Horrific Pit Bull Attacks? Seriously?

This morning I was on my way to work and was halfway listening to the morning show on the radio. My attention was caught when I heard them mention something about Horrific Pit Bull Attacks, or something along those lines. I don't remember the exact adjective they used, but that's the gist of it.

At any rate, they called one of their morning personalities who happens to be at the beach, as she had apparently had a horrific pit bull attack. As an aside, from what I could gather this is a somewhat regular segment on their show. Anyway, we'll call this girl Betty for the sake of the story.

So she starts to recount her story. She was at the beach, and out in the front yard with her dog, and her father's dog. She had them both off leash, and was getting ready to leash them to take them for a walk. As she was preparing to leash them a lady walked past with her dogs... her dogs that were all on leashes. In case you missed it... the other lady was going for a walk with her dogs... on leash. I believe they said she had four dogs with, though not all of them were Pit Bulls.

Anyway, one of the two dogs that Betty had with her decided to....

Wait for it...

Go say hi.

Yes. Her off leash dog went over to "say hi", and one of the leashed dogs took exception to the lab-ish dog saying hi. The dog on leash apparently broke the collar and took her dog to the ground. I'm wondering how long this was going on for a dog to break a collar like this? That's not to say that collars don't sometimes break when they're pulled just right, but still.

To make a long story short, apparently the other dog she had also decided to "go say hi" and apparently there were leashes and collars broken, and Betty's dogs were hurt. She talked about how the other woman was screaming and trying to break it up, but from what I can gather it didn't sound like she did anything to help the situation. Two of the leashed dogs stayed out of it, by the way.

I had to get out of the car and go into the office, so I didn't hear the rest of the story. I don't know to what degree Betty's dogs were hurt, and I am terribly sorry for their pain. I do not say any of this to negate her very real distress. I'm terribly sorry that she and the dogs went through what they did.

However, it just makes me CRUNCHY in the extreme that we're going to talk about Pit Bulls attacking when it was her own stupid dogs and her own stupid fault that her dogs went over there to begin with. Those pit bulls didn't attack - her dogs ran over there when they shouldn't have. Period. It's stories like this that give bully breeds press that they don't need. It makes me more than just a little crazy.

People. Don't let your dogs "go say hi". I don't have pit bulls, but I can tell you that had these two lab-ish dogs come up to my dogs, while leashed, to "say hi" chances are high that one, or possibly two of my dogs would have taken exception to it.

It's just like any other thing... stack your deck to try to set the tone for the best outcome possible. Don't let your dogs just "go say hi" to dogs you don't know.
And while we're at it, don't call this type of thing a horrific pit bull attack. Call it a stupid owner attack.