Jersey, the Bronx, Long Island, Seattle and Louisiana, among others.  It is likely that many other breeders still are busy.  For a small, twisted sector of the human population, watching dogs try to kill each other constitutes entertainment.

The good thing about these busts is that the dogs are freed.  The bad thing is that many of them are badly raised animals whom people are frightened to take into their homes.

An anti-pit bull website, thetruthaboutpitbulls.blogspot.com, quotes a veterinary professor who estimates that less than five percent of American dogs are pit bulls, but that pit bulls account for more than 60 percent of dog attack fatalities. 

I don't have a grand solution for this sad situation, but I would be willing at least to donate to an organization that provided leashes for urban dogs owned by homeless people.

Crusty Pit Bulls of New York

At 8 a.m. on August 1, a photographer was walking her pug in New York's East Village neighborhood when a large, unleashed pit bull barrelled off a couch that was sitting on the sidewalk and attacked her smaller dog, biting it in the throat.  


“People were bashing the dog on his head with a stick,” she said. “Someone screamed to me, ‘Grab the balls!’ and I squeezed that dog’s balls as hard as I could. He didn’t let go. I tried to pick up his legs, which I was told you’re supposed to do."

The woman's dog was taken to a veterinary hospital where it died the next day.

The dog's owner later was identified as a Crust Punk, an unusual creature himself. 


Crust Punks

Crust punks, also known as crusty travelers, are a group of voluntarily homeless people who gather each year to spend the warmer months in East Greenwich Village.  They sleep on sidewalks and gather in Washington Square Park and also Tompkins Square Park, which has a popular dog run.   

A neighborhood paper, The Villager, has published many informative reports on the clan.  It has argued for some police enforcement, given the voluntary nature of their settlement and their competition with involuntarily homeless people seeking money from passersby.  In addition, photos and bios of individual crusties can be found on a several-year-old website called crustypunks.blogspot.com.

Here are a few crusties photos: 

The crusties got their name from the stiff appearance of their unlaundered apparel.  (They are reported to use the perhaps pejorative name to describe themselves.) They are said to gravitate to animal ownership because they believe that animals, like humans, should live outdoors.

It may be that crusties cannot pass the scrutiny of animal rescue organizations -- these people are homeless, after all -- and so are more likely to end up owning pit bulls with unfortunate backgrounds.

Futher Attacks

At midday four days after the first attack, another pit bull lunged from its place near two dozing or drugged men on the sidewalk and ran toward a man who was walking his dog 40 or more feet away.   

“That dog saw my dog," said the man.  "He wasn’t on a leash. I picked up my dog. When he jumped up and bit me, it was like it was in slow motion. He got a chunk of my arm. It was brutal. It wasn’t a nip — he bit through my arm,” the owner said.  

The man required many stitches to repair his tricep and several days in the hospital.  Doctors have told him to expect permanent nerve damage in the arm.

After this second pit bull attack was reported, another East Village man came forward to say that he too had been bit on the arm by a vagrant's pit bull just nine hours earlier than that occurrence.  He said the attacking dog also was an unleashed crust punk pet.  He was annoyed to learn from police that dog owners faced no criminal consequences for their pets' misbehaviors. He was told that his only recourse was to file a civil complaint, which would be a challenge if the defendant were homeless.

The man has lived in the East Village for many years and said he has observed crust punks for at least 10 summers now.  Lately, at least, he is finding them annoying.

"First of all, the crust punks aren't homeless," he said. "They are like vacationers camping on my street." Still, "If you choose to be homeless, you shouldn't be able to have a dog unless you take care of it properly. The problem is that these dogs aren't fixed, and they're not on leashes."

One crusty traveler's dog appears to be responsible for two of the above attacks. Here is a picture that The Villager pulled from the dog owner's facebook page.

Natas

Natas (Satan spelled backwards) was trying to calm his dog, a friend told a reporter, “but he’s only had him for a month. My friend John’s girlfriend took the dog and gave it to Natas because it was very mistreated.

“People have to understand -- when we get ’em, they’re not in the best condition,” he said of the pit bulls. “It’s like someone getting out of a mental institution — you have to re-acclimate to society.”

Unfortunately, Natas himself died at the end of August.  No word on what happened to him or to his dog, Jax.


After reports of the summer pit bull attacks in the East Village, three other dog owners came forward to say their pets had been attacked by pit bulls at the Tompkins Square dog run.  Some owners are reported now to be carrying knives for protection or avoiding the area altogether.

Cheaters, Cheaters Everywhere

At the risk of sounding judgmental (the greatest secular sin of our times), I'm going to share a little story.

I had made an appointment for a carpet cleaning company to send a worker out this morning to shampoo the downstairs rugs.

When the fellow arrived, I told him I would like him also to clean a stairway carpet that had accumulated a few spots.

"Okay," he said.  "That will be between you and me."

(Translation: "You will pay me cash for the extra work, and I won't report it to my boss.")

"No," I said.  "You have to put all your work on the bill." I find myself saying things like this a lot these days.

He didn't put up a fight.  He cleaned the carpets and wrote up a receipt for everything he had done. I paid him, and he left.

