Methinks both sides have an agenda. Having an agenda isn’t the issue. 
I’m saying two things. One is that mixed breed dogs do not necessarily look like their parents, nor do they necessarily resemble any identifiable breed in their recent genetic history. Secondly, there are many breeds, types, and mixes that bear the same phenotype commonly associated with “pit type dogs”. All studies that purport to show statistics on bites by breed rely on the victim’s ability to identify the dog. Since so many breeds, types, and mixes resemble “pit bulls”, there is no way to accurately identify which stocky, short-coated, blunt-muzzled breed was at fault.
Any given individual’s ability to differentiate good examples of identified purebred dogs from good examples of other purebred dogs makes no difference whatsoever to the discussion of dog bite statistics.
I don’t believe this is anything like “splitting hairs”. This is the absolute key point to the debate.
All of these ones, for a start. Is this a pit bull? How about this? This guy? What about this dog? This one? My dog gets called a pit bull at least two or three times a week. I assure you, there is no pit bull anywhere in his breeding history.
Many breeds and mixes resemble pit bulls. That you can identify a good example of a purebred German Shepherd Dog from a good example of a purebred Labrador doesn’t make any difference.
Can you find the “pit bull” in this roster?
So… now you’re willing to concede that it doesn’t matter what the breed is, you only care about it’s external appearance? You’re telling us that you believe the dog’s phenotype is what makes it dangerous?
Err… many, many breeds of dogs were bred to kill small (and large) animals. Many breeds of dogs were bred for pit fighting. What’s your point?
What makes it undeniable? The fact that it’s… all wrong? Or the fact that it’s all wrong? I’ll need some help, here.
Oh, okay. If you’re laying out the platform that you don’t care about facts or science, then… I’m not really sure we can go any further with this.
Well, I don’t know. Let’s see them. It will be interesting, since as we have already established:
I don’t care which side of the debate you’re on, that’s funny, right there.
Clearly ;). Who needs facts WHEN WE HAVE SHOUTY CAPS?!LOLLLOL!!1
NajaNivea
Well, it’s pretty clear that dog fatal attacks disproportionately affect children. It’s also reasonable that the dog attacks by Pit Bulls disproportionately affect children. The issue is with the assumption that dog attacks are disproportionately Pit Bull attacks.
But that statement was intended as a “but think of the children” argument and was dismissed as such.
hamhawk said:
So are you asserting that the only dog breeds are German Shepherd, Poodle, Doberman Pincher, Black Labrador Retriever, and Pit Bull? Are you asserting that all dog breeds have very distinct visual features? Are you asserting that if dog breeds share visual features, they aren’t really distinct breeds?
How is it that you jump from being able to distinguish a few visually distinct pure-bred dogs into being able to tell a Pit Bull from any other type of dog, including when the dogs are mixed breeds? Note that the “find the pit bull” link provided has a dozen breeds of dog I had never heard of before that link. Are you that much of a dog breed expert that you know all the dog breeds? Or is it your contention that they look alike, they must really be the same breed with the same traits?
From one of the previous links?, quoted by hamhawk:
As has already been shown, dog shelters do not have any special insight into the breed of their strays, especially mixed breeds. They use this scientific process called “guessing”. DNA analysis shows that their process is flawed.
This is important, because communities are taking the approach mentioned and making breed-specific legislation, but other dog owners are getting set up. For instance, NajaNivea posted a pic of his/her dog that is routinely mistaken as a Pit Bull. People who are biased against appearance will not be happy with NajaNivea’s assurances his/her dog is not a Pit Bull - close enough for government work, euthanize it. But it didn’t even bite anyone! Hey, it’s a risk we can’t take. :rolleyes:
NajaNivea said:
Friendly reminder, you probably want to watch your tone. Personal attacks are not allowed in this forum.
HamHawk said:
When irrational logic fails, revert to infantile tactics.
Nice points, NajaNivea. Don’t waste your time on this guy. For anybody else who spots even an ounce of common sense in HamHawk’s rants, please post it for our ‘message boarding’ pleasure.
I am currently going through a few studies and reports I’ve found(warning-PDF) that the “National Canine Research Council”(aka Karen Delice) seems to have skipped over.
Which reports are those? I mean, which ones on the list do you think she hasn’t seen, or has ignored? And what leads you to those conclusions?
