Work pix: Dog Safety Seminar

I attended one of these two years ago, which I mentioned at the time. I was hoping to see her Dogo again, but she said it had died last year of lymphoma. However, this time they had a Presa Canario.

click to enlarge all

This dog was freakin' huge. Follow the Wikipedia link for more details if you're interested. Suffice it to say that if one of these decides to attack you and you are unable to put a bullet into its head, you are most likely going to die. I've never seen any of these around S.A. They're still fairly hard to find and quite expensive in the U.S. She said they had rescued this one from someone's back yard in Missouri; when she talked to the guy on the phone and tried to explain what would be done with the dog, he replied, "I don't give a sh*t what you do with it, just get it out of here." With its present owners (the man and woman in the photos) it is very affectionate and obedient. I wouldn't want to be a stranger in its territory, though. The dog above weighed about 140 pounds, and it's still growing. She expects it to weigh around 200 pounds by the time it's full-grown.

The breed has become infamous mostly for this incident. Upon scanning this Wikipedia document, I don't notice the big detail, perhaps it was edited out. Anyway, the big detail that gained the breed notoriety was that the male dog consumed some 4 pounds of the human victim while she was still alive. The woman running the seminar said, "And because of this, every crazy person in the country wanted one."

I also thought it interesting that she mentioned that "cops kill more dogs in training...you wouldn't believe it. Anytime I'm asked to hold a seminar for cops, I say NO. Because they're all lunkheads."

Sorry for the lousy photos. Next time I upgrade my phone, the most important thing I'm going to look for is the quality of the photos it takes.