Plum Beach; Another Pit Bull Attack

Yesterday morning at Plum Beach in Brooklyn, we saw two loose dogs more or less accompanied by their owners. Here they are.

Attack in New Jersey by a pit bull, apparently unleashed because the owner “heard the attack” and intervened. Read all about it. As reported here ,the dog was then stolen from the shelter to which the police had taken it, but the dog was recovered and the thief, apparently a friend of the owner, was arrested.

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In response to the pit bull post, our good friend and faithful commenter Surreal947 complains that she "still" doesn't understand what point we're making. The point is that in public, including in the parks, dogs should be leashed; and one reason is that--as exemplified in this post--when dogs are not leashed in the presence of strangers, by design or accident, bad things can, and often do, happen. It is almost impossible for them to happen if the dogs are leashed. That they are not reported to happen more often under the DOPR's lunatic off-leash rules is attributable to, we suspect, underreporting and the flight of most other people from dog areas of the parks during these hours.

Surreal continues "What does this one person have to do with the majority of dog owners who are good owners and neighbors?" We don't know that that statement is true; all too many dog owners, in our experience, are aggressive scofflaws. But even if it's true, it's irrelevant. Some dogs cannot be trusted near strangers, and it should not be up to the rest of us to figure out which dogs they are.

Surreal also would like us to print a shaggy dog story reported the other day about a dog who dialed 911. The story does show that dogs can make great pets. But once again, it's irrelevant. That they're great pets should not give their owners license to impose them on the rest of us.