Virginia has joined Florida in establishing a registry of dangerous dogs. The web-based registry will publicize the location of dogs adjudicated as vicious throughout the state. (To read the article, click here.)

It's a good idea but it is not the only way to avoid a dangerous dog in your neighborhood. I addressed this last December when I was a guest on Fox News. Here is what I said:

"I think in order to avoid dangerous dogs, there are really three other things you have to do. And those are, you've got to talk to the kids in the neighborhood, the adult neighbors, and also, the postman.

"Because you're going to get as much information from them as you're going to get from this Web site. In fact, you're going to get more because they're going to tell you about the dogs that are about to bite people, as opposed to the ones who have been adjudicated in dog court as having already bitten."

Click here to see the interview.

A new study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence has confirmed a link between ownership of high-risk dog breeds and deviant behaviors, crimes against children and domestic violence.

As I said in People magazine, "There's a direct relationship between bad owners and bad dogs." (Kenneth Phillips, quoted in "Biting Back: When a Dog Sinks Its Teeth In, Attorney Ken Phillips Goes For the Throat," People, July 17, 2000, p. 102; click here to download the People article.)

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's, the University of Cincinnati, and the Cincinnati Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that one hundred percent of the owners of high-risk dogs had either one criminal conviction or traffic citation. Thirty percent of high-risk, cited dog owners had at least five criminal convictions or traffic citations. Only 1 percent of owners of low-risk, licensed dogs had at least five criminal convictions or traffic citations.

Categories of criminal convictions examined were aggressive crimes, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, crimes involving children, firearm convictions, and major and minor traffic citations. For more about this, click below to read the full post.

Hilbert Jones, 66 years old, was tending his garden when he was attacked by three pit bulls on November 6, 2006, in Lumberton, NC (USA). They bit him 150 times and yet he has survived.

In Robeson County, where this attack happened, there have been 94 dog bites since the beginning of this year. About one-third of the bites — 32 cases — involved pit bulls or a pit bull mix, according to county health officials.

As it typical in these incidents, the local newspaper quoted the director of the health department -- not an animal behaviorist, but a health official -- as saying the following: “The problem with pit bulls isn’t typically the pit bulls, but the owners. The ones we have problems with are the owners who aren’t responsible. Those with pit bulls need to be particularly cautious.” (To read the article, click here.)

Can anyone possibly believe that the problem has nothing at all to do with pit bulls themselves? What other breed of dog will bite a person 150 times? That comes to 50 bites each for the three dogs, all biting the same person at the same time. Is it not fair to say that any dog with such a huge appetite for biting should be regarded as unnecessarily dangerous?

A new article in a Colorado paper refers to breed banning as "a Holocaust against dogs." Once again we are stunned by the inappropriate and demeaning linking of breed specific laws and human horror. The 20th Century saw millions of human beings murdered in the Holocaust and genocides. To compare this to breed bans is an example of the extreme ignorance -- perhaps the dangerous ignorance -- of some members of the dog lobby in the USA.

As the pit bull gene slowly finds its way into the bloodlines of gentler breeds, many experts have begun to fear that dogs will eventually be considered unsafe as human companions. While breed banning is not the solution to the dog bite epidemic, it might become necessary if other measures prove ineffective because of lack of support, failure to enforce laws, etc. Attempting to equate the practice with racial discrimination and the Holocaust is nothing but the most base form of propoganda, which will do nothing to help the situation.

An Illinois man is on trial for killing his neighbor's dog. The charge is animal cruelty. The dog was trespassing on his property, had been pursuing another animal, and was racing toward him for the apparent purpose of attacking him. (For details, click here to read the news article.)

We read about dogs rushing into a neighbor's yard and killing someone as they prune their flowers (see the posts below). Is it really animal cruelty to kill a dog under such circumstances? What other choice is available in cities where the animal control department refuses or is unable to take dangerous dogs off the streets?

A newspaper quoted someone today as saying, "Breed-specific legislation is racism against dogs." No, it is not. Invoking the fight against racism is not only irrational but also a slap in the face of anyone who seriously opposes discrimination against people based upon the color of their skin.

The term "racism" refers to human races, not breeds of dog. The making of such a comparison is a tip-off to the extreme lengths that the dog lobby will go in order to avoid the common-sense regulation of killer dogs and their dangerous owners. Such statements should be roundly condemned.