You’ve got to know thats the most idiotic argument ever.If a million babies a year were killed by their cribs it would never justify having any killed by dogs.The fact that your argument is so asnine says something about you!Your practically a moron!!
Moderator interjects: Both of you, KNOCK IT OFF. Personal insults are NOT permitted in this forum. You may comment on what the other person has to say, but NOT on him as a person. Our philosophy is generally that we try to have rational, civil discussions without stooping to name-calling.
hamhawk, I understand that you have had a horrible experience that colors your attitude. Still, our goal here is for rational and calm discussion. If you’d like to just blow off steam about pit bulls or their owners, you might go to the forum called The BBQ Pit. Our goal in this forum is exchange of ideas and information, sharing knowledge, learning from each other in a calm and polite manner.
Cool it, both of you, NOW.
The point is threefold –
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ALLLLLL dogs can cause serious injury or death (see my lnk to the blog describing a Jack Russell terrier killing a human)
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The incidence of deaths caused by dogs is statistically so low that it would be far down any list of concerns for legislation
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Pit bulls are less – yes, dog experts agree, much less – likely to hurtchildren than other breeds.
So I DO have a dog much less likely to cause harm. Thanks for the suggestion!
As do attacks by other dogs, and for that matters adult humans. Sad, but not a pit-bull-specific issue.
Is this comment not an insult because it uses big words?
No, pit bulls were not bred to fight humans. Pit bulls were bred to fight DOGS. Pit bulls can, by the way, tell the difference. I don’t know why we believe (enough to enshrine in case law!) that a bloodhound can identify a particular man, but refuse to believe a pit bull can identify (and react differently to) a human and a dog. Remember, in general, pit bulls are very deferential toward humans, and make poor guard dogs because they tend to like strangers.
You mean they fought dogs, not humans?
And humans caged together in an unnatural environment never fight, right?
And Golden Retrievers can be caged with ducks at the shelter and won’t harm them?
Because otherwise you’re not making much of a point.
The term “game” (a dogfighting term I hate) refers to a dog’s willingness to endure pain and fear, not his likelihood of attacking another dog. The word for that, I think (I don’t read much dogfighting literature), is “hotness.” “Gameness” is a psychosis in the same sense that relentlessly retrieving a ball is a psychosis, or barking at every stranger, or any other intense trait in an animal (or human).
That aside, neither a normal “game” or “hot” dog would think of assaulting a human. The term used to describe pit bulls that assault humans is “unsound,” and as far as I know, not even the worst dogfighters would breed such an animal.
It’s worth noting that my sister has a miniature poodle registered with the county as a dangerous dog.
No, it’s not an insult because it’s referring to a large group of people with a political agenda. It’s not different from insulting Republicans or anti-gun activists or … Those are all large groups of people with a strong stand on an issue, some of whom happen to be posters.
We don’t have rules against insulting such groups (or any outsiders, for that matter); our rules are against insulting other posters. Yes, I agree that there’s some slight awkwardness – insulting “all Democrats” is insulting some of our posters. But it’s usually a question of the thrust or implication. I see Left Hand’s comment as being addressed at a large group with a stance on an issue; I saw your comment as being addressed only at one poster.
OK, although I intended it to apply to everyone who ignores a greater threat while cherry-picking a much smaller threat (the collective “you,” in other words. But I understand intent is obscure. I apologize to all concerned.
If it helps anyone in understanding, my vehemence is due to seeing myths repeated which slander, and even endanger, my family members. Dogs don’t post here, so they’re not protected from insults.
Yes, and people die of papercuts too. You are trying blindingly obvious statistical ploys and deceptive segues to try to make your points, and all you are succeeding in doing is making me believe that your position is most likely crap or else you wouldn’t have to be so underhanded. You are also insulting the intelligence of your audience if you think you are fooling anyone.
Using a qualitative (small dogs can cause injury and death) statistic to arrive at the conclusion you cannot reduce the risk of your dog causing injury and death by buying a small one is as stupid an attempt at persuasive rhetoric as ever one comes across.
Sure they do. I believe you as much as I believe that you are honest with statistics.
Hmmm. Since the prior statement was about “every second you spend on this message board,” I took the “you” in the next statement to be a continuation. It can be a problem with the word “you” in American English. I’m in a rush at the moment, I will reverse the Official Warning but I won’t change the verbal (post). Fair enough? And please be careful in future.
Princhester, I believe that Sailboat was being deliberately hyperbolic in that post for the sake of satire. It was in response to hamhawk and the perceived “think of the children” argument.
