BRATTLEBORO — My name appears in the first half-dozen words in the first sentence written by Jeniffer Kozlowski [“No bull,” Counterpoint, July 18], who continues, apropos of nothing, to say that “random citizens with no scientific credentials whatever” are reported in media to evolve or generate pit- bull statistics.
She continues, saying a national veterinary association says that ”[dog bite] statistics are not really statistics,” and that media reports are not accurate.
This is as if I had written that they were 100 percent accurate, whatever that can mean, or that a group of lawyers I cited who prosecuted these affronts were also wrong to some degree.
The writer does not say how accurate these statistics are, as if perhaps an American being killed by a pit bull every 30 days instead of every 21 days could be considered more satisfactory. Perhaps those bitten don't even care if the pit bulls are guard dogs or family pets, or if they have “only” 35 percent pit bull in their DNA.
This self-proclaimed “objective” reporting continues for 28 paragraphs, without quoting me at all, but as if in using my name there is some inference I am being responded to.
The only reference to anything I actually said is quoted in 18 words, 40 paragraphs later, about not blaming the police department, and the columnist approves and agrees! I hope the reader is catching the drift here.
What a shame that after this agreement I and others are challenged about a previous report published in the same newspaper:
1) “We have only his word that the dog who bit him was a 'pit bull.' What irony from Ms. Kozlowski, who doesn't trust the media, had not noticed from the previous report that this happened at the vet's! It happened in front of 10 witnesses, and it was the vet who challenged the owner and identified the dog as a pit bull.
But maybe the vet is not sufficiently an expert to identify a breed? Most people can identify a Lhasa Apso from a Collie from a Beagle or a Bassett at 100 feet, though the article asserts that it is not possible to do the same for bulldog types.
“Was there a DNA test done on the dog?” Ms. Kozlowski asks. I must ask her to believe me when I say that having been bitten, I was less concerned with breed identification and blaming as I was with the dog having rabies. There was a rabies test done, the point of which was not to blame a species of dog but to determine if I and the dog were diseased.
“We also have absolutely no idea of this dog's previous behavior, or how this dog was kept,” she writes. The vet didn't think this was important at the time, as if blaming was not in her mind either, but unprovoked attacks were. Yet the woman holding the leash had a less-than-3-year-old daughter with her, and the pit bull didn't seem like a guard dog but more a family pet, and it was definitely not a cat dressed up in a dog outfit.
Even so, regardless of the breed, the vet recommended putting it down right then, since there are no excuses for unprovoked attacks.
She then addresses “[a] situation at the local park with another alleged pit bull type dog.”
“For breed identification all we have are eyewitness accounts; we have no confirmation this dog was a pit bull,” she writes. Ms. Kozlowski now doubts my neighbor's identification and fatuously wants to see a breed certificate or some DNA data from, as I wrote before, a dog walker who ran off with the dog. We also learn that eyewitnesses are not good enough to make such identifications.
I shall certainly pass on Jeniffer Kozlowski's advice to my neighbor, whose dog was almost killed, that in the future she doesn't say “pit bull” or even “pit-bull type,” since it is apparently blaming to identify a type of dog. To her credit, my neighbor was probably not blaming pit-bull types any more than I was at the vet's, and she was probably paying more attention to getting her dog to her vet to save its life.
Somewhere after paragraph 40, my name appears yet again! This time it recommends I “get to know one of these dogs,” but isn't that what I wrote in the first place in The Commons? [“The pit-bull quandary,” Viewpoint, June 13]. That there is a local pit bull, and she is intelligent and loving.
How would Ms. Kozlowski know that I like dogs unless she read what I did write in the previous report? That sort of suppression of someone's statement doesn't seem very innocent to me.
The idea from the previous report is not to blame the dog, but to identify the dog, and a stated reason to do so is that they can do so much damage.
What does Ms. Kozlowski think were traits chosen in the breeding program for the past 60 years: to create (a) a lovable house pet, or (b) a guard dog?
Blaming is not the point, but neither is absolving or exonerating, which is to create the incredible disappearing dog.
Neither blaming nor excusing seem to be useful ways to air the issue of people's safety from dogs such as pit-bull and other types, which can do great damage and even cause death.
Neither will advance responsible community advocacy.