Breed Specific Legislation (BSL)

To: oped@newsday.com

From: Steve Stone

Subject: Kathy Guillermo's Dog Article

TREAT THE DISEASE, NOT THE SYMPTOM

Kathy Guillermo's February 12, 2001, op-ed piece titled "Ban the Breeding of Fighting Dogs" makes me enormously grateful that Ms. Guillermo is not my personal physician, for Dr. Guillermo would spend her time and lots of my money treating my symptoms while the disease raged on and my health deteriorated.

Ms. Guillermo seems unable to realize that the United States is experiencing an owner problem, not a dog problem.

Her lack of doggy perspicacity radiates from her unsavvy op-ed piece which is little more than a pastiche of unsubstantiated anecdotes that portray pitbulls, bullmastiffs, Presa Canarios, and others as culprits whereas she should have shown their irresponsible and sometimes criminal owners as the real villains .

The nation really does need new and stricter legislation - effectively enforced - that will hold urban and suburban owners strictly responsible for damages and/or injuries that their canines inflict, irrespective of breed. If the dogs involved are unconfined or off-leash, fines should be tripled.

Ms. Guillermo fails to mention that dog attacks against humans by non-fighting breeds have become ascendant in recent years, and unless one wishes to keep adding more and more breeds to her "proscribed list" until eventually all breeds will be banned, discriminating against the breeds she mentioned is nothing more than an exercise in futility.

Perhaps that is precisely her unspoken agenda.

Steve Stone