The first report states that Rottweilers and pit bulls were responsible for 60% of fatal attacks.
The CDC report in the third link puts pit bulls at the top of the list for fatal attacks over a 15 year period.
There is a report about Denver’s court fight to overturn a state legislature’s attempt to prohibit local governments from regulating dangerous dogs by specific breeds. Denver won.
Also, I still haven’t found any background information whatsoever about the National Canine Research Council-the only links on line are their website(which only gives a couple of names), and all their press releases.
…Okay, but again, the CDC and the American Veterinary Medical Association disagree that it’s ever possible to reliably count dog bite numbers by breed.
Do I seriously need to link the CDC and AVMA’s reports for, what, the sixth time?
Okay? Here’s a list of municipalities where BSL has been overturned. Sure Denver won. Does it mention that they’re now in the process of overturning it, and turning to a behavioral-based dangerous-dog law model? Can you guess why that is?
Hint: Breed-specific legislation does not work. The reason it doesn’t work is because you cannot identify dangerous dogs by phenotype. The one commonality in dog bite related fatalities is mishandling, not breed or phenotype.
/shrug
What’s your point? The only time I’ve cited her is using their “find the ___” PDFs, which use DNA results from Mars Wisdom Panel, the commercially-available DNA testing group. Her historical article on dog breed hysteria is well-researched and, I believe, well written. Other than that… since nothing else I’ve cited comes from her, again… what’s your point?
Leaving Karen Delise out of the conversation, what changes? Certainly not the CDC and AVMA’s stance on the topic.
That’s part of it… but I don’t believe his thinking on that topic was a strictly linear “dog attacks [and thus pit bull attacks] disproportionately affect children”. If it was, his use of “pit bull” in place of “dog attacks” was rather disingenuous. I don’t think it was though, as LHOD’s argument lies specifically in regards to his belief in an alleged inborn “psychosis” (his word) that he believes the breed carries in its DNA, as well as his idea that a dog trained to attack small animals will not be able to differentiate between a cat and a toddler. This shows that he specifically believes pit bulls to be disproportionately dangerous to small children, as opposed to all other breeds.
The bizarre thing about this concept, to me, is… why aren’t the same people getting hysterical about any hunting breed that exists? After all, they were specifically bred to kill animals, and having seen plenty of “pet bred” beagles do fine work in critter control, I can assure you recent breeding history frequently makes little difference. Why not froth and fume about property guardian breeds, or personal protection breeds which carry a breeding history specifically designed around civil aggression and suspicion towards human beings? People like LHOD and hamhawk will tell you that a random-bred mongrel in the pound that has a brindle coat and semi-prick ears is a ticking timebomb, a homicidal maniac because of the potential for pit fighting blood anywhere in its remote genetic makeup, yet the same people won’t blink an eye over any one of several dozen cattle-droving, property-guardian, molossoid and personal protection breeds specifically created for human-aggression-related protection work. Our friend hamhawk is even repeatedly using the GSD–a breed which for most of its contemporary history has been specifically and heavily selected for civil aggression work–as a counterpoint to identifying what he alleges are “dangerous” dogs.
It’s a much smaller (though still incorrect) leap to say a dog bred to bite bad guys won’t know the difference between a good guy and a bad guy, than to say a dog bred to fight other dogs will not know the difference between a cat and a human… but you won’t see them snatching up their children in a cold sweat when they see this pooch strolling up the block on the end of a leash. This dog, however, crisis situation. :rolleyes:
It makes no sense… none at all. Breed is far from the main factor in dog attacks. What** is** the main factor? Poor handling.
And you know, that’s kind of what pisses me off the most about all of this… these idiotic assertions that external appearance dictates whether or not a dog is dangerous completely removes the onus of responsibility from the handler. Instead of pinning the culpability on the idiot with the unrestrained, undersocialized dog of any type, they look at the shape of the dog’s ears and declare that it’s a natural menace to society, psychotic beyond control. WTF kind of justice is that?
