Customer Reviews

Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I respect Vicki Hearne, I like this book. Bandit, and his case that Vicki fought for so well was a very important watermark in exposing the myths and half truths that cause so many local authorities accross the country to blindly deem certain breeds of dogs as dangerous. I want to love this book because of this, however, for me the book was to difficult to read. Vicki uses extremely complicated sentence structure and seems to enjoy putting the reader through the wringer before she makes her point. I had to come back to this book a few times to finish it. I believe this is a story we all should be aware of, unfortunately the style of writing alienates it from a good deal of it's prospective audience. If you're well read, go for it, if not just expect to go through a mental obstacle course before the book is finished!

Ok, ok, Hearne can be annoying with the long philosophical musings. (She comes across as someone who's been made to feel small by academics and is putting on airs.) But, Honey, Vicki Hearne knows dogs.

Hearne has great, intuitive, gut-instinct about people and dogs. This gripping story. (Skip the "philosophy" which seems weirdly inserted into this fascinating story anyway.) Hearne has done the research. She understands and communicates the myriad elements of the pit bull and dangerous dog hysteria. You'll come to the end of _Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog_, a well informed citizen on the issue of blanket, breed specific, dog bans.

Your heart will be touched by old Bandit's story. You might not take your right to dog companionship quite so much for granted anymore. You may find (god forbid)you need this information in your own town. As for the reviews above mine... you have to understand (or admit) everybody is an expert when it comes to dogs. The backbiting in the dog world... well, it's no pun.

Update 9/18/06: Vicki Hearn died a couple of years ago at way too young an age. Dogs have one less advocate.

Some people object to Vicki Hearne's writing style (smart girls can be annoying). Others feel her training methods were too harsh. But Vicki Hearne knew a great dog, and how to write about one. Be warned: This book is politically incorrect and may make you do something really stupid, like adopt a pit bull. Vicki Hearne is, after all, the one who said, "It is true that Pit Bulls grab and hold on. But what they most often grab and refuse to let go of is your heart, not your arm."

This isn't a book about dog training, although it talks about that quite a bit. It's not even a book about dogs really, although it talks about dogs all the time. It's really about our relationships with dogs, how they fit into our lives and our society and our mythology. Hearne taught poetry at Yale, but her real calling seems to be dog training. Her writing is funny and dry and full of information, and sooner or later she'll say something that annoys you. But if you can't take a little annoyance you should have a dog. And she's probably only annoying you because you are carrying around some misconception about dogs.

I have owned and trained multiple breed of dogs and Ms Hearne is very right about the issue. This book should be mandatory to be read by anyone and everyone of the dumb politicians that come up with those stupid bans. This book is very true and is a must read, whether you are a dog owner (of any breed) or not.

This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the problem of biting dogs. It is extremely well-written, researched, referenced, and very informative.

My one reservation is that the author advocates the use of choke-collar training. There is so much to be gained from modern psychology and operant conditioning when training an animal. Pain in animal training is totally obsolete.

But this one small quibble doesn't spoil an otherwise engaging and thought provoking read! Very few fiction or non-fiction dog books can hold a candle to this one in scholarship and quality of writing.You will need to read it at least twice to absorb all the subtleties.

An extended and beautifully written book on an insight of Hannah Arendt's, that goodness that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil.

Emmanuel Levinas, at the end of an essay on Heidegger's Nazism, ``The diabolical is not limited to the wickedness popular wisdom ascribes to it and whose malice, based on guile, is familiar and predictable in an adult culture. The diabolical is endowed with intelligence and enters where it will. To reject it, it is first necessary to refute it. Intellectual effort is needed to recognize it. Who can boast of having done so? Say what you will, the diabolical gives food for thought.''

This book is some of that intellectual effort towards the future of dogs.

The late Vicky Hearne was never considered a great trainer across the board. Those that believe in Positive Reinforcement training consider her techniques and ideology to be cruel and unnecessary. For instance: holding a dogs head in a hole filled with water to stop the dog from digging. There are other methods that can stop the behavior without using such barbaric methods. Her techniques should not be used, and notice, the aggressive dogs she deals with are never rehabilitated into mainstream doggy life as it were. They are never trained to the point of being trusted. So much for her methods.

Hearne's beautifully written book is, oddly, never referenced by people who loudly defend the 'fighting' breeds of dog from scrutiny. Hearne was a skilled and charismatic writer who can almost sell the utter malarkey that pit bulls have been unfairly maligned by 'the media' and 'hysteria.' But apparently, her complex, elliptical writing style and fascination with philosophy are a 'downer' for people who just want outrage stories about beaten dogs and biased media outlets. How very revealing.

I started reading the book with quite high expectations, and at first these were fulfilled. However, after a while, Vicki Hearne's personal opinions of dog people and the world in general becomes uninteresting and at times even annoying. It would help if she stuck at least a little bit more to the subject matter, the story of Bandit and the problem about dangerous dogs in general. But instead, she glides off into philosophical thoughts which nobody really wants to hear about anyway and trying to convince the rest of the world about the viciousness of the media and politicians. Still, it was a nice, but different attempt to the dog-bites-person problem.