To be honest, I am really beginning to get confused with all of the twists and turns this conversation has been taking. If we could move away from the issue of genetic/neurochemical or other causation or mitigation of impulse aggression in canines -- as that discussion seems to be progressing nowhere -- and get back to the BSL elements of the discussion…

 I want to state that I am vociferously opposed to BSL not simply in defense of Bullies (in fact that is not even a significant factor), but rather because legislation that bans and condemns innocent dogs simply because they are members of a specific breed (or even  superficially resemble the breed) in my mind sets a horrifically dangerous precedent for all breeds (very much including our mastiffs).
 
Despite the fact that, in 2012, additional nations such as Trinidad and Ecuador -- whom Steve has cited -- have imposed breed specific bans, several US states and countries that have had BSL in place for some period of time have become convinced of its ineffectiveness and  have repealed, or are considering/debating  the repeal of such legislation

In 1996, a Scottish study entitled "Does the Dangerous Dogs Act Protect Against Animal Attacks" looked at the three month period before the implementation of BSL and the three month period after said implementation.  The study found that the banned or regulated breeds contributed to only a small percentage of attacks.  The study further revealed that Alsatians and mongrels (mixed breed dogs) were the most common breed involved (in 24.2% and 18.2% attacks, respectively), while the restricted breeds accounted for only 6.1% of the attacks. 

In September 2002, the Administrative Court of Berlin ruled null and void the government of Lower Saxony, Germany's breed specific law related to 14 breeds of dogs.  This ruling was based, in part, by a study by Esther Schalke, PhD, DVM, which demonstrated that breed specific legislation was ineffective. 

In June 2008, the Netherlands repealed a 15 year ban on pit bulls after research proved that it did not improve public safety and dog bite incidents did not decrease.  The government had commissioned a study of the ban’s effectiveness, which had revealed that banning a breed of dogs was not a successful dog bite mitigation strategy. Instead, the researchers recommended better education for children and adults on proper interactions with dogs.

In 2009, Italy abolished its breed-specific regulations, which applied to 17 breeds of dogs, in favor of legislation that holds individual dog owners responsible for their dog’s behavior. Italy’s Undersecretary Francesca Martini reported, “The measures adopted in the previous laws had no scientific basis. Dangerous breeds do not exist.”i The breed ban was replaced with a law making owners more responsible for their pet's training and behavior.

In June 2008, a report regarding the United Kingdom's Dangerous Dog Act of 1991 was issued.   According to the report commissioned by pet insurer LV, the number of people hospitalised for dog attacks has increased by almost 50% in the past decade -- this is despite having breed specific legislation in place since 1991. 

In 2007, a Spanish study compared dog bites reported to the health department of Aragon, Spain for 5 years before and 5 years after the implementation of breed specific legislation in the form of a Dangerous Dog Act.  The Spanish study concluded, among other things, that there was no change in the number of dog bites reported, and that the restricted breeds, were responsible for less than 4% of the reported bites both before and after the BSL took effect.

A 2006 Australian study entitiled Breed-specific legislation and the pit bull terrier:  Are the laws justified?concluded that the data collected in the United States to support the theory that pit bulls posed a unique danger to the public is flawed by methodological shortcomings.  The study also concluded that the evidence does not sustain the view that pit bulls are a uniquely dangerous breed, and breed-specific laws aimed to control it have not been demonstrated by authorities to be justified by its attack record.  

Within the US, as of January, 2012, 35 cities and counties within 17 states have repealed existing BSL, and over 125 cities and counties (my eyes glazed over and I lost count) within 40 states decided against it.

Already  dogs included in US bans and restrictions other than pit bull types have included:  Rottweilers, Doberman,Chows, GSDs, Dogo Argentino, Canary Dog, Akitas Presa Malorquin, Tosa, Cane Corsa, Brazillian Mastiff, American Bandogge Mastiffs, Neapolitan Mastiffs, Presa Canarios and Sharpeis.

The Responsible Dog Owners Of The Western States (RDOWS) has just updated the list of breeds that have been banned or restricted in the U.S. This list includes English Mastiffs, Bullmastiffs, Great Danes, and Irish Wolfhounds. However, I couldn’t confirm this in my research into BSL bans and restrictions.

I would say our English Mastiff is already in peril, whatever the fate of Pit Bull breeds.

I support what Mainemastiff said.

