This is a letter sent in response to an article by Kathy
Guillermo.
To: oped@newsday.com
From: Steve Stone <sstone@pvtnetworks.net>
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
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