Horses really should be banned from dog parks

I get a kick out of false comparisons.

Inevitably, in every debate about guns, someone will point out that cars kill more people than guns. Should cars be banned,  the writer demands?

But the distinction, you see, is that cars aren’t designed for killing. Guns are. Even then, if a particular model of car was found to be causing many more deaths than any other model — due to mechanical issues, for example —  it would be corrected or withdrawn. Knives can be a deadly weapon but they’re also a common tool in the kitchen. Kitchen knives have been used to kill people but, in general, the chances of being killed by a knife are much smaller than being shot with a gun, and they’re used much less frequently in mass murders.

I’ve been receiving a few such false comparisons in the pitbull debate.

“Why can’t all the white haired people drive well, they are a menace on our stress and they should be banned from our roads and have to take tests to make sure they know how to drive. But since they unfortunately not going away, maybe they can drive somewhere else. Sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it,” wrote Brock Smith.

Brock was. no doubt, shouting “Take that!” to himself as he penned those words, but absurd comparisons aren’t effective at making an argument. Very few white haired people intentionally attack other people with their automobiles. If statistics showed that they did, I’d say it would be worth a look.

Another critic noted that he or she had once almost been hurt by a spooky horse. Should horses be banned?

No, I say, just from dog parks. Look, horses are a prey species and therefore operate on the “flight” part of the “fight or flight” mechanism. They survive because they have long faces with which to keep an eye open for predators as they eat, and long legs with which to flee. But no savvy person will take chances with horses because a 1,000-lb. animal that doesn’t realize its own strength can do a lot of damage if it panics.

Pit bulls, on the other hand (as I point out in today’s Kamloops Daily News Armchair Mayor column, “10 Things About Pit Bulls and Dog Parks”http://tinyurl.com/am3n2xf ) were created with a fighting instinct. When the trigger is pulled, a pit bull will attack. In study after study, attacks by pit bulls are ahead of any other breed, and sometimes the suffering inflicted on other animals and humans is shocking. Pitbull owners don’t like to acknowledge the accuracy of these studies, but there are too many of them to reject.

Comparing dogs to horses and guns to cars is apples to oranges. There are no perfect solutions but we can try to reduce the harm by going after the most obvious problem areas.