SACRAMENTO, CA - A pit bull attack that left a woman in Stockton dead Thursday has re-ignited a debate about the breed: Is their reputation for violence deserved?

STORY: Woman killed in apparent pit bull attack in Stockton ID'd

Owners of American Staffordshire Terriers competing at Cal Expo's Sacramento Kennel Club Dog Show will tell you their dogs are often mistaken by the public for pit bulls, so they're intimately aware of the public scorn for pit bulls.

That's especially true for Richard Chatigny. After years of raising Amstaffs and other dogs, he and his wife adopted a pit bull named Sadie.

"She's the calmest. She's the most obedient. She's the most accepting of anybody and everybody. She's a great ambassador," Chatigny said of Sadie.

The California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis has been cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for not preventing illness or injury to a number of rhesus macaque monkeys housed at the center three years ago, UC Davis officials reported today. The citation carried no fines or enforcement actions.

The USDA citation stemmed from the deaths of 19 animals in the primate center’s outdoor breeding colony in 2009 and 2010.

The deaths were related to infections, injuries and/or inadequate maternal care, common causes of mortality in outdoor colonies, especially among younger animals.

"We take our responsibility to care for these animals very seriously. We are committed to doing everything we can to improve," said Dallas Hyde, professor of veterinary medicine at UC Davis and the center's director... Read More

Part of the ancient mystery of the makeup of the modern Western dog has been solved by a team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine.

Several thousand years after dogs originated in the Middle East and Europe, some of them moved south with ancient farmers, distancing themselves from native wolf populations and developing a distinct genetic profile that is now reflected in today’s canines.

These findings, based on the rate of genetic marker mutations in the dog’s Y chromosome, supply the missing piece to the puzzle of when ancient dogs expanded from Southeast Asia. The study results are published online this month in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution... Read More