I really see nothing odd about my reply to NajaNivea’s post (#129?). She thought I’d used the wrong term, and I assured her that I hadn’t. I did see the sensationalism condensed and linked to in her post, but I hadn’t noticed it so much in regular media reports.
I don’t read much print news, and most of my news is via network and local television.
Her reaction to my posts was a little odd, though.
I (obviously) used the word simply to explore any misinformation about the pitbull-like breed of dog, which is the topic of this thread. I don’t know where you got the idea I was exploring the meaning of the word itself. I assume you meant “wondering” what my point is.
Nonsense, you say. Last time I checked my dictionary, there was a rather distinct difference between “killed”, “attacked”, and “bit”. I said the probability of being “attacked” was exceedingly low, to which you cited me 4.7 million people are “bit”. I’ve been bit a dozen+ times by dogs, never been attacked. And spare me the “800,000 people per year require medical attention for dog bites” … Why?
#1. 800,000 divided by 300 million = .003 … Not exactly tilting the radar, is it? And can you only imagine how many of those bites were the result of pure ignorance/foolishness on the part of the “victim” versus some random “out of nowhere” event? I can.
#2. “Medical attention” can be as simple as some iodine and a Bandaid administered by your mommy. The number of bites actually requiring hospitalization (i.e. pretty damn serious) is only about 6,000. Wait, my calculator is smoking = .00002. Apply these same numbers to pit bulls only, and well, my calculator window doesn’t have enough space for all zeros after the decimal. But to be on safe side, better sign that BSL petition the next time it circulates around your neighborhood.
#3. I’m familiar with the JAMA report and in fact have corresponded with the guy at Dog Bites Law. My conclusion: A plaintiffs lawyer who makes his living off of dog bite litigation has every incentive in the world to make you believe we have a huge dog bite problem in this country.
Mangeorge - Sorry for the misspelling. I have no problem with your original question assuming it was genuine. Sometimes the words we use in a written context have unintended meanings & tones … I think this might have been one of those cases.
What she said was:
Then you pointed it out.
I think the Michael Vicks of the world are responsible for themselves.
BTW, I was around in the 80s. In the mid 70s I went to Oklahoma with my then wife, and some of her relatives kept dogs (pink nose something-or-other) for fighting. That’s one thing they would have in common with Vick.
At this point I’ll stop you; don’t bother continuing to argue with me, if you don’t consider a dog bite to be a type of dog attack. Perhaps we’re speaking different languages.
The rest of your post simply demonstrates a misunderstanding of the two stats we’re comparing. But like I said, don’t bother.
I love dogs (and cats). I can’t adopt a dog because I live alone and I feel it’s kinda mean to leave a dog alone all day while I’m at work.
My daugter has pitbull (pitcow?;)) and she’s been babied and gentled all her life. She’s a doll. But still, if you try to make her do something she doesn’t want to, like get off the couch, she gives you that “look” that says she’s sizing you up. She also pushes back. Hard. No bites or growls, though.
LHOD, you don’t control whether I argue with you or not. If you don’t like the responses, stop posting indefensible opinions on public message boards.
OK, sure, a dog “bite” can certainly be an outcome of a dog “attack” but are you seriously suggesting that those 800,000 bites should be viewed as “attacks”. If you reach down to help an injured dog, and he nips you out of fear or pain, were you “attacked”? If you cut a dog’s quick with your nail clippers and he bites you, were you “attacked”? If a vet tech gets nicked breaking up a dog fight at doggie day care, was she “attacked” or was she accidently “bitten”? Gimme an f@#ing break, LHOD. Is this what you teach your daughter … Sweetie, don’t stick Fluffy’s tail in that wall socket because she might “attack” you?
Please enlighten me on how the rest of my post demonstrates my misunderstanding of these two stats. If we’re “speaking different languages”, what type of language are you speaking?
You’re being disingenious. What NajaNivea said was:
And she’s right. There is/was a definite media trend towards demonizing pit bulls.
Does this mean there was a cabal of journalists stroking their chins and persian cats and figuring out ways they could ruin the APBT’s good character? No.
Does the media sensationalize all things pit bull? Yes.
Does the media often label a dog involved in a dog on human attack a pit bull even when it’s not. Yes.
Is the media slow in correcting errors like the above? Yes.
I would add that the HSUS deliberately began a fear-mongering campaign in mid 1980s claiming there was a dog bite crisis (there was no dog bite crisis). This was done to raise funds for their organization. From there, the fear-mongering campaign against pit bulls began and spiraled out of control by the media and other humane society type organizations.
Does this fit the definition of a conspiracy? No. At least not according to the OED. I realize you’re going by a different (and incorrect) definition of the word but I don’t see what you’re point is. IMHO, it doesn’t absolve the media of the harm they’ve done simply because they didn’t do it deliberately.
I open my computer or a newspaper/magazine and I invariably come across a negative story on Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan or Britney Spears. Does this mean there is a conspiracy by the media to ruin their reputations? No. It just means the story sells.
