Pit Bull Service Dogs: They're too sensitive but they still need prong collars

The recent near-fatal mauling of Joe Finley in Chicago revealed a great deal about who runs Chicago Animal Care and Control and how it operates.

Finley's brutal attack left him without a foot or the use of his arm. In response, the CACC and the city attorney's office did exactly nothing to prosecute the irresponsible owner that let his dogs, which were known to be aggressive, run at large. Local residents and aldermen were appalled and wanted action to ensure public safety. When Alderman Fioretti raised the question of a pit bull ban, the obligatory pit bull service dog handler was trotted out to state he was afraid that his pit bull service dog would be taken away if BSL were enacted in Chicago. The service dog handler in this case was Chris Maddeford and the service dog is in fact a service dog in training from Kelly and Greg Yearwood's non-profit called Pits for Patriots which was started up less than a year ago. They started with four pit bulls and two of those washed out - one for health and one for temperament reasons.

The remaining two pit bull service dogs in training wearing prong collars.

Pits for Patriots cites as their inspiration two "successful" pit bull service dog organizations, one in New York, and one in Tampa Bay, Florida. More about that later.

News updates have come out in which Finley describes his horrific attack at length. Though he gave up on his foot long before he was finally rescued, he never lost consciousness and he never quit fighting to keep them from getting his neck.

"Finley says he wants to run again, a hobby he took up just 10 years ago. Finley says he also wants to work on erasing the mental image of the attacks. He says he replays it over and over in his head. He will be discharged from Stroger Hospital and transferred to an in-patient rehab facility in the Chicago area."

"Trauma surgeons at Stroger say during the first few days of recovery they were not sure if Finley was going to survive. One doctor describes Finley's injures as equivalent to stepping on a landmine. Doctors credit Finley's incredible physical and mental strength for his survival."

Peggy Sue Leifer left this comment on the CBS local news update:

Peggy Sue Leifer is Snicker's fur mommy. Notice she's not sending good wishes directly to Finley, she's addressing her old pal Steve Miller, the WBBM reporter who interviewed her a few weeks earlier about bringing a pit bull to Aurelia, Iowa which has a pit bull ban.

Isn't it sweet and thoughtful that she bids Miller to send the man who just nearly was killed by pit bulls the good wishes from Snickers the pit bull, too?

Peggy Sue Leifer is the wife of ex-marine, retired Chicago cop, and stroke survivor Jim Sak. They lived in Chicago until the end of 2011 when they moved to Leifer's hometown of Aurelia Iowa. The city of Aurelia had recently enacted a ban on pit bulls in response to specific public safety problems the city was facing with regards to pit bull attacks.

The city of Aurelia, IA, responding to a petition from residents, enforced the pit bull ban it has had on the books since 2008. The pit bull in question is none other than Snickers, Sak and Leifer's pit bull which they allege is Sak's service dog. And now Sak and Leifer are suing the city of Aurelia with monetary and other support from Animal Farm Foundation, a pit bull ownership advocacy group.

Two separate advocacy groups have responded to this story, pit bull advocates and advocates for equal rights for people with disabilities.

1. Pit bull ownership advocates feel that though there is no constitutional right to own a pet dog, they must be guaranteed the freedom to own a type of dog that has killed more people than all other kinds of dogs combined in recent years, no matter the effect on the community, and with no concomitant responsibility. And they frequently and publicly wish ill will and harm to anyone who disagrees with them.

2. Advocates for people with disabilities have successfully lobbied to protect and assert their constitutional rights, freedoms and access guaranteed all US citizens.

Take a guess: which group members do you suppose have taken to the internet comments sections and participated in a collective hysterical hissy fit condemning an entire town and which group members have participated in educated, reasoned and nuanced discussions about freedom, rights and responsibility?

The Nutters:

Diann says: can these City Officials and some residents be anymore bigotted and ignorant? May the Bible you thump open to the right page and the Church pew all you good Christian folk sit on burn your bottoms! Shameful and Disgraceful behavior by the petition signers.

Clay Hund says: Burn the town down, and lynch the politicians!!!

Selwyn Marock says: I hope you do the planet a favour and choke on your turkey bone.

Commenters on the public boards on Service Dog Central:

Kirsten says: The letter of the law is REASONABLE accommodation, not any and all accommodation without having to ask for it. In the case where dogs in general are allowed in a community, reasonable accommodation assumes no special request for accommodation is necessary. But when we look at places such as housing, the accommodation must be requested. So I think they could make a case that this is a reasonable accommodation to take into account the community's right to self govern and protect their citizens AND the PWD's right to have a SD. A compromise. Reasonableness loves a compromise. Not budging is very likely to land them with a very broad "any pitbull claimed as a service dog, without proof, is allowed" and that's going to be a huge mess.

