Andover overturns breed-specific dog ordinance, welcomes pit bulls in city

The conspicuous “No Pit Bulls Allowed” sign that once hung at Dog Park at Central Park in Andover is no longer applicable.

The Andover City Council voted 4-1 on Tuesday to repeal the decades-old ordinance that banned pit bulls in Andover.

Repealing the ordinance had been an ongoing discussion that gained momentum after the city annexed an area just east of Andover last year, according to City Administrator Jennifer McCausland. Pit bulls in the annexed area were grandfathered in but deemed “potentially dangerous” under city ordinance, she said.

Diana McCann told councilmembers she was glad she could keep her pit bull after the annex impacted her home.

“She is just a big baby,” McCann said about her pit bull before expressing her support of repealing the ordinance. “We have three dogs but only one pit. I think if you look at the dog owners and not the breed, you get a lot more accomplished.”

Six people spoke during the meeting in favor of eliminating a ban on pit bulls. Councilmembers were also sent 17 emails, with three people wanting to keep the ban in place and 14 wanting the change.

Councilmember Mike Warrington was the only vote to keep the ban in place.

Warrington said that 46 people have been killed by pit bulls this year in the U.S. Victims, he mentioned, ranged from a few weeks old to 86.

“Most of them are pretty chilling,” Warrington said about the descriptions of the attacks.

Councilmember Tim Berry asked if the statistic came from dogsbite.org. Warrington said the figure did, among other sources that he didn’t mention.

“That website has actually been proven to be completely false,” Berry said.

Warrington said: “It’s not.”

Another councilmember, Troy Tabor, said the statistic was accurate and backed up by a national database. He said there were three million pit bulls and a couple of hundred attacks nationwide.

“Statistically that is almost zero. It’s terrible for the families … but when you are making a decision for all of society you have to look at it a little differently,” he said. “The deaths are overwhelmingly by pit bulls. They just are. It’s just data. You can go look it up.”

It’s unclear where Tabor garnered his facts from.

Midge Grinstead, Kansas state director of the Humane Society of the United States, said she doesn’t know of any credible database that tracks dog attacks or the breed of dog that attacked.

Herding breeds were the No. 1 biting dog she saw during her 15 years as director of the Lawrence Humane Society. No. 2 was labrador retrievers because there were so many, she said.

“No breed is inherently dangerous,” she said before going on to cite several organizations, including the American Veterinary Medical Association, that supported there was no evidence of breed-specific aggressiveness. “All of these people say that there is no basis in science that a pit bull is more aggressive, more dangerous and more likely to bite.”

Grinstead said dogs with bigger mouths, like pit bulls, could be expected to do more damage than a chihuahua.

Treatment by the dog owner is a better indicator than breed of whether or not a dog will bite, she said.

Pit bulls used to be called “nanny dogs” because people could leave them to watch their kids, she said. Bans of the breed started in the 70s when pit bulls became popular pets and fighting the dogs became an issue, she said.

“(Pit bulls) were bred as a hunting dog, not as a killer,” she said. “There is so much falseness about pit bulls and locking jaws and aggressive behaviors.”

She has been in the animal welfare arena for 30 years and still can’t definitely tell that all dogs are pit bulls. Certain breed combinations can make pit bull-like characteristics, making it even harder for the bans to be enforced, she said.

“To have effective dog management, the laws should be applied consistently to all dog owners,” she said, adding “anti-tether” and “cruelty measures” are more effective than pit-bull bans at reducing dog attacks.

Tethering a dog for long periods of time goes against their nature of being social animals and being in packs, she said.

A movement to repeal pit bull bans started nearly a decade ago, she said. Grinstead said she’s been involved in overturning about 24 bans in Kansas.

Roughly 80 to 90 pit bull bans still exist in Kansas, she estimated.

Andover first considered a pit bull ban in 1988 after one injured the wife of a city council member, according to a former article in The Eagle. The ordinance banning pit bulls was first written in 2000, then rewritten twice since then, the article says.

The sign banning pit bulls at the Andover dog park has been removed for some time, according to McCausland. As of Saturday, pit bulls will now fall under the city’s dangerous dog ordinance, like all other dogs.

“I hope nothing severe happens ... and I just want to be on record that I am gonna be against this,” Warrington said. “And if you vote for this and something happens, I’m sorry.”