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http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/news/1760177,3_1_EL09_06COUNCIL_EL_S1-090909.article

Pit bull owner to plead breed’s case

September 9, 2009
By MIKE DANAHEY mdanahey@scn1.com

ELGIN — Joe Remijas and his dog Taysia recently made their 700th therapeutic pet visit in the Elgin area.

On Wednesday night, Remijas intends to address the city council during the public comments portion of its regular meeting, in part to advocate that dogs such as his pit bull are not banned one day from Elgin.

Remijas said he has heard that some council members favor a breed-specific ban, perhaps one that would give residents 30 days to register pit bulls already here but would forbid any more dogs of that kind in the city once those already here pass or move away.

“I hope they don’t ban pit bulls but make whatever they do apply to every breed of dog,” Remijas said.

There had been talk of the council this month considering a draft of an ordinance giving Elgin’s existing animal control laws more teeth. But City Manager Sean Stegall said Tuesday that no specific date has been set for its presentation. Stegall said that although a majority of the document has been written, it is still a work in progress, and it is still too early to tell if it will amount to a full-out breed ban.

Staff is looking at the availability of space at local animal shelters and what other cities are doing in regard to pit bulls and dogs deemed dangerous. It also is weighing how whatever is proposed can be accomplished, given that the city has just one police officer specifically assigned to animal control, Stegall said.

Remijas also attended a council meeting with other pit bull owners back in 2006, when the council was first flirting with passing a ban on pit bulls.

Remijas said he adopted Taysia when she was 6 months old from the Anderson Animal Shelter in South Elgin, where Remijas is a volunteer. The two have been visiting both Provena Saint Joseph Hospital and Rosewood Care Center on a weekly basis since 2003.

While Taysia offers an example of how docile pit bulls can be if raised correctly, what prompted consideration of banning the breed was an incident in May when a Chihuahua was mauled to death by two pit bulls on Elgin’s near-west side.

Violent attack

Since that time, there has been at least one other violent incident involving other pit bulls in Elgin, according to police. On the night of June 24, a 46-year-old woman reported that she was sitting outside her house on Summit Street, with the rear door open to let in a breeze, when two pit bulls ran into her yard and then her home.

According to a redacted police report, the dogs were going after cats the woman owns and bit a kitten. The woman used a broom to ward off the dogs, which fled the house by tearing through a front screen door. She then heard a 21-year-old woman call for the dogs and put them in a house. A 23-year-old man who identified himself as the dogs’ owner was given a citation for having dogs at large, reports stated.

According to information provided by Elgin police animal control Officer James Rog, there were 369 reports involving animal bites in the city from 2006 through Aug. 31 of this year, with 71 of those involving dogs identified as pit bulls. Rog said dogs made up about 90 percent of all those bite cases, which also include cats and wild animals. Rog declined to say if pit bulls made up the most cases of any single breed.

Research conducted for Utah-based animal welfare advocacy group Best Friends Animal Society by Brooklyn-based economist John Dunham & Associates estimates that a town such as Elgin would have almost 20,000 dogs, with about 1,400 of those “pit bull-type dogs.” The annual costs associated with a ban in the city would be more than $130,000, according to the study’s estimates.

Staff writer Steven Ross Johnson contributed to this story.