And fear sells. The public loves a bogeyman. They love to think someone’s out to get them whether it’s witches or communists or satanists or people poisoning halloween candy.
So who wouldn’t want to read about poor people fighting dogs in the ghetto, dogs whose jaws lock and who can bite through steel?
People love that stuff and the media loves to sell it to them. The problem is that it isn’t true.
What did I point out?
Sure, Michael Vick is ultimately responsible for himself but when I hear Whoopi Goldberg, on the View, defending Vick because it’s the “culture” he grew up in…well that “culture” sprung from the HSUS and the media.
I don’t know what your point is here. I never said dog fighting wasn’t around until the 1980s. Dog fighting has been around forever, with pit bulls since the 1850s (I believe).
What I said was the huge explosion in their numbers and the horrific ways these dogs are trained occurred because of a moral panic that began in the 1980s.
This isn’t a pit bull (two words, btw) thing. This is a your daughter is too lazy to train the dog thing.
When you set out to buy a dog, you look primarily for a breed that has the characteristics you want. You have a very good idea what a Beagle, a Chihuahua , a poodle, a Jack Russel or a Pekenese is like. You also have a damn good idea what you can expect with a Pit Bull, or a Rottweiler. You can not know what a specific dog is like until you have it and raise it. But you do not walk in with a blank slate. I have seen some very sweet, tail and butt wagging Pits. But I have encountered the other ones too. But all dogs are not the same…Breeds do have characteristics. Pits are very tough dogs and are bred for generations to be stubborn and fearless. They are also very big and strong. That can go wrong .
In my experience, no dog is more viscious than a Chihuahua. I’ve never encountered one that did not snarl, drool, and snap at every houseguest. The owner of the little ankle nipper, of course, is oblivious as the little monster lays in her lap like a soothed kitten. “Isn’t it cute how he growls! Oh, don’t worry. He won’t bite.”
Okay, so if you agree that a breeding background for fighting other dogs makes a dog no more likely to attack a human than a dog bred for fighting wolves, hogs, or for fighting humans… and that a dog’s phenotype cannot necessarily be used to judge its breeding history… and if you don’t believe they should be legislated against… then really all you’re doing is popping in here to ascribe the term “psychosis” to the behavior we call “dog aggression”?
Am I understanding your position correctly?
First off, I have never said anything different. Your attempt to characterize me as a waffling loony-tune is eye-rollingly lame.
Before we launch a discussion about pit-dog breeding and dog aggression, let’s get this out of the way:
Your anthropomorphic characterization of a selectively-emphasized natural canid behavior as a “psychosis” is, to use your words, offensive, stupid, and ignorant. You are ascribing a human mental condition to a natural canine behavior that you find distasteful.
Humans are great at taking small elements of canine behavior and selectively emphasizing them through breeding and training to get them to do extra-ordinary things, like manipulating a wolf pack’s ability to herd caribou into what we see today as a working border collie. A pit dog exhibiting dog aggression is not “psychotic” any more than is a foxhound exhibiting “fox aggression”, or a cur dog exhibiting “hog aggression”. Boar hunting dogs are most certainly bred for and expected to be “dead game”, hog hunters use the term and mean it. Once a dog is gripped, he or she is expected to stay there in complete disregard for personal safety until either the boar’s last heartbeat or his own. Many even have to be broken off the dead hog in mildly unpleasant ways. This is a trait highly prized because a dog who lets go is going to cost the other dogs and the hunter their lives.
Similarly, this trait of “gameness” is highly prized in most other professional canines. Sled dogs will run their feet bloody and fall down dead in the traces, given the option. Scent hounds have been known to follow trails for hundreds of miles. A GSD or Malinois who lets the bad guy go because he gets concerned about his own mortality is quickly going to find himself pink-slipped.
In fact, in the world of working dogs (that is, breeding dogs for a functional task, rather than simply as pets and companions), a notable lack of gameness, or the ability to make independent decisions in regards to personal safety or the task at hand is a trait we’ve worked hard to selectively emphasize for very specific tasks… as with Guide Dogs for the Blind. They will tell you it’s not easy to do. We’ve been breeding dogs to do their job and follow instructions to the last letter for many of thousands of years. It’s only very recently that the trait of tenacity has been seen as a nuisance or a problem. As a society, our dogs’ main job now is to lay around on the couch and be a good boy.
Pit dogs don’t fight because they are “psychotic”, they fight because they’ve been bred for a love of challenge, a never-say-die spirit, and a poor ability to communicate with other dogs. I have a friend who is a professional dog trainer and who specializes in working with “random source” pit type dogs, particularly in the realm of dog aggression. She teaches them the body language they need to approach another dog in a manner that elicits a friendly response from both sides–it turns out, many of them just don’t know how to “speak” dog. There is a whole range of behaviors that mama teaches to the pups, or that pups learn from each other during the early socialization stages. Effective dog-dog communication is not a set of skills prized in pit dogs, and so was selected against, both in breeding and training. Pit dogs are separated from mama and from each other early, too early to learn good communication skills which comes from learning to interact and negotiate with their littermates and other adults, or bite inhibition, which happens in the 8-10 week stage… but this is not at bedrock a genetic thing, it’s a behavioral thing which stems from poor socialization from day one. There are some elements of genetics involved, of course–the most successful pit dogs were the ones with the poorest negotiation skills and the greatest love for fighting with other dogs–but again this is a collection of behavioral traits, not a mental illness.