The entire thread is an interesting read as is this link to the Bronk v Ineichen suit Kirsten refers to in the thread.

You can immediately see that pit bull advocates view freedom as "I should be able to do anything I want." Kirsten and the other commenters on the Service Dog Central forum, who have had to be vigilant and pro-active about asserting and protecting their equality and rights, have a much more sophisticated and reasonable understanding of freedom.

And the people at SDC also realize that just because Mr. Sak has a disability and claims his dog is a service dog, that doesn't necessarily make it so. The Bronk v Ineichen suit demonstrates that people with a disability who own a dog, but can't demonstrate that the dog meets the standards of service dog training cannot claim the dog to be a service dog. Moreover, by following the discussion in the SDC Aurelia thread, it is clear that advanced obedience training, as well as individually trained tasks, is a requirement for a sufficiently trained service dog. It is assumed that a genuine service dog would have both the training and temperament that would make it safe in any public area.

There are a number of reasons to suspect that this dog is a genuinely beloved pet, but not an adequately trained service dog.

The description of individually trained tasks Snickers has been trained to perform listed by the physical therapist, the Animal Farm Foundation and the motion for preliminary injuctions all consistently name the same three individually trained tasks - "walking, balance, and retrieving items around the house."

Sak and his wife describe, at various times, completely different tasks than those mentioned by the physical therapist, lawyers and pit bull advocacy group; they do not mention the "retrieving items" task at all; and they contradict each other as well as the legal documents submitted in the suit. Sak says that the dog is specifically trained to regard a hand tremor as a signal to sit and wait for a command which is usually go get his wife so she can help him back up after a fall. But, Peggy Sue Leifer, his wife, says, "I have a very hard time getting Jim back to his feet, but he and Snickers have it worked out."

Sometimes, Snickers' trained task is described as dragging Sak to the wall or furniture so he can pull himself up and other times Snickers is described as being trained to stand so Sak can pull himself up by pulling on Snickers collar.

Snickers seems to be an unlikely candidate for a balance and support service dog for a grown man because he is simply not large enough to do the job. The Service Dog Project breeds and trains Great Danes as balance and support service dogs. The SDP states, "The Balance support dog should be at least 40% of the person’s height. A 6-foot tall man needs a 30” dog. This puts stability at the person’s fingertips. The dog should also weigh at least half the person’s weight." They also outline the long training period for the dogs and go into detail about how the handlers are trained to pull themselves up in a specific way so as to not injure the dog.

Snickers was supposedly trained, in the event of a fall, to drag Sak to furniture to allow him to pull himself up. Sak grabs Snicker's collar for this purpose. But, as SDC members note, this would be injurious to Snickers. Evidently, Sak did not consult any service dog information at all because the most cursory search on the internet suggests that Snickers should be fitted with a harness to safely accomplish this task.

Sak provided a letter from his physical therapist to the city council that states she "was involved in" and "supervised" therapy sessions that included Snickers. She stops short of stating she helped train the dog and she was apparently unaware of several of the quite physical tasks that Snickers had been trained to do - dragging Sak, allowing Sak to pull himself upright by pulling on him and, alerting Leifer of a fall. (See attachments at the end of the document)

If the dog is self-trained, evidence of the number of hours this dog was trained first in obedience training to an advanced level and then in individual training for specific tasks to aid his handler should be available to the judge because though it is permissible to train a service dog one's self, the owner must still put the same amount of training on the dog.

The International Association of Assistance Dog Partners has advocated for responsible service dog partnerships for 80 years. They maintain that trainers function as ambassadors for the assistance dog movement. The IAADP believes that "assistance dogs have worked successfully in public and won the public's acceptance by achieving high behavioral and training standards which set them apart from pets and other animals. Their exemplary conduct led to state legislatures granting access rights to the blind, deaf and mobility impaired. Those early teams paved the way for the Americans With Disabilities Act, which has opened the door to individuals with a wide range of physical and mental impairments being able to have access rights."

Their suggested minimum training best practice standards include a minimum of 120 hours of training logged over a period of at least 6 months.

People focus on the "individually trained tasks" that are required for a dog to qualify as a service dog, but it must be stressed that a service dog also required to be very well obedience trained and be obedient in all public situations they are exposed to. It is significant that in the motion for a preliminary injunction, Sak and Leifer stipulated that they would not take Snickers in public. One could suspect that Sak had no desire to take Snickers out in public if the dog's behavior might betray the fact that he is not highly trained to be obedient in public places.