You can bet we carry his paperwork on us at all times when we travel with him. There are a whole lot of municipalities, counties, and even entire states where he can be legally seized and immediately euthanized on animal control’s say-so based on his appearance, and if I didn’t have his pedigree, registration paperwork and tattoo information in hand, I would have no legal recourse to stop it. In most cases, the laws are written such that any dog that fits the visual profile is affected, not just the APBT and associated pit-history breeds. Any dog that fits the profile based on physical characteristics–that means they don’t have to prove your dog is a pit, only make a claim that it bears some of the physical characteristics of pit-type dogs… and that if you cannot prove your dog is not a pit, your dog will die. Mixed-breed pound puppy? So sorry… unless you can swing DNA profiling in time. That mine is a hog hunting dog from South America with no “pit bull” in thirty generations behind him makes no difference to someone with an irrational hate on for dogs that look like him… if he fits the profile, he dies.
I don’t know if any of you non-bully-type-dog owners really understand what it’s like when a certain sector of society viscerally hates your dog to the point of wishing death upon them, purely because they fit a sort of canine racial profile. I can count the number of people who have recognized his breed in seven years on one hand. We are out in public a lot together, and mostly people are very attracted to him, but I have had people threaten to shoot or poison my “mutant pit bull”. He’s never, never left in the yard unattended for this very reason.
What makes it that much worse is that pits are good dogs. They’re stable, friendly, loving dogs. They’ve got their drawbacks like any other breed, but in generally, they really did and do deserve their historic status as “America’s Dog”.
I’m new here. Found this while reading other interesting facts. As a pet lover, with special state issued license plates for being a pet lover, one who gives all my charitable contributions to animal rescue organizations, I can’t help but be disturbed by the anger here. I live on a busy street on the way to a busier city park. I love to talk to all the dog walkers. I always ask the walkers if I may greet their dog and then I offer my hand for a sniff first to ask the dog as well. I watched as a terrified newly rescued American Eskimo Dog who let me gently speak to her on her first walk on a leash turned into a lively affectionate love bug. She remembered me from that first day and her once curled under tail was wagging to beat the band! I even met a young man with a pit bull. Betty the pit was wearing a pink bandana and she wagged her entire butt with happiness at meeting a new friend. You can bet your hind quarters I asked about the temperment of Betty before I approached.
That being said, it ain’t the dog. It’s the owner. I HATE picking up dog poop from my corner property since I have a cat. I hate that my grass dies where people let their female dogs pee in my yard. But I am not angry at the dogs. It is the owner.
Whether the owner has a pit or a lab or a nervous teacup chihauhau, that owner has responsibility to ALWAYS have control over his/her animal. The owner has a responsibility to make sure the yard is secure at ALL times. The owner has the responsibility to take their pets to regular vet visits. A sick dog could become a biting dog for no other reason than poor pup felt lousy. A dog of whatever breed is owed quality food, quality care, quality supervision and quality training.
Don’t adopt a dog on a whim. Dog ownership is a huge responsibility. But the love you get in return is worth it all. It seems to me (in my humble opinion) that some breeds get a bad rap because of stupid humans. Humans take something sweet, something that wants to please and turns that creature into something terrible. (Insert Michael Vick comment here if desired.)
Sometimes I would rather spend my days with dogs and cats than some of the humans that are on this planet. It ain’t the dog…it’s the human.
Sorry, that should have said “disagree with the premise that…”
NajaNivea said:
I’d be curious for a cite on that. I suppose I can envision some type of wording where that is technically possible but seems totally reasonable - except for the bit about being breed specific.
NajaNivea is mostly correct … go to any website with BSL ordinances and you will find the dreaded “anything that resembles a pit bull” language. My only objection to Naja’s statement is use of the word “immediately” – in many cases there is a brief waiting period to accommodate disputes or efforts to relocate the dog outside the municipality, though it usually just delays the inevitable. Most people don’t have the resources to fight city hall or uproot their lives over a pet.
Don’t believe it happens? Over 2000 pits (and pit-like) dogs seized & killed in Denver. I’ve actually heard numbers exceeding 3500. See recent articles:
http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=13623
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2009/09/inside_denvers_pit_bull_row.php?page=1
Photo: Director of Denver’s Animal Control being licked by a pit bull on death row … Not a surprising image to any of us who know the breeds.
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/illegal%20pitbull%2C%20no%20other%20info%20(9).jpg
Which part were you wanting cited? Here’s Bracken County, KY’s ordinance.
(bolding mine in all cases)
Miami-Dade County, Florida (search “pit bull” and click on first link)
Point c) is particularly vicious–they specifically rule out out phenotypic considerations as evidence for why your dog is not a pit bull. In other words: they can use the matching characteristics as evidence, but you cannot use the differing characteristics as a defense.