This is where the AKC & the MCOA can be instrumental in protecting the Mastiff. Those states that are seeking to enforce dangerous dog laws, need to be contacted by our parent club. Supportive understanding in reducing dangerous crosses, would be seen as a welcomed relief by many municipalities, who might otherwise use broad brush tactics, which may certainly include the Mastiff.

Denial won't help our situation down the road. If we confront the issue head on, in a rational mode of preparedness, we will have a game plan that we can illustrate to all, about the general good nature of our pedigreed Mastiff, bred by responsible members of a 100+ year old organization.

It's another reason to become a member of the MCOA. If we all organize an effort and present a unified front, the MCOA logo might truly protect our breed and become a meanigful sign, separating our breed from BYBs &  risky puppy mill bred stock.

I also absolutely support developing proactive plans to protect our Mastiffs, but to me this means strong MCOA advocacy, marketing and publicising our breed, educating the public reaching out to communities and similar actions. It does NOT mean supporting BSL and the eradication of pit bulls or other unpopular breeds.

The final solution?  Really?

“There was a time when Soviet science was in a desperate state and Belyaev’s foxes were endangered,” said Ray Coppinger, a dog biologist at Hampshire College in Massachusetts who tried to obtain some of the foxes to help preserve them. But the animals seem to have left Russia only once, for Finland, in a colony that no longer survives.

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Jan-Peter Boening for The New York Times

Frank Albert, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, is studying two colonies of tame and hyperaggressive Siberian rats to determine the genetics behind their differences. A handful of genes could be responsible.

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The rats used in Mr. Albert's research come from an experiment started in the former Soviet Union by Belyaev, shown above.

There was far more to Belyaev’s experiment than the production of tame foxes. He developed a parallel colony of vicious foxes, and he started domesticating other animals, like river otters and mink. Realizing that genetics can be better studied in smaller animals, Belyaev also started a study of rats, beginning with wild rats caught locally. His rat experiment was continued after his death by Irina Plyusnina. Siberian gray rats caught in the wild, bred separately for tameness and for ferocity, have developed these entirely different behaviors in only 60 or so generations.

The collection of species bred by Belyaev and his successors form an unparalleled resource for studying the process and genetics of domestication. In a recent visit to Novosibirsk, Dr. Brian Hare of the Planck Institute used the silver foxes to probe the unusual ability of dogs to understand human gestures.

If a person hides food and then points to the location with a steady gaze, dogs will instantly pick up on the cue, while animals like chimpanzees, with considerably larger brains, will not. Dr. Hare wanted to know if dogs’ powerful rapport with humans was a quality that the original domesticators of the dog had selected for, or whether it had just come along with the tameness, as implied by Belyaev’s hypothesis.

He found that the fox kits from Belyaev’s domesticated stock did just as well as puppies in picking up cues from people about hidden food, even though they had almost no previous experience with humans. The tame kits performed much better at this task than the wild kits did. When dogs were developed from wolves, selection against fear and aggression “may have been sufficient to produce the unusual ability of dogs to use human communicative gestures,” Dr. Hare wrote last year in the journal Current Biology.

Dr. Hare believes that wolves probably have the same cognitive powers as dogs, but their ability to solve social problems, like picking up human cues to hidden food, is masked by their fear. Dogs, after their fear is removed by domestication, see humans as potential social partners, not as predators, and are ready to interact with them. But though selection for tameness was probably the first step in domesticating dogs, Dr. Hare said, they may well have adapted to human societies in other ways, with the smarter dogs leaving more progeny.

Although most of the tame foxes have stayed in Novosibirsk, Svante Paabo, also of the Planck Institute, recently managed to persuade the Russian researchers to let him have some of both breeds of the rats, after visiting Novosibirsk several times.

“It looked as if it would not work for a long time, but in the end we managed to build enough trust,” Dr. Paabo said. He and his student, Mr. Albert, work closely with Dr. Plyusnina. Mr. Albert hopes to identify which of the rats’ genes were selected for by the domestication process.

His strategy is to cross the tame rats with the ferocious rats and then score the progeny for how much of each trait they inherit. He hopes to identify 200 sites along the genome at which the tame and ferocious rats differ. If one or more of the sites correlate with tameness or fierceness in the progeny, they will probably lie near important genes that underlie one of the two traits.

The genes, if Mr. Albert finds them, would be of great interest because they are presumably the same in all species of domesticated mammal. That may even include humans. Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, has proposed that people are a domesticated form of ape, the domestication having been self-administered as human societies penalized or ostracized individuals who were too aggressive.