Regarding SIDS, Sailboat was trying to point out the statistical significance of dog bite deaths as compared to other situations in daily life. SIDS has a far greater incidence rate. Or one could look at statistics for drownings, or deaths of children in car accidents, or in-home poisonings, or any number of other dangers to children and the effective death and injury rates. Just to put dog bites in perspective.
Be that as it may, it is fair to address Sailboat’s point thusly: just because one danger exists does not make another danger ignorable.
Pit bulls were bred to fight DOGS. Pit bulls can, by the way, tell the difference. I don’t know why we believe (enough to enshrine in case law!) that a bloodhound can identify a particular man, but refuse to believe a pit bull can identify (and react differently to) a human and a dog.Because pitbulls are dumb dogs!
The point is threefold –
-
ALLLLLL dogs can cause serious injury or death (see my lnk to the blog describing a Jack Russell terrier killing a human)
-
The incidence of deaths caused by dogs is statistically so low that it would be far down any list of concerns for legislation
-
Pit bulls are less – yes, dog experts agree, much less – likely to hurtchildren than other breeds.
So I DO have a dog much less likely to cause harm. Thanks for the suggestion!
Why even waste my time arguing with gibberish such as this.YOUR DISMISSED!!!SAYONARRA
Nice summary Cecil … better than most of the crap on the web.
I’d like to emphasize one point that is not adequately explained by Cecil. The question is NOT whether pit bulls are involved in a higher percentage of fatal dog attacks (or non fatal for that matter) than other breeds, but what percentage of the entire pit bull population is engaged in fatal (or serious) dog attacks. Example: In the U.S. each year, about 15 out of a conservative nationwide population of 3 million pit bulls are engaged in fatal dog attacks. The math is quite simple and yields a .0001% ratio. That’s right people … one one thousandth of one percent of the pit bull population is involved in fatal attacks … Statisticians refer to such numbers are “infinitesimally small” or “statistically irrelevant”. If these dogs are dangerous, vicious killers, what are the other 2,999,985 other pit bulls doing each year?
I mean no disrespect to dog attack victims, but we can’t draw conclusions about dogs or anything else in society based on irrational fears. Frankly, one could make the case that the .0001% number provides strong statistical proof (if not irrefutable), that pit bulls are a safe bet.
Why? It seems to me that if the question is whether Pit Bulls are more dangerous than other dogs, as it was, then it’s perfectly reasonable to compare them with other dogs.
Looking at fatal attacks alone is useful, but only really if we have some cutoff point where a certain amount is useful to us to know. That is to say, 15 deaths a year doesn’t sound good to me, but how many is too many, or many is very few?
Rev -
Point well taken, but the inquirer’s original title was ‘Are these pit bulls really that dangerous’ … I think Cecil and other inquiring minds find it more helpful to examine whether the breed is dangerous (in general) rather than ‘compared to other dogs’.
On your 2nd point, certainly all fatal dog attacks are tragic, but death occurs to people at much higher rates from all sorts of strange means, avoidable and unavoidable (e.g. slipping in the tub kills hundreds of people per year). 15 may sound alarming to you, but relatively speaking it is statistically not relevant enough to draw conclusions. I would also encourage you to read the circumstances behind those 15 - 20 deaths per year … in most cases there is no verification of the breed and incredible human negligence involved.
Helpful, sure, but I don’t know about “more” helpful. All danger requires a comparison of some kind in order to be relevant; you feel that it’s more appropriate to compare Pit Bull-attributed fatal attacks to fatalities by things in general, but i’d tend to say that’s too wide a comparison. We do need some sort of baseline, something that we can compare 15 deaths per year to to know whether that’s a lot or very few, and it makes sense to me that we should be comparing against dogs as well as potentially dangerous things in general.
More people have tubs than do Pit Bulls; it’s quite possible for there to be many hundreds of times more deaths from tubs than deaths from Pit Bulls, yet Pit Bulls be the more dangerous proportionally (i’m not saying this is so, just giving an example). Statistically speaking, it’s certainly relevant, in that it pertains to the subject at hand; tiny numbers are also not, necessarily, statistically irrelevant, since comparison plays a considerable role in determining significance. You really can’t take a single number and declare it insignificant based on its unlikelihood, let alone call it close to irrefutable.
Too, if breed verification is an issue, likely as not it is an issue the other way as well; there may be incorrect cases of non-Pit Bulls being identified as such, but also cases of Pit Bulls not being identified as such. Likewise human negligence could also be a factor in non-Pit Bull fatal attacks, bumping up their numbers as well.
