Pit Bull Attack: It's Not About Leashes

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

A  dog lover brings her tiny, lovable pet to the beach. Suddenly, without warning, a pit bull rockets on the scene and rips the little dog to pieces.

Happens a lot around here. Most recently, on Sunday. That’s when Nakita Young brought her children and her 8-pound Yorkie-Shih Tzu mix, “King,” to Virginia Beach. Young had her pup on a leash but an unleashed pit bull killed him at 31st Street in front of his owner and nauseated onlookers.

"He just wouldn’t let up," Young told The Virginian-Pilot. "He just locked his jaws on him.”

The killer dog was caught several blocks away by Virginia Beach police and he’s in custody of animal control, while authorities decide the next step.

I’ll make it easy for these dithering bureaucrats: Kill the damn dog. Today. No second chances.

He’s a proven public safety menace. 

We were lucky it wasn’t a kid who was savaged by this bloodthirsty beast.

My feelings about pit bulls are well known. And despite the witless bloviating that’s sure to follow by people who like this breed and claim the dogs are just sweet little love bunnies, it’s based in fact.

More than 66% of fatalities by dog bites over the past 14 years came from pit bulls and pit bull mixes.

Yes, I know. Cocker spaniels are the dogs most likely to bite you. But they aren’t killers.

All dogs bite. Few kill.

Right on cue, as soon as the story about King’s violent death hit the news, apologists for the breed jumped on social media to blame the breeder, the owner and the city for not having leash laws on the beach. (And they also blamed King’s owner for bringing the dog on the beach when dogs are banned after Memorial Day. She hadn’t seen the sign. Who cares? This could have happened anywhere. Any time.)

Pit bull owners are terrified of a ban on their dogs. More than 900 American localities either ban pit bulls or require them to be sterilized. Sensible people from San Bernardino County, CA to Prince George’s County, MD to Miami-Dade County, FL have enacted ordinances to protect their citizens from these dogs

How much longer must Virginians have to listen to people dissemble about pit bulls before we do what sensible people in scores of cities have done: Ban the freaking breed.

By the way, pit bulls are not allowed in military housing. If the Marines are afraid of these animals, we all should be.

Fatal attacks on people are covered by the media, of course. Attacks on pets, like “King,” rarely make the news. 

In 2014, I wrote about a little dog name Stoley who was shredded by pit bulls on Chick’s Beach.

By then, I was well acquainted with pit bulls.

I first wrote about this muscular, unpredictable breed in 2001 when a family love bunny in Great Neck Meadows chewed his way through a garage door to attack an 11-year-old girl shooting hoops in her driveway. A neighbor saved the girl’s life by beating the savage animal into submission with a pail.

In 2005 I wrote about Dorothy Sullivan, an 82-year-old Spotsylvania woman who was fatally shredded by a pack of marauding pit bulls.

 That same year I wrote about a Suffolk toddler who was killed by the family’s pit bull mix. 

In 2016 I wrote about the Hertford County, NC woman who was killed by her own gentle-as-a-kitten pit bull.

In June of 2017 I wrote about the 90-year-old Virginia Beach woman who was disemboweled and had most of one arm chewed off by her daughter’s newly adopted pit bull. She died hours later.

In December of 2017, I wrote about the 22-year-old pit bull owner in Goochland who was ripped apart by her sweet pets.

Between sordid tales of human carnage, I try to write about family pets mauled to death by pit bulls. They’re the most frequent victims of this vicious breed.

This is another one of those stories. The ending is always the same.

Tragic.