Joel stein why i hate dogs

Most dogs beaten in a fight will submit the next time they see the victor. Not a defeated pit bull, who will tear into his onetime vanquisher. This, too, has to do with brain chemistry. The body releases endorphins as a natural painkiller.

Pit bulls seem extra-sensitive to endorphins and may generate higher levels of the chemical than other dogs. Endorphins are also addictive: "The dogs may be junkies, seeking pain so they can get the endorphin buzz they crave," The Economist suggests. Finally, most dogs warn you before they attack, growling or barking to tell you how angry they are—"so they don't have to fight," ASPCA advisor and animal geneticist Stephen Zawistowski stresses. Not the pit bull, which attacks without warning.

Most dogs, too, will bow to signal that they want to frolic. Again, not the pit bull, which may follow an apparently playful bow with a lethal assault. In short, contrary to the writings of Vicki Hearne, a well-known essayist on animals who—in a bizarre but emotionally charged confusion—equates breed-specific laws against pit bulls as a kind of "racist propaganda," the pit bull is a breed apart.

Pit-bull expert Semencic makes a more sophisticated argument as to why pit bulls shouldn't be singled out for regulation. Pit bulls, he says, were bred not to be aggressive to people.

But Semencic's argument assumes that the culling of man-aggressive dogs is still going on—which it isn't. As Robin Kovary, a New York-based dog breeder and pit-bull fancier, acknowledges, "Once the word got out, 20 years ago or so, to youths who wanted a tough dog to show off with, the breed passed into less than responsible hands—kids who wanted the dogs to be as aggressive as they could be. Y et Kovary is at least partially right when she says, "It's the two-legged beast, not the four-legged one, we have to worry about.

Raised responsibly, the pit bull's good side can come to the fore. But pit bulls have become enmeshed in the brutality of underclass culture, magnifying the breed's predisposition to aggression. Pit bulls are its biggest problem. More than 60, animals, half of them dogs, entered the shelter last year. According to CACC official Kyle Burkhart, "more than 50 percent of the dogs are pit bulls or pit-bull mixes—a huge percentage.

Waiting in the CACC's lobby, I got a firsthand look at the pit bull as a standard-issue accessory to underclass life: toughs in baggy pants and stocking caps paraded in and out continuously, negotiating to get their impounded dogs back or to adopt new ones. Three distinct classes of irresponsible—or, more accurately, abusive—owners are the source of the CACC's flood of pit bulls.

First are the drug dealers, who use pit bulls, or pit-bull crosses, as particularly vicious sentinels. New York City cops had to shoot 83 dogs to death in , most of them pit bulls guarding drug stashes. Burkhart showed me a few such sentinels in the center's dangerous-dog ward. Lunging against their metal cages, these pit bulls were the most ferocious animals I'd ever seen: pure animal fury. Intimidated, I kept as far from the cages as I could. Dog-fighting rings also fill the CACC with abused animals.

The rings, moving clandestinely throughout the state, stage battles between pit bulls, sometimes to the death, as cheering spectators wager on the outcome. The dogs the CACC receives from the raids will often be missing ears or will bear deep scars from their battles. Manhattan Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe isn't surprised at the savagery: "We regularly find dead pit bulls in the parks; on one occasion, we found eight pit-bull carcasses dumped in Riverside Park.

They'd been killed fighting other dogs. It's an unsavory crowd that participates, whether as trainer or spectator, in the blood sport, says ASPCA humane-law-enforcement officer George Watford. Finally, the CACC gets pit bulls owned by teenagers and gang members—"young punks," Watford calls them—who raise the dogs to intimidate.

The teens, sporting military fatigues and shaved heads, ignored her and went on with their barbarous fun. Typically, these teens lose interest in their brutalized—and usually unneutered—dogs and let them loose, swamping the city with stray pit bulls.

W hat should New York City do about its dangerous dogs? One possibility: ban the pit bull, as England has done.

Unfortunately, thanks to the state law nixing breed- specific legislation, such a ban would entail a difficult battle for state permission. And if the city bans the pit bull, what's to stop thugs from shifting to other breeds that can be made into weapons, such as the Canary dog or the Dogo Argentino? Outlawing them all would be an extremely divisive policy. What about the city's idea of forcing pit-bull owners to buy pricey insurance policies? It makes little sense.

Given that a paltry 10 percent of the city's dogs have licenses, only the law-abiding minority of pit-bull owners—not the louts who terrorize park-goers—are likely to comply with the new requirement, assuming it can get past the state objection to breed- specific laws.

Moreover, those who wanted to comply would have a hard time finding an insurer. Though homeowners' policies generally cover dogs, few insurance firms will issue one to someone with a dangerous animal. Much sounder are the city's proposals to eliminate "provocation" as a defense for a dangerous dog's behavior and to pare away legal protections for dangerous dogs. As Cornell's Katherine Houpt underscores, "If a dog has bitten someone, we should consider it dangerous until proven otherwise.

Who cares if a child has poked it with a pencil? The city's best course would be to require the owners of all dogs weighing more than 40 pounds to keep them muzzled in public, as Germany does with potentially aggressive breeds. But those are the exceptions. More than a few included measurements. Teenage girls wrote to request autographs and teenage boys sought internships.

It certainly is, because these fans may soon be seeing a lot more of Stein. Multiple television networks knocking on your door. Especially for English majors. This is not generally how Cardinal grads go forth to make their fortunes. In his three years of Daily opining, Stein honed the style that he continues to deploy at Time.

He was funny, he was savvy, he was loaded with pop-culture references and he was self-deprecating. When Stein graduated, he hoped to write for either television or magazines.

He had no experience with the former and very little with the latter. And although Stein did a column for Time Out— a forerunner, more or less, to the Time column—he even wrote about people other than himself.

Remember, flat-front pants. Even while de-pleating his wardrobe, Stein kept applying for jobs at Time. Several rejection letters now hang on his office wall.

After two years at Time Out, and several freelance articles for a Time- offshoot publication, he was finally hired. He and Isaacson thought they were hiring a clever guy who would do general society and culture writing, with a healthy dose of sports. The biggest surprise to people who only know Joel through his columns is that he is, in person, the gentlest, most self-effacing person you can imagine.

We made that deal back in high school. And I briefly saw Stein stop trying to hide it. Glick : Forgetting freedom at Passover. Susan Swann : How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does. Samuel G.

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