[DaySleepers]

I live in a country with a short list of banned breeds. It's the usual suspects (or at least nothing surprising for these kinds of laws) - APBT, AST, Fila, Tosa, Dogo, Czech wolfdog. I'm honestly fully opposed to BSL simply because the data has shown time and time again that it does nothing to change dog bite statistics, but it is a little different when it's a country-wide ban of breeds that are not already established within the borders. At the very least there aren't family pets being seized and put down, or neighbors claiming someone's blocky-headed lab mix is a pit mix because they're annoyed that the dog barks sometimes. And there DEFINITELY aren't the ridiculous things that can happen in city-wide bans in the US, like how Denver would detain (and potentially euthanize) even service dogs travelling through if they decided the dog looked at least 50% APBT. That's changed in recent years, but harrowing stuff.

So at least the ban here isn't immediately harmful to families who keep these breeds or mixes that may or may not have these breeds in them. The only case I've heard of since moving here was someone breeding alleged APBT mixes for hog hunting (also illegal here - dogs can track animals or blood trails, but hunting that requires them to physically have contact with the prey is outlawed). But it still sucks, imo, because I've found that even very dog-savvy, informed people like my MiL have very skewed preconceptions about the banned breeds, which of course makes them harder than ever to change. MiL honestly thought of APBTs and ASTs as kind of nasty, aggressive, unpredictable animals, until she and I began talking dogs together and I could give her a better picture that they, like many terriers, tend to have high prey drives and a fairly high incidence of dog aggression, but by and large can be extremely sweet and loving towards humans and make excellent pets for many people, so long as they understand the breed tendencies and are prepared for them. Just like lots of breeds, honestly. Would the ban still be in place if more of the Norwegian dog community had an accurate view of these breeds' real temperaments and what owning and managing them was like? I honestly don't know.

There is some talk in the Norwegian dog community of movements to ban certain breeds - or at least ban their breeding - due to how poor their health is. Cavaliers are on that list, and maybe English Bulldogs? I'm not sure off the top of my head (I can read a fair bit of Norwegian but it still takes me a while to muddle through it, so I'm not going to take the time to look it up right now unless someone's very interested, lol). While I agree that these breeds are in crisis and something absolutely needs to be done to improve their health as a whole, this legislation worries me because it sets an uncomfortable precedent for legislation around dog ownership, care, and breeding that could easily get out of hand. Norway takes its animal welfare legislation seriously, which I appreciate, but they do take it too far sometimes (see: BSL and also it was actually illegal to own ANY reptile when I first moved here. Now there's a short list of approved species).

...I know it's a cultural thing, so forgive me if this is in any way insensitive, but I am bemused at the idea of a whole country banning a breed due to size. I've known a couple of the real giants (St. Bernards, Leonbergers, Bernese Mountain Dogs) who are just super laid-back and chill, and do better in small living spaces than high-energy smaller breeds (like my own ~15kg Lagotto Romagnolo, who is being brought out to run around an empty sheep field in a couple hours so he doesn't drive everyone in the apartment crazy). Not saying that's the case for something like a Fila, I don't know the breed well enough to judge, but in my experience size does not always indicate what's a good small-living-space dog. A culture where people expect dogs to tolerate each other but don't go around trying to get on-leash dogs to say hi to each other sounds pretty great, though, wish more places were like that.

 

[DaySleepers]

Yeah, I can't speak to it from a personal perspective because I've never lived there permanently, but the UK breed ban was (and is) a much bigger mess because of the amount of banned breeds and possible mixes in the country when it happened. That's where I've heard lots of stories of family pets that aren't even confirmed bully mixes being seized and euthanized. Total nightmare.

You're probably right about the perspectives on aggression, which is super interesting. Norway definitely has a more Westernized outlook (just to clarify, not saying that's a necessarily good thing, lol) - maybe a little better than the US in understanding that dogs are animals who do animal things, but that could also be that I spend more time with dog-savvy people here than I did in the US.

I do think there's a difference between dogs who show aggression towards humans in a way that's seen as appropriate by their owner and local community and ones who show it in a way that becomes a problem for their owner and community, but the line is too fuzzy for any label to be really accurate. While there absolutely are dogs who are too unstable and unpredictable to be safe in any circumstances, you definitely also have dogs who would be perfectly correct in their temperament if they were doing their ancestral 'job', but become a menace when an unprepared owner decides they want to own one in a suburb or city. That's why I like dangerous dog laws over BSL - they don't punish people keeping and managing the breed appropriately because someone else thought they could bring a Komondor into their townhouse and it'd just be a big, sheepy lab.

I'm an outcross person. Outcross everything (...with purpose and appropriate testing and everything, not just willy-nilly). Open stud books. This idea of permanently closed studbooks is going to have every purebred in jeopardy eventually. To be fair, the discussion happening in Norway is after several years where the government gave breeders time to try to improve the standard of health in the problem breeds, but it just hasn't happened. I won't speculate as to why, since I'm not involved in those breed communities.

I can definitely see where the idea of big dogs in small living quarters being inhumane came from. It absolutely can be in some situations, though as I said before, there's definitely some giant breeds that do better in small living spaces (assuming they get exercise outside the home of course) than smaller breeds, so it's not universal. Reminds me of how some cultures have banned crates and will vehemently argue that they're always cruel when they save the life of many dogs (because they can't get into dangerous things in a crate, because crating can be an important part of managing and resolving problem behaviors that may get the dog surrendered to the shelter system or euthanized, etc). They can absolutely be abused, but that doesn't make them inherently cruel.

But I'm also aware that I grew up in a country with a serious dog overpopulation problem, and that dogs being given up on due to a behavior issue is often a death sentence for them, because there's so many adoptable dogs in the US shelter systems who DON'T have a known serious behavior issue. And that people in apartments or other small-space living arrangements owning dogs of all sizes in an ethical and humane way means more dogs get homes. So my perspective is absolutely skewed as well towards "if it keeps a dog in a stable, responsible home, that's more humane than life in a shelter kennel and premature euthanasia". Which... well, I hope some day I won't have to look at things that way, you know?