It's always a fucking Pit Bull

[Crazyhorse]

@russian_heel

Wait a minute. The report says it was a pit bull. This is fairly well respected newspaper. Now we can’t cite newspaper reports?

Yeah right. Here’s a journalist’s guide to Pitbull identification for your perusal.

The Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics Behind Dog Bites is a good read about how reliable press reports of “pitbull attacks” are.

No idea whether these dogs were pitbulls or not, but newspaper reports saying that they were adds absolutely zero credibility to the claim.

What is a Pit Bull?: It is commonly accepted that “pit bull” is not a breed but a loosely defined and general category. Definition of this category varies depending upon the source. Any blocky headed dog, or any mix of breeds that is between 35 and 100 pounds and upwards of 30 individual dog breeds may currently fall in this broad category through the use of visual breed identification.

How are pit bulls identified?: Visual breed identification, or the extremely scientific (insert sarcasm) process of tilting your head 30 degrees to the right or left and guessing based on a few, basic traits and the inability to automatically identify the dog as something else, is how pit bulls are identified. Based upon the observation of a handful of variable breed-associated physical traits, such as coat color, body size, skull shape and whether the ears are erect or floppy. These physical traits are found in many different breeds and are controlled by approximately 50 of the roughly 20,000 genes that create a dog.

Dog bite “statistics” are based off of media reports found online where pit bull type attacks are proven to be reported thousands of times more often than dog bite stories involving other breeds. Hardly a scientific, objective, or accurate way to collect information and in fact, there is a proven bias and over reporting when it comes to dogs labeled as pit bulls.