Though perhaps some of my five readers own what I call "vicious dogs" and this topic might offend, I have to air this opinion anyway.

At work a lady a couple of seats behind me was late to work. She's white, probably late 40's, very outdoorsy, very "Granola," and often talks about her Rottweiler dogs. She said she was late because one of the dogs had given birth to half-a-dozen puppies. "The last time one of my dogs gave birth it had 12," she said.

"I guess I'd rather get mauled by six Rottweilers than 12," I said. Of course this set her off reciting the same old tired defenses of her dogs that all owners of dangerous animals spout when someone points out that their pets could potentially kill them or someone around them. "Yeah, you have to make them mean," I said in a sarcastic, sing-song, space cadet voice, "They're really sweet and lovable." Indeed, she said, the only mean Rottweilers she had ever seen had been kept away from people. If the dogs were bad it was because of the owners, not the dogs.

She started telling me that Rottweilers were a breed that went back 2,000 years, and they were bred to pull meat wagons for butchers. I silently wondered if she had that fact right, but I did know something about butchers and another dangerous dog, the pit bull.

Pit bulls were bred by butchers to assist with slaughtering cows. Butchers would turn the dog loose to grab a bull by either the throat or the nose to pull them into the butcher shop. Of course at first the bull would toss it's head back and forth trying to shake the dog loose, so they were bred to never let go. Eventually the bull that weighed about a ton would relent to the dog that weighed maybe 60 lbs.

"Oh, what you're saying makes sense, then!," she said. She said that on her farm she had some new calves, and a friend with a pit bull had come over and when the dog saw the cows it went crazy. It crawled under the fence and immediately set upon one of the calves, giving it six puncture wounds. It only let go after they beat on it relentlessly; I can't believe it didn't go after them next.

So what do you guess happened there? Was her friend just a bad pit bull owner? Had the dog been kept away from cows too much and it didn't know how to handle it when it saw one? Or was it because the thing was bred hundreds of years ago to attack large animals?

Just like that ding-dong of a few months ago with the orangutan or chimpanzee that she was bathing and sharing glasses of wine with. Wasn't it cute? It wore a little ball cap and rode a tricycle! Adorable! Until it got loose and reverted to its natural instincts and ripped her friend's face off. But I'm sure when it had bared its teeth and grabbed for other people in town she had told them they were just being paranoid and it was a teddy bear.

My dog was just a little beagle-dachshund mix that was very peaceable, but when he got older and more crotchety he tried to attack a couple of people, probably because his hearing had gone down and he had thought they snuck up on him. Whatever the case, even a little beagle-dachshund will attack sometime, but at least you have a fighting chance with one of those.

So what's my point? That potentially dangerous dogs should be confiscated and perhaps their owners should be gassed along with them by the Humane Society? I don't know. I just don't like big, dangerous dogs.