Denver, Colorado (same search criteria):
At least there’s this:
So you’re (potentially) allowed a hearing, but if it’s a mixed-breed dog and you have no registry paperwork or any other verifiable proof, then you’re screwed.
It’s true, many give you a few days to present documents (if you have them), but for a mixed-breed dog this grace period is absolutely useless. Some areas, like Yakima County, Washington, give you the option of placing the dog outside the city or killing it, so there is that.
Sometimes of course they dispense with the procedural nonsense, and just let the dog out of the car and shoot it in the face. Or in Toledo, on your front porch, then laugh about it.
Both of these areas, Toledo and much of Tennessee, carry anti-pit-bull ordinances. If the dog is considered de facto vicious, it’s easy to justify killing it.
…and sure, neither of these examples prove anything, but I suspect a poodle coming toward the officer and carrying the same body language (perked ears, smiley mouth, wagging tail) would probably not have received the same welcome.
This was just put up on the St. Louis Post Dispatch website. Not all communities are trying to kill every pitbull. The Humane Society of Missouri works tirelessly in their efforts to stop puppy mills (a big problem here), rescue dogs from mills and horders and, now, rehibilitate fighting pitbulls. One dog is starting a new life as a therapy dog. I hope the link works. The picture says a thousand words. If the link does not work, the story can be found through the main page www.stltoday.com
Oh man… thanks for posting that. This photo just about made me lose it.
Good point, MyCatLovesTV, though when you reference “communities”, be careful to distinguish between the Humane Society and city government. The Humane Society (national & local chapters) have been on the right side of this issue for years, but they don’t make the rules. City politicians, on the other hand, widely ignore the recommendations of just about every major animal organization in existence, caving to pressure from hysterical citizens like HamHawk, and pandering to fear-driven voters under the guise of “protecting the community”.
But to your original point, there appears ‘some’ growing evidence of the general public giving these dogs a better chance at life. The Michael Vick case offered us an unprecedented example of how remarkable pits are. These WERE genetically bred fighting dogs and WERE exposed to the worst conditions imaginable, yet 47 out of 49 dogs were successfully rehabbed, adopted, or sanctuaried (1 euthanized for illness, 1 euthanized for temperament). That’s a 98% success rate under court supervision … doesn’t quite fit the “vicious killing machine” stereotype, does it? I dare say those results could not be achieved with human beings, yet pit bull haters keep on hating, politicians keep on banning, and shelters keep on killing.
For anyone who may still be on the fence about how they feel about pit bulls, you may want to watch this excellent “audio gallery” from the Washington Post regarding the Michael Vick dogs. The images and audio of the actual people/dogs involved may prove more convincing then the varied opinions on this message board.
The bizarre thing about this concept, to me, is… why aren’t the same people getting hysterical about any hunting breed that exists? After all, they were specifically bred to kill animals, and having seen plenty of “pet bred” beagles do fine work in critter control, I can assure you recent breeding history frequently makes little difference…
We’ll get "hysterical"when beagles start attacking and killing people in big numbers…lol…look out people for the attack of the killer beagles…
People like LHOD and hamhawk will tell you that a random-bred mongrel in the pound that has a brindle coat and semi-prick ears is a ticking timebomb, a homicidal maniac because of the potential for pit fighting blood anywhere in its remote genetic makeup, yet the same people won’t blink an eye over any one of several dozen cattle-droving, property-guardian, molossoid and personal protection breeds specifically created for human-aggression-related protection work…
Don’t go putting words in my mouth.I don’t think its right to ban pit bulls or any other breed of dog.If your dog is biting or mauling anyone then don’t worry about it.I’m sure majority of the time they catch the offending dog,therefore it doesnt really matter what breed it gets listed under.Bottom lne is people are sick and tired of their kids getting mauled/and killed by **DOGS[B.It just so happens that the biggest offenders seem to be that breed that goes around impersonating pitbbulls.The media and public arent making it up.They just didnt grab the name pitbull out of a hat .If as you say your a responsable pet owner then you got nothing to worry about.The stats don’t lie and every study says pits and rotts are right atthe top.I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT WHAT THE CDC SAYS OK!Do you really believe a dog that was bred and in fact created to kill is no more likely to bite than a dog bred to fetch or herd cattle?Be honest,and try and keep a straight face as you lie najanivea…