Watertown Wisconsin is considering creating an ordinance that would single out pit bull type dogs as dangerous by default. City officials cite the increase in number of dog bites and attacks as the reason for the proposed changes. “Pit bulls” are said to be the primary culprits.
Data from the city tells a different story. In an article published by the Watertown Daily Times the data is shown but the whole story presented by the data is excluded.
“There were 1,831 dogs registered with the city in 2012, according to the dog report completed by the police. The most popular dog in the city was the labrador retriever with 315 reported, followed by the shih tzu with 118, followed by the golden retriever with 113. There were 44 pit bulls registered in the city in 2012.
According to the report, 78 dog bites to humans were reported between Jan. 1, 2010 and Aug. of 2012. Pit bulls were involved in 19 percent of bites, mixed breed or others were involved in 18 percent, unknown breeds in 17 percent, labrador retrievers in 8 percent and cocker spaniels in 8 percent.”
This data leaves out the number of unregistered dogs, which is usually the majority of dogs in a municipality. Also missing is whether the biting dogs were registered but most importantly is the context of the numbers. 19% of bites in this case is roughly 15 bites in a 17 month period, spanned over whatever various mixes of dogs were considered to be pit bulls. While any dog bite is unacceptable from a community safety standard, addressing a minority of bites with an ordinance will not reduce the real factors involved in dog bites.
If one type of dog were to be singled out the remaining 81% of bites would have virtually nothing done about them.
Residents and locals: Reach out now to your officials to stress the importance of breed neutral as a better path to public safety. 100% of bites need to be addressed. A committee meeting will be held Wednesday Feb. 13th at 5:00 in room 2044 at Watertown City Hall, 106 Jones Street. Please attend the meeting if at all possible, or you can contact you aldermen here.
Fred M. Kray
krisdiaz9
Stop BSL 
BSL does not work. It just puts families out of homes, forces them to lose a member of their family and the number of dog bites doesn’t really go down. BSL is just like racism, judging a living being ONLY based on the way it looks. Is that what we have come to? If only some people knew the love of a pit bull….how sad.
Ban the *real* bullies…the thug owners.
How about stricter laws for people. So the dogs arent being fought or abused.
BSL is the Watertown (Wisconsin USA) Public Safety Commission’s incompetent response to specific IRRESPONSIBLE owners of multiple UNLICENSED “pit bulls” in town who were REPEAT offenders because Watertown DID NOT HAVE ADEQUATE DANGEROUS DOG LAWS in place at the time. If they had, the problem would have been effectively solved after the FIRST offense and the number of “pit bull” bites would have been greatly reduced. Also note that they do not add those unregistered pit bulls to the TOTAL number of “pit bulls” in Watertown. The report leaves BOTH important facts out and is therefore deceptively making it appear that the “pit bull” attacks were UNRELATED. They need to add “__ different dogs and __ different owners were involved in the __ pit bull bites.” This is an overt indication that there are prejudicial anti-pit-bull bigots not interested in objectively analyzing the problem but rather in presenting misleading data to garner support for their personal hidden hateful agenda. “Punish the many for the sins of a few.”
Here is the follow-up article on the meeting flooded with pit bull advocates: http://www.wdtimes.com/news/article_bf0004fe-76c9-11e2-b09d-001a4bcf887a.html
Watertown Public Safety Commission:
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Mark Kuehl- markk@wdtimes.com
Fred Smith- wccpastor@charter.net
Patrick Bleske- alderman5dist@hotmail.com
Robert Stocks- sarah.stocks@att.net
Facebook Pages:
https://www.facebook.com/NoWatertownBSL
https://www.facebook.com/WatertownForResponsibleDogOwnership
Watertown “pit bull” owners as well as ALL Wisconsin dog lovers THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!