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Denver ban spawns dog underworld

DENVER - A few weeks ago, two police cars and two animal control vehicles pulled up at the home of Stef'ny Steffen looking for her beloved 4-year-old pit bullterrier, Xena. Seven officers hauled the animal off to the city shelter, putting her on death row.

Xena became an outlaw after Denver won a court fight and reinstated one of the toughest pit-bull bans in the nation. Since May, more than 380 dogs have been impounded and at least 260 destroyed - an average of more than three a day.

Dog owners are in a panic. Some are using an underground railroad of sorts, sending their pets to live elsewhere or hiding them. City officials would not estimate how many people might be violating the ordinance.

Some owners, like Steffen, have won a reprieve for their pets with help from a rescue group. The group got Xena released by signing an affidavit stating that the animal would never return to Denver. The group took the dog to Mariah's Promise in Divide, an animal sanctuary that has accepted more than three dozen pit bulls from Denver.

Steffen said leaving Xena 60 miles from home was her only choice.

"It's safer than animal control. Safer than keeping her underground - at least she'll be able to play now," Steffen said. "But she'll miss us. We're her pack."

Denver is one of three major metropolitan areas, along with Miami and Cincinnati, to ban pit bulls, said Glen Bui, vice president of the American Canine Foundation.

Denver's ban applies to any dog that looks like a pit bull. The animal's actual behavior does not matter.

City Council member Charlie Brown said that in his judgment, "pit bulls are trained to attack. They're bred to do that."

Critics of the ban use words like "annihilation" and "genocide," and the city shelter has received e-mails likening animal control officers to Nazis.

Denver banned pit bulls in 1989 after dogs mauled a minister and killed a boy in separate attacks.

The Legislature passed a law in 2004 that prohibited breed-specific bans, but the city sued and a judge ruled in April that the law was an unconstitutional violation of local control.

Critics of the ordinance say that a blanket ban on an entire breed is misguided that the law should instead target irresponsible owners and all dangerous dogs.

"If anyone says one dog is more likely to kill - unless there's a study out there that I haven't seen - that's not based on scientific data," said Julie Gilchrist, a doctor at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who researches dog bites.

[Last modified July 21, 2005, 00:57:10]