Pit bulls are no longer a restricted household pet in DeKalb County, a zoning change that its advocates say should help the county focus more on all dangerous dogs and possibly improve the adoption rate from its shelter.
"Our criteria always has been and always will be dangerous dogs," said William Z. Miller, DeKalb's director of public safety who oversees its animal control office. "Now that we have addressed a misclassification, adopting out a friendly, loving animal will not be a problem."
The DeKalb County Commission unanimously agreed Tuesday to lift the ban on pit bulls -- part of the county's zoning code, not animal control ordinances -- after more than a year of weighing the issue.
No other metro county has a ban on pit bulls, and DeKalb’s was less a ban than a source of confusion. Code enforcement officers cited owners who simply had to point out “pit bull” is not a breed of dog to have their tickets tossed.
“It has not been an effective tool for being able to get rid of dangerous animals,” said Commissioner Jeff Rader, who had championed the change. “We are better served relying on the criminal code.”
DeKalb has a strong local ordinance against vicious and dangerous dogs. Twyann Vaughn began serving a 16-month sentence in January after a county jury convicted her of six misdemeanors for her dogs attacking a young neighbor.
Eight-year-old Erin Ingram lost part of her arm and nearly died after being mauled by the two dogs in her Lithonia yard in 2010. One dog was a pit bull. The other was a mutt.
“It’s judging an animal by how it looks, which is just as offensive as it is with people,” said Rebecca Guinn, executive director of the LifeLine Animal Project, which runs low-cost spay-neuter programs and helps rehabilitate dogs in cruelty cases, many of them pit bulls or pit-mixes.
That look -- the boxy head, strong jaw and muscular body -- is common to several breeds that are commonly referred to as pit bulls. They range from Staffordshire bull terriers such as Petey, the dog that trailed the Little Rascals in the 1920s and 1930s movie shorts, to that Georgia icon, the bulldog.
DeKalb joined many jurisdictions nationwide to ban pit bulls about a decade ago because of well-publicized attacks by dogs with that appearance.
No one has ever been successfully cited for owning a pit bull as a household pet. But the ban did hurt the county's ability to adopt out dogs with that look from its shelter, except to rescue groups and the occasional experienced owner.
Because the dogs have been overbred, the shelter took in thousands of the dogs in recent years, though. That helped drive up DeKalb's euthanasia rate at the expense of many dogs that, if not for their suspected breed, meet temperament tests to be pets.
“It certainly doesn’t hurt that these dogs will be treated differently now,” county spokesman Burke Brennan said of the possible increase in pit or pit-mix adoptions.
The Atlanta ResponsiBully Coalition, which encourages spay-neuter for the dogs and advocates for bully breeds, is eager to work with the shelter to make that happen. Coalition President Ashley Derrick said her organization would like to host classes for would-be owners to have a better understanding of dogs known to be intensely loyal and people-focused, even when being mistreated.
“These are great dogs with a bad reputation because of irresponsible owners,” Derrick said. “The county is doing the right thing to focus on those bad owners, not the dogs.”
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