Yet another group is a victim of discrimination...

Yet another group is a victim of discrimination

There were a lot of heroes on and post September 11th. One group that is often seen in videos of the days after the attack is the Search and Rescue (SAR) dog teams combing the scene for survivors. SAR dogs were a vital part of the response team. Several hundred dogs, along with their handlers, worked 12 hour shifts on the dangerous pile of rubble seeking survivors. Many of these heroes were German Shepherd police dogs and many suffered from cuts, breaks, and dehydration. Veterinary Medical Assistant Teams were on site to administer IVs, flush eyes, clean wounds, etc. These dogs were exposed to asbestos and other toxins in the air as well as to poisons and fires on the ground.

Days of national disasters aren’t the only time that SAR dogs work. They often are called in to subdue a dangerous criminal or to search for missing children or even to visit nursing homes as therapy. Many German Shepherd dogs are chosen as guide dogs that allow blind or other challenged people to have a quality life. Yet these working canines are among the dogs that are now the victims of selective discrimination by the insurance industry. Some homeowner’s insurance policies blacklist certain dogs being allowed coverage. This means that one of the handlers, who many times is a police officer, may not be able to get homeowner’s insurance because their company blacklists breeds that it deems ‘dangerous’. So a Shepherd or a Rottweiler can put its life on the line with its handler but it may not be able to live with her.

Dogs cannot be the victim of profiling. If a dog is vicious – it is not a breed issue. It is an owner issue.

A second from of bias occurs when insurance companies permit the dogs in question but then require a fenced yard. Individuals in condos and townhomes (where many cannot fence in) then become a target too. This is not only unjust but it is baseless. A fence may actually cause more bites. An owner with a yard is apt to ‘let the dog out’ and not walk him or train him properly ‘because we have this big yard.’ A dog is more apt to be left alone outside, bored, and unexercised. This, too, can lead to aggression. So requiring a fence eliminates some owners from consideration and is utterly nonsensical as a protectant. A high energy dog requires a forty five minute to one hour walk regardless of its property size.

The Humane Society estimates that 40% of us own a dog. German Shepherds are the #3 most popular dog in America according to the American Kennel Club (Rottweilers are #17) for the year 2006. So a lot of families have these two dogs. Bites occur to nearly 2% of the population each year from all dogs combined. Most can be attributed to poor socialization, poor training, not spaying or neutering and just plain not supervising correctly. These are all owner faults. It is not the dogs fault.

Phil Supple, Director of Media for State Farm, said in a 2003 article on Insure.com, “We believe that there are good dogs and bad dogs within every breed, just as we believe that there are responsible and irresponsible owners.” The article also stated that State Farm doesn’t discriminate against breeds. They do, however, want to know if a dog has bitten anyone before. They will look at the circumstances of the attack in that case. Was it provoked or unprovoked? How serious was the injury? State Farm, and other companies that are fair to dog owners, are rightfully concerned with unprovoked attacks. (Anyone who has picked up a newspaper over the past few weeks knows all about the current controversy with Congo and the debate over why a provoked dog might be executed.)

Some of the large insurance carriers won’t cover homes in certain areas if a restricted dog is present. It’s actually easier to get coverage with a handgun in the house than with a Siberian Husky present. Some states ban this practice, and rightfully so. There are bills in several other states looking to ban the practice.

State Representative Robert Menga (D-New Haven) Connecticut wrote bill HB 6543 a few years ago. I interviewed Rep. Menga online from 12/13/07 to 12/14/07. He said, “I wrote the bill to be very accommodating to the insurance industry. It said that breed in itself could not be used to deny a homeowner policy. However the insurance company could require underwriting guidelines with each breed, such as obedience training, neutering, no children in household, no nearby school, etc.... If the guidelines were not met then the insurance company could deny coverage based on breed. I thought it would give the chance of responsible dog owners of certain breeds the ability to buy insurance in the same market as most homeowners.”

Representative Menga added, “The [insurance (my addition)] industry fought me hard. Lobbied the entire legislature. It was an 80 minute floor debate in the house. The speaker held the machine open and helped me influence a few house members to put the vote count over the top.”

But the bill failed in the Senate. Insurance companies that did underwriting in urban areas, like Allstate, lobbied hard against it.

New Jersey legislators need to sponsor a bill similar to the one written by State Rep. Robert Menga in Connecticut and make this practice illegal. Certain requirements could be acceptable. These requirements would apply to all breeds of dog for the betterment of everyone, man and dog alike. For instance, a dog must be spayed or neutered if they do not belong to a breeder (besides helping to control the pet population – 70% of dog attacks are by unneutered males) by the age of 8 months. One must post signs on front windows indicating a dog’s presence and its breed. These could be printed by the insurance company much like car security stickers are mailed out to auto policy owners whose vehicles have alarms. One would be prohibited from chaining a dog up outside for more than 30 minutes on any given day as chaining can lead to poor health and aggression. Owners must sign a pledge to follow local leash laws and promise to curb their dogs.

Dogs that gave and continue to give so much to us deserve the right to a good home in New Jersey. Racism of any kind is wrong and that is exactly what is being practiced by many of our country’s insurance companies.