I don't think this guy thought he was doing anything wrong.  Effectively, he was proposing to use his employer's equipment -- and time that his employer was paying for -- to cut a side deal for himself.  

He's happy to steal from the person who gave him a job.  He's a thief. 

Am I the only one who finds this disturbing?

The Next Big Roller Coaster

New Jersey opened the Labor Day Weekend with yet another fabulous roller coaster ride. It is called El Diablo and has a big cute devil statue (below) near its opening run. 

The location is the Six Flags park in Jackson, New Jersey.  

(Six Flags built its first park in Arlington, TX, and named it after the six flags that had flown over the Lone Star state:  Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America.  Now there are almost 20 Six Flags parks in North American, and almost nobody remembers the origins of the name.)  

Anyway, back to the new entertainment.  

According to the Six Flags people: 

      "El Diablo is an utterly unique seven story tall looping steel coaster which towers 

      over the Plaza del Carnaval section of the park.

       "You’ll face off against other riders in specially designed seats which bolt up and 
       back the looped track like a pendulum, higher and higher until you’re suspended
       completely upside down in mid-air!

       "Then El Diablo gains enough momentum to soar through a full 360 degree loop, 
       again and again and again! The steel beast can even change directions, 
       halfway through the loop!"

Sounds great if you are a roller coaster enthusiast. The ride opened a couple days ago, and already many people have posted twitter videos of their experiences.

Here is a general image of El Diablo.

As regular readers may recall, I am not a fan of fancy roller coasters or other crowded entertainments.  While my home is in New Jersey, I have yet to attend a concert of either Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen, each of whom is popular in the state and featured regularly on the playlist at my local gym.  

But when I read of this weekend's opening of the El Diablo coaster, I thought, why not give it try? 

I consulted the Significant Other and the younger person.  Alas, the only result was an unfortunate series of recollections of allegedly comparable experiences travelling in cars when I have been behind the wheel.

Gentle readers, here is your alternative:  Drop by my home on grocery day, or spend many hours and dollars traveling to Jackson, N.J. to ride El Diablo.

Scofflaw City

Here is a picture of two traffic signs in my town.  The one I want to discuss is the lower one that shows a left-turn with a red slash through it.

A left turn at this spot is a quick way to get from a major street to a popular grocery store.  The alternative is to travel another quarter mile down the road to a busy traffic signal, then make a u-turn and drive back to enter the parking lot from the other side of the road. 

For years now, I have taken a left turn at this juncture because it is more convenient.

Several weeks ago, when the younger person was in town for the weekend, we drove to the grocery store.  

"Turn left here," I told him.

"You mean in front of the no-left-turn sign?" he asked.

Suddenly I saw the sign with new eyes.  I had never noticed it before.

Later I went down to our police department and had a conversation with the desk sergeant.

"Have I been breaking the law all these years?" I asked.

"No," he said.  "That sign was put up four or five months ago.  You've only been breaking the law since last spring."

What a relief.

I went back to the scene with my point-and-shoot camera.  Here is what I saw.

Taking these shots took about three minutes.  (There actually are five more such pictures, but they are pretty darn blurry and I think I have made my point.)

There is an old question:  If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a noise?

This, I believe, is a similar conundrum:  If the police department puts up a new traffic sign and nobody sees it, is it really there?

For friends in my town, I offer this as a warning.  

A Public Service Warning: Passports

If you have a passport and you think you know its expiration date, think again.

A friend of mine, born in St. Petersburg and now a U.S. citizen, planned a trip this summer to Turkey and Greece.  Her family planned to return on August 13.  Her passport expired on August 29.  Naturally, she did not expect problems.

To her surprise, she was denied approval to travel because her passport's expiration date was less than six months after her planned date of return.  Her husband and son left without her while she traveled instead to Philadelphia to get a new passport.  

She missed Istanbul.  (Nobody should miss Istanbul.)  Plus, it cost a small fortune to rebook her air tickets.

Apparently travel guide books are making this known, but it is not broadly circulated in our country because US officials actually respect the dates on US passports.

The general caution:  "Many countries will not grant entry if your passport expires within six months. Other countries will only allow entry if your passport is valid for the entire length of your visa, which can range up to 90 days and beyond. Check with the State Department to find passport deadline rules for different countries. The general rule is to renew your passport before it is six months from expiration."

Words don't always mean what they seem to mean, alas.  

My advice:  Check your passport's expiration date now. 

Ankle Boots

One trending item in wardrobes this fall seems to be the ankle boot.  Most are shown with low heels, but there are high-heeled versions and, of course, some wedge varieties that resemble the unfortunate wedge sneakers that were so popular a few years back.

I saw many young women in ankle boots last winter in Los Angeles.  In my experience, the looks these girls adopt go national not long after.  So I'm betting ankle boots, mostly in ever-popular black, will be big sellers this fall and winter. 

The model above is from Louis Vuitton, and it is expensive, more than $1,400.  Fortunately, designers and retailers are featuring the look at many price levels.  Some examples are below.

Michael Kors

Cole Haan

Prada 

(This boot, with its elastic side panels, is technically a Chelsea boot and is reminiscent of a style made famous in the 1960s by the Beatles.  Chelsea boots are being shown this fall in styles for men and women.)

Tabitha Simmons 

Target