Rev -
You make some valid points and I always enjoy hearing other perspectives.
But I try to keep things simple and what I think most people ultimately care about when they bring up “the pit bull issue” is whether or not they are in danger when around these dogs (either as pets or in random encounters). Even if you want to assume that pit bulls bite and kill at a rate 10x greater than the next worst breed of dog (an extreme falsehood), the actual number of perpetrators relative to the total pit bull population is still staggeringly low, especially when you consider the bizarre circumstances under which many of these attacks occur. When 99%+ of dogs within any breed category – be they labs, pit bulls, or poodles – are not maiming or killing people, what value can really be derived from comparing one breed to the next? For instance, would it really matter to you if .005% of pit bulls caused harmed to people while only .0001% of labs did the same? If it does, I’d love to hear why.
No matter what sort of math you want to throw at it, you will be hard pressed to come with any statistic that shows even 1% of a particular breed is threatening human safety. I suppose this is why I urge people to put these attacks into relative perspective and to consider the simple yet powerful fact that the overwhelming majority of pit bulls are not causing any harm to anyone.
That was a crappy response. He was saying that since he worked with dogs for a living , he could talk with experience and a degree of expertise . It was his experience that pits would tear up each other in cages. That is a fair observation.
Maths does what you want it to. For example, you could describe the same statistics as Pit Bulls being an order of magnitude more dangerous than other breeds, or them being 50 times as likely to cause harm; very emotionally “scary” forms of the same basic statistic.
And yes, I think it would matter. It seems to met that if a species of dog is so apparently more dangerous - even if the number of actual attacks will be low - then there need to be questions asked about why this is so, and if they could be prevented, to an extent greater than those same questions about dogs in general. It would suggest that there is some factor at play beyond simple incidence; and that, since lives are at risk, even a small number of lives, it’s likely worth trying to find out what that factor (or factors) is.
That, for the most part, there is no problem, doesn’t mean that for those cases where there is a problem we can disregard it. Certainly things like this need to be put into perspective, but it’s easy to go too far one way as it is the other. Beyond that, it’s pretty possible to come up with “simple yet powerful” facts on whichever side.
I never said to disregard the fatal cases … I just don’t believe the number of cases are significantly high enough to draw sweeping conclusions about the breed. I’m all for exploring the causes of dog attacks and how to prevent them … Vet & author Karen Delise has written extensively on this subject and comes to the same conclusion most rational thinkers do … that breed is NOT a major contributing factor to dog attacks. If we spent more resources on dog bite education and enforcing existing dangerous dog laws rather than legislating breeds bans & breed genocide, then we’d all be safer.
Indeed. I’ll defer to sailboat’s point that the term I should’ve used is “hotness”; I’ve tended to understand “game” to refer to all the traits a pit needs to survive in the pit, but s/he’s right that the willingness to attack other dogs deserves a name different from the willingness to keep fighting despite serious pain and injury.
Comparing “game” or “hotness” to fetching a ball is bizarre and absurd. Yes, neither is a natural trait. But one, y’know, kills other dogs. The other one gets tennis balls slobbery. I’m okay with a ballfetching psychosis. A dogkilling one, not so much.
As for the pit’s differentiation between humans and dogs, absolutely–with one caveat. Fighting dogs are often trained on small animals, which may or may not be dogs. Cats are used, for example, as are raccoons (IIRC–it’s been awhile since I watched the video about training pit bulls for the pit). The danger toward children comes when a pit sees a small child, and the kill-the-small-animal psychosis gets triggered.
If small children looked and moved a little bit like a tennis ball, I wouldn’t want golden retrievers to be around my kid, either.
Nor should I compare the danger of my child being around a pit bull to the danger of a sunny day in Disney. Rather, I should compare that danger to the danger of my child not being around a pit bull. Given the disproportionate “hotness” in the breed, I’ll be warier of my kid being around an unknown pit than I would be of my kid being around an unknown Llhasa Apso.
Revenant Threshold said:
There might be cases of pit bulls not being identified as such, but the likelihood is greater that it goes the other way. People are sensitized to look for pit bulls, so anything that resembles a pit bull will likely be identified as such, whereas people are not sensitized to think “this is not a pit bull”, so they’re not going to be actively trying to dismiss the dog as a pit bull.
Any dog attack is susceptible to being described as an attack by a “pit bull type”. Between most people not being able to differentiate certain dog breeds, and the media sensationalizing things, misidentification is rampant. It simply is not a balanced situation where mistakes in identity are equally likely both directions.