Please note the "trainer's responsibilities" section on the same IAADP page. The first responsibility is to "know pertinent canine laws." As a former CPD tactical officer who worked in a city that banned handguns, Officer Sak's duty was to enforce a handgun ban no matter his personal views on the issue and he, more than anyone, is aware that the law applied to everyone, even those who professed ignorance of the local ban and who were otherwise responsible with handguns.

However, he and his wife used this very excuse to explain why they brought a pit bull to a town with a pit bull ban. It is highly doubtful they were ignorant of pit bull bans in general or that owning a pit bull mix would potentially subject them to bans if they moved. And it stretches credulity to think that they were unaware of the ban in Aurelia given Leifer's affiliation with Cynthia Bathurst of Best Friends Animal Society and Safe Humane Chicago. Both organizations strongly advocate for pit bulls and against pit bull bans and work closely with the Chicago Police Department about dogfighting and other pit bull issues.

Much as been made by pit bull advocate groups of the horror of having one's service dog and pet taken away. No mention whatsoever has been made about adults taking responsibility for their choices. The first choice made was to get the pit bull mix knowing that having a kind of dog often subject to breed bans would restrict their freedom of movement with the dog - whether they agreed with the bans or not. Their second choice was to attempt to make their pit bull pet into a service dog by registering it with NSAR, a scam registry, instead of looking at one of the many organizations that offer free training for veteran owners who want to train their own dog or make available genuine, trained service dogs to veterans at no cost through private donations and a federally funded pilot program through the VA:

Patriot Paws

Hero Dogs

Freedom Service Dogs

Soldier's Best Friend

Vet Dogs

Vets Helping Heros

Vets First

Yet another organization, Pit Bulls 4 Patriots, was founded with the intention of training rescued pit bulls as service dogs for veterans with PTSD. The newly minted Chicago-based Pits for Patriots claims they were inspired by this Florida organization. The history of this organization provides yet another reason to be skeptical of pit bulls paraded as service dogs.

Pit Bulls 4 Patriots had to abandon their original concept but the dedicated founders transformed the program into Hounds 4 Heros, a program that uses rescued greyhounds instead. Why? The pit bulls were not working out as service dogs. They took too long to train, and they found that pit bulls were too "sensitive" to work with handlers with PTSD because they "reflected" the symptoms of their handler's PTSD. Evidently, the pit bulls were exhibiting common symptoms of PTSD: anger, irritability, hypervigilance, and anxiety. Irritable pit bull service dogs. No Thank You.

"We became clear that we need dogs who are able to provide calm in any situation rather than matching the handler's feelings. Also, it is critical that PTSD service dogs can adapt and recover quickly from stress, and to be resiliant enough to do that again and again"

In addition, the wonderful pit bull "washouts" could not be easily adopted so the founders of the organization are now the proud owners of a boatload of pits. Rescue pit bulls, it seems, are not inherently (genetically), suited to service dog work.

It seems that greyhounds possess inherent (genetic) characteristics that pit bulls do not:

"In our search for the "perfect" PTSD service dog, we are very excited to have Murray join us. Greyhounds tend to be calm, loving but not pushy, caring but not overly sensitive, and are happy to relax and go wherever their person needs them to be."

Second quote:
Our dogs are carefully selected for having exceptionally calm and stable temperaments. We like working with greyhounds because we do not have to train over any strong genetically bred instincts and drives (such as protection/guarding, being territorial, herding, dog aggression, or hunting). It was surprising for us to learn that although some greyhounds have a strong prey drive, most do not. While growing to adulthood in preparation for racing, greyhounds remain in daily contact with their litter mates and other hounds. They are spared from the jarring loss of their pack at an exceedingly young age, unlike most other dogs, who are bred and quickly sold as pets. This continued companionship with their own kind is extremely healthy for balanced brain development and canine social skills. Since they are being groomed to become racing dogs, their lives are disciplined, with plenty of exercise, routines, and very clear guidance from all the humans they come in contact with. As a result, they tend to be peacefully submissive to people, and easily accept direction. This is very helpful in their new roles as service dogs for our PTSD veterans.
This next quote seems to speak directly to their experience with pit bulls and to the very real dangers of trying to shape dogs bred for fighting into service dogs:

We can't overstate the importance of the balanced minds and good nature of these dogs for their job as psychiatric service dogs. It is critical that our dogs are going to be calm and stable "on their own" without the necessity of great guidance and leadership from their handler. When living with someone who has fluctuating weak energy and leadership skills, such as anyone with a psychiatric disorder, a dog will revert to its genetically bred instincts and/or to default behaviors learned in puppyhood. Skilled training can override weaknesses in temperament and high-drive instinctual behaviors, but our PTSD handlers will not be able to maintain training over the top of these things. The longer the team spends together, the more the dog's training would "unravel" and revert to the genetic predisposition of the dog. Examples of this would be an unbalanced German Shepherd who falls back inappropriately to his instinct to guard and bite when threatened, or a herding dog who neurotically begins nipping at the feet and heels of anything that moves around his person. With the greyhounds their default is to either relax, or quietly withdraw into themselves. As a result, they don't act out, become dangerously unbalanced, or create problems for their handlers or the public. They are able to maintain and return to their trained behaviors with relative ease.These gentle, intelligent, and malleable dogs respond very well to our positive training methods. They are able to perform the many kinds of tasks and work that most benefit people who face the daunting challenge of living with PTSD.

the PB4P service pit bulls in training and the other kind of service dog

Pit bull service dogs that end up in the news have almost always turned out to be scams, sometimes disastrous ones. Robert Weller even got a ban exemption in Denver for his supposed service dog. It bit him many times and the last time it wouldn't let go.

That is not stopping AFF from launching their own rescue pit bull stunt service dog training program. They are going at it the right way, too. They are basically putting out a nationwide call for appropriate pit bulls that they will evidently transport to the Farm at their own cost. But the best news is they now believe that anyone can identify a pit bull, because they will accept any dog that was identified by anyone at intake as a pit bull for the program!

They undoubtedly will be able to come up with a few pit bulls with the temperament of a labrador retriever, which is basically what they're looking for, by casting such a wide net. But it is nothing more than another stunt, just like the failed Lawdogs experiment.

This lawsuit in Aurelia IA, is another stunt by the monied AFF. They are turning a grown man, a marine, into a victim to suit their agenda and they are scapegoating an entire city. Aurelia is not taking it lying down. These people love their city very much and they very articulately describe their home town and the goodness of the people in it.

Excerpts from a letter to the editor by an Aurelia citizen who's a former Marine:

After reading people's comments on Facebook and other media outlets, such as "I Hope the people of Aurelia burn in Hell and are eaten by pit bulls," and other people insulting family members of the city council, I am for sure embarrassed.

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Eight years ago I witnessed thousands of people in this rural community stand on the side of the road to salute a KIA Marine; where two young boys in the back of a pick-up truck held on to an American flag in 35 mile an hour wind to honor him; where an 83 year old veteran stood on the side of road in sub zero temperatures because he wanted to salute this young American for the last time; where fireman flew a flag over the road attached to a ladder because they felt it was their job

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I am hearing many people assault the city council members, who were simply trying to do their job and enforce an existing law after they were petitioned to do so. They have even been called unpatriotic by some. As a veteran, I will say that this is a legal issue and the subject being a veteran has nothing to do with the conflict at center.

For those of you throwing mud at the council, insulting them behind their backs in the name of patriotism, and claiming to be ashamed of Aurelia, you need to know that veterans are not victims, they are strong individuals, and to consider one a victim is an insult to those left on the battle field.

Excerpts from a Chronicle Times editorial the next day:

The national vitriol being aimed at the City of Aurelia for enforcing a City Ordinance banning pit bulls in the town is unfair, unjust, unduly harsh, and simply doesn't relate to the type of wonderful people who call that community "home."

Acting upon a citizen petition calling for enforcement of the pit bull ban, the City Council, paying heed to its constituency, earlier this month voted 3-2 to uphold the ban that resulted in a pit bull mix banned from the City limits.

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After checking around, we found that having a pit bull as a "service dog" is extremely rare, if any others exist at all.

We do not know what the City of Aurelia plans on doing about the pit bull ban enforcement, or if it will recant its actions, amend the ordinance, and legally allow the man to have his "service dog" returned to him.

According to reports, the man is suing the City of Aurelia in an effort to get his dog back. Aurelia has a local attorney in the case, and the man also has an attorney paid by a national animal rights group.

Apparently, it all may be played out in a court of law.

Without getting into all the gory details, pit bull bans are on many city's books for a reason. For Aurelia, or any other city to roll the dice, run scared, and turn 'em all loose on an unsuspecting public because of the special circumstances surrounding this case is hazardous and possibly fatal folly.

Sak and Leifer have won a preliminary injunction to keep Snickers until their lawsuit against the City has been decided. It has been reported that they are asking that a judge find that Aurelia's ordinance is in violation of the ADA and unenforceable and that Sak and Leifer are seeking damages from the city. That will show them and any other city what they'll get if they try to do their duty and exercise home rule principles to protect their citizens.

Hopefully, Aurelia will keep up the good fight. No one wants to see another Johnston City, IL tragedy. Johnston City is a disastrous example of what can happen when communities are denied their right to home rule by laws crafted only to protect pit bull advocates.