That is why dogs like the Vick dogs can be re-socialized, re-trained, and placed in pet homes. They only need to be taught. Granted, some dogs are uninterested in re-training, just like some greyhounds are uninterested in learning not to kill cats, but in neither case is the dog “psychotic”, it’s just a dog doing what it has been bred and taught to do.
Breeders who are “breeding the hotness” out of pits aren’t breeding out a “psychosis”, they are breeding and rearing well-socialized dogs. Your belief that this is some kind of genetically-carried mental illness on par with schizophrenia displays a serious lack of understanding about canine behavior and husbandry.
This is true only insofar as it is true for all breeds of dogs. There are many, many breeds of dogs bigger and stronger than pits and bred for traits which are much more likely to translate to or result in human-aggressive tendencies with improper handling.
As I said before, pits are very “soft”, extremely compliant dogs. They are eager to please and easy to handle and train. Historically they were culled hard for human aggression (though there was one notable exception to this) and expected to respond to handling and human interference even under the direst of circumstances. It is for this reason that I would wade in and break up a thousand pit dog fights before I would ever even consider stepping into the middle of a squabble between a couple of shepherds. Also for the same reason that as a vet tech I can treat an injured pit dog with no resistance or fear of reprisal, but would be sure to have a second set of hands for restraint, or would muzzle, many other breeds and types more inclined to use their mouths on human flesh.
That is due to poor training. The idea that it is “cute” for a tiny dog to act aggressive needs to be put to rest. Especially in their interactions with other dogs. It’s not cute and not safe when your little dog comes running up and try’s to fight with a big dog.
When Trogdor cut his leg earlier this year and needed stitches I rushed him to the nearest vet rather then our usual one 30+ minutes away. The vet tech came in and took off our bandages and was manipulating his leg. Halfway through it she looked up and said “Thank goodness he’s a pitbull” I assumed she was referring to the pain tolerance making it easier to work with him. She said if they get a dog like a chihuahua it is a lot harder for them to work with the hurt dog because they are much more likely to respond negatively to interaction.
I think that this is an unintended consequence to people letting their little dogs act aggressively. If you allow your dog to respond aggressively to new or strange situations it is going to magnify that response when it is hurt and needs the help.
Sorry the above was meant as a response to Liberal but Naja got a post in between.
This is a very telling statement, and reflects on most of your rants, which I’ve learned to not even try to read.
Like this one. I’m not sure, because I cannot read your entire posts, it seems you’re saying that pitbull-type dogs only inherit what you consider to be positive traits.
Do you personally know any pitbulls?
Sorry about that misplaced “lay” up there, this subject gets me all fired up.
Liberal, I have long ceased to be amazed at what little dogs are allowed to get away with by virtue of their appearance and social status. Cujo the schmoopie-poo snarling and taking a swipe at you is cooed over and given a diamond necklace, while Muffin the APBT has toddlers snatched away and the cops called for face-licking at the park.
mangeorge, you’ve quoted two different posters. Please try to keep up.
Naja has said many times that Pitbulls are as a breed much more likely to be dog aggressive than other breeds, which is not a positive trait. What she is arguing against is the concept that dog aggression = psychosis or human aggression. Her assertion is that by virtue of breeding a Pitbull is more dog aggressive, and at the same time less human aggressive then average.
…and since when is speaking extensively on a controversial topic one has much experience in and strong opinions about “ranting”?
I have thought long and hard about what I am posting here, and spent many years learning this stuff. I have been working dogs my entire life. This discussion, the pit bull debate in general, is deeply important to me, and deeply important to the many thousands of people whose dogs are being killed, or whose lives are being made infinitely more difficult due to horrifically misguided legislation enacted based on a bunch of urban legends. People’s dogs are getting killed over this by the thousands.
If you’re not interested in exploring the topic or engaging in this discussion, then don’t. But don’t mischaracterize what I’m doing here. It’s offensive and unfair.
I’ll keep this one short so as not to challenge your stamina or reading comprehension.
I do not ascribe qualities of “positive” or “negative” to animal behaviors, aside from true mental illness, which is exceedingly rare. Animals are not “good” or “bad”, they are what they are.
Also, what Miltonyz said 
Ugh, and now I really am spamming the thread, but just for the record, I agree with valleyofthedolls here.
A dog with a tendency toward resource-guarding and pack-status challenge is not a dog that should be allowed to sleep on the furniture, and is a dog who should be expected to earn all good things in life. As in most such cases, this is a fine example of user error.