Dr. Paabo said that if Mr. Albert identified the genes responsible for domestication in rats, “we would also look at those genes in humans and apes to see if they might be involved in human evolution.”

Human self-domestication, if it occurred, would probably not have exactly the same genetic basis as tameness in animals. But Mr. Albert said that if he could pinpoint the genetic difference between the tame and ferocious rats, he would compare the chimp genome and the human genome to see if they showed a similar difference.

One possibility is that a handful of genes — perhaps even just one — underlie all the changes seen in domestication. A structure in the embryo of all vertebrates, known as the neural crest, is the source of cells that constitute much of the face, skull and pigment cells, and many parts of the peripheral nervous system and endocrine system. If the genes in the neural crest cells were delayed just a little in coming into action, a whole range of tissues could be affected, including the maturation of the adrenal glands that underlies the first fear response of young animals, Dr. Fitch has written.

Could a single gene that affects the timing of neural crest cell development underlie the whole phenomenon of animal and human domestication? “There would be one happy science Ph.D. student if that were true,” Mr. Albert said.

One problem with BSL is that these ‘proper’ breeds will be extinguished along with the ‘pit bull types’ – which in terms of lurid media coverage, as Erica said, seems to include anything that is not blatantly and immediately obviously another breed (e.g., Rottweiler, Doberman, GSD)

Another issue is the proliferation of gangsta types, drug dealers, dog fighting rings and so on who DO breed and TRAIN for aggression towards other dogs and humans – and really don’t care what breed they desecrate. On a pragmatic level, and for the sake of argument (which the bite and dog bite related deaths statistics simply don’t support) let’s stipulate that  pit pull types in their entirety exhibit vicious and unreliable temperaments and that BSL is ‘justified’. Also let’s imagine that BSL is a success -- all ‘pit bull types’ have been exterminated.

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Do you think that is going to deter unscrupulous BYBs and young men who need to enhance their street cred or compensate for low self esteem with a bad azz dog? If we accept the premise that any breed/strain may be bred and trained to become aggressive/vicious, in my view, they are going to focus on the next breed(s) that can be transformed (through breeding, training, abuse, etc) into aggressive dogs. We know that of all mammalian species, the plasticity of DNA in dogs, alone, parallels that of humans. A huge array of factors and mutations can alter sequencing in all kinds of predictable and unpredictable ways.

 With the variability in the size and proportions of ‘pit bull types’ already evincing signs of crosses  with Cane Corsi, Mastiffs, Presa Canarios, Dogo Argentinos, Filas, and so on, do you really believe that BSL is going to stop at ‘Pit Bull types’? In fact, in my survey of BSL legislation world-wide, most banned lists include several (up to 20 or more) breeds (real breeds). The next stage ‘Pit Bull Type’ could very well be a ‘Mastiff Type’ – a sobriquet that has already entered the media vocabulary around reported dog attacks. If a precedent is set for effecting the extinction of an entire breed and everything that remotely resembles it in phenotype, and if the next ‘Pit Bull Type’ becomes a ‘Mastiff type’   I don’t believe that municipalities are going to care  a fig about what the MCOA says.

Additionally, my post # 58 describes my findings of the latest status of BSL – the number of countries, US states and cities that have repealed BSL, are considering it (UK) or have decide against implementing it. The Toronto study is the only one I’ve seen thus far in which BSL appears to have reduced dog bites. it includes caveats that the reduction is not necessarily caused by the ban.

One other point I would make about, the Fox study: The only factor/variable studied was the aspect of breeding. Whilst I think  this is of vital interest, it may not be the whole story.  I read nothing about attempts to study mitigating factors – such as looking at the impact on vicious individuals of good socialization with humans from kit-hood, training/learning, etc. Similarly (and I certainly do not think it would be ethical to do so) there was no  observation of the effect of abuse, deprivation, neglect and other stressors on individuals from the ‘tame’ group.

My response to Toni............

Toni,

 Thanks for you quick reply!

 http://www.dogsbite.org/legislating-dangerous-dogs-state-by-state.php

We were thinking, that an effort targeted at the municipalities listed in the above site, might be a way to preempt those municipalities, from naming the Mastiff as the next breed to be banned in the future.

Would the MCOA consider this sort of approach, and if so, are you willing to take this to the board for review? If enacted, this tactic may act as a firewall for the Mastiff.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Steve