What's a dog-loving city to do?

One look at Colleen Lynn's arm, and I was chilled — then enraged.

She bears six purple marks where a pit bull's teeth sunk in, and a plate beneath her skin to shore up a fractured bone. Six months after Lynn was attacked while running on Beacon Hill, her arm is just 25 percent healed. And that's nothing special.

Between January 2002 and August 2007, the city of Seattle recorded 1,519 dog bites. Pit bulls were responsible for 361 of them — 24 percent.

Last month, a Seattle police officer shot and killed two pit bulls after they entered a yard and attacked a German shepherd, then cornered at least one person in another yard.

There are more pit bulls than any other breed at the Seattle Animal Shelter. On Friday, there were 21 dogs there; nine were pit bulls or mixes. "The shelter is disproportionately filled with pit bulls at any given moment," director Don Jordan told me.

Attacks. Fear. All in one of the most dog-friendly cities in the country.

Lynn, 38, a freelance Web designer, has been slowly, tentatively researching a citywide ban on pit bulls, or a requirement that the dogs be sterilized. "I have to prepare myself to be massively intimidated," Lynn said Monday. "But we need to recognize the problem. Our community is suffering."

I am with her, but I hesitate, too. Banning any breed would be tough for the city to enforce. And, like anything else, there are exceptions to every rule.

Ledy Van Kavage, senior director of legal training and legislation with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said breed bans are ineffective and a waste of money.

"This is America," she said. "You should be able to own whatever breed you want."

Oh, but not in Denver, Lexington, Ky., Miami-Dade County, Fla. — or Enumclaw, which passed an ordinance banning pit bulls in 1990.

Enumclaw has a contract with King County Animal Control, which investigates complaints and determines whether a particular dog is, in fact, a pit bull. If it is, it's placed in the county shelter. "It's not that big of an issue for us," said City Administrator Mark Bauer. "A couple a year at most."

Jordan, of the Seattle shelter, doesn't think Seattle should follow suit, but instead enhance the dog laws that are already on the books. Punish owners who don't leash or train any and all dogs.

Before pit bulls, he said, the status dogs were Rottweilers and Dobermans. You don't hear about them anymore.

"You want laws that address the actions of all breeds," he said. "Because if you ban 25 percent of the dogs in Seattle, what are you doing about the other 75 percent?"

Lynn isn't buying it.

"It's not about hating people or loving pit bulls," Lynn said. "It's about victims and victims' recourse and the public policy around it."

In the meantime, she is starting a support group for dog-bite victims, Families and Dogs Against Fighting Breeds (www.fdafb.org).

I remembered a dog once bit my sister in the throat, where she still has a scar.

Which breed?

"A dachshund," she said.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Muffy never bit.