This is the statement I have a problem with. There’s a lot of folks who would argue that the number could be significantly lower than 50%. They pretty much reject all breed identifying statistics from the general public because studies seem to show that the general public is awful at identifying pit bulls and rottweilers.
While I give some credence to the claim that pit bulls are difficult to identify at times, that is definitely not the case with rottweilers
It is, since the general public seems to think that any large, shorthaired black and tan dog is a Rott. One of these was recently ID’d as a Rott in one of the shelters I sweep. It didn’t have as much hair as the dogs in those pictures, but still!
Wanna bet?
Let’s play a game shall we? Below I will post 7 photos I found using Google. As in the real world, the only information you have is that the set of dogs contains pedigree rottweilers, crossbreeds and animals with absolutely no rottweiler ancestry at all. You will not be told how many, if any, animals are in each category. They may all be pedigree rottweilers, or there may be no rotties at all.
If it is definitely not difficult to identify rottweiler then everybody should definitely be able to get 7 out of 7 for the identification test. Of course they are all Google photos, so you could easily cheat, but I’d like you to try unassisted first and give us an honest answer.
Ready?
I’ve seen several mastiff crossbreeds, particular mastiffs crossed with weimeraners, that have absolutely no known rottweiler ancestry yet I would have picked them as 7/8 rottweiler at least. One of those dogs I always assumed was a purebred rotty, as did the trainer at the obedience class I was attending. We were astounded to learn it was a mongrel mastiff X doberman hybrid. And we were people who prided ourselves on being able to pick dog ancestry.
Once you start adding the crossbreeds and mongrels to the mix it becomes impossible for even the most skilled person to accurately identify rottweiler heritage.
And of course the general member of the public couldn’t even tell the difference between a breed standard rottweiler and doberman even in good conditions, much less in the heat of an attack.
It’s a vicious cycle, dogs often interpret human fear (staring, sudden movements, sudden noises) as a direct threat they must defend against, or it can arouse their ‘prey’ instinct (especially in the case of children).
Labs are happy dogs, but nearly everyone they meet is happy to see them. My two 20-lb light-colored fluffy dogs are perceived as non-threatening, and never get a negative emotional response. My 80-lb Shepherd/lab mix is a totally different story - people have reacted with obvious fear many times when he was totally ignoring them. One man kicked him, hard, in the chest on a public sidewalk out of the blue. I’m hardly any bigger than the dog, and I think this makes people fearful I can’t control him (I can if I need to). The only difference between him and a lab is that he has a slightly more shepherd-y shape and a dark face and ears. I think the dark face is the kicker.
- close up. Not enough visual to make a determination
2.no, wrong jaw shape.
- same as one.
4.no, no way.
5.Rottweiler mix maybe
6.mix maybe
7 mix maybe.
None strike me as pedigreed Rottweilers.
Well, that falsifies any claim that it’s definitely not possible to mis-identify rottweilers. It does prove beyond any doubt that it’s impossible, even under ideal conditions, to identify rottweilers visually.
What is most telling is that you identified the pedigree rottweiler/s as potential mixes, definitely not purebred, while at the same time identifying dogs with not an ounce of rottweiler in their genetics as also being potentially mixes. That pretty much seals the case, If you were attacked by a rottweiler you would identify it as a rottweiler crossbreed, maybe. If you were attacked by pedigree dogs of other breeds you would also identify them as rottweiler crossbreed, maybe.
I also find it telling that even with a full body photograph there is " Not enough visual to make a determination", yet we are expected to believe that a person being savaged by the dog will have much better visual information, presumably because they have a better perspective and calmer frame of mind.
If you are representative if the general public, and given the conditions of the test you should be much better, then identification of rottweilers in attacks is worth less than randomly assigning dogs to breed based on colouration and general build.
FTR:
[spoiler]1: Doberman crossbreed, no known rotty ancestry.
- Doberman labrador crossbreed. No rotty ancestry.
3)Rotty X doberman cross
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Unknown crossbreed.
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Pedigree rottweiler.
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Pedigree English mastiff, no rotty heritage whatsoever.
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Rottweiler X Englsh mastiff cross.[/spoiler]
Edit “mastiif crossed with weimeraners” in my last post should read "“mastiif crossed with dobermanns”. No idea how weimeraner ended up there. Brain fart.
Anyone who wants to try again:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
To give a hint this time, there are more than two pedigree rottweilers in the list.
Show me where I misidentified one dog as a rottweiler. That is the issue in this debate. The claim that Rottweillers and Pit Bulls get an unfair reputation because too many dogs are identified as pit bulls/ rottweilers
What is most telling is your deliberate misrepresentation of my previous post. If I made an error in this regard, it was only once. as you show only one pedigreed rottweiler. I’d be very interested to know how you are so confident that #5 is pedigreed
Once again, you’ve misrepresented my post Only one time did I mention the possibility of Rottweiler breeding for a completely non Rottweiller dog. I certainly wouldn’t have identified that dog, #6 as such . Look at him. He has no Rotty colouring whatsoever, which led me to consider the possiblity of a trick on your part 
For you maybe. I have to shake my head with your conclusion.
That is an outright lie. Both pictures where I simply could not make a determination because of close up frontal views. resulting in perspective distortion, with no information on height and length of body with respect to the head and no view of the tail.
The breed of the dog involved in a savage attack is usually reported by the press based on the dog owner’s word and/or police report. who get to see these dogs in real life without any stress.
Don’t forget to tell us how you know #5 is pedigreed.
The problem is that you failed to identify any dog as a rottweiler, even the rottweiler. You can’t misidentify a dog as a rottweiler if you are so afraid of false positives that you refuse to name any dog as a rottweiler.
But I suspected, based on your past behaviour, that you would try this tack. SO I’ve posted a whole slew of other photos with more pedigree rottweilers. Have a go at those and see how you go.
Precisely. You got the answer wrong 100% of the time.
As with the pit bull ID page that has been posted before, the whole point is to show how lousy people are at picking rotties out of a line-up.
But as I said, I suspected, based on your past behaviour, that you would try this tack. So I’ve posted a whole slew of other photos with more pedigree rottweilers. Have a go at those and see how you go.
In which case you were being incredibly vague in your wording. Are we to take it that “no, wrong jaw shape” means the dog has absolutely no rottwieler ancestry? In which case you misidentified several dogs with known rottwieler ancestry as having none.
Which as I said, with absolute honesty, is much as attack victims would see them.
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Cite.
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If you really believe this then how can you claim that pit bulls can be so readily misidentified? Aren’t they IDed in the same way by the same people? What on earth makes rotties easier to ID than pit bulls?
And I look forward to seeing your effort with the updated picture list. As it contains several pedigree dogs it will overcome your objections raised so far.
Of course since you are attempting to show that rotties are never misidentified I expected you to be overcautious in your ID, as you were, by refusing to say that any dogs at all are rottweilers. With a list containing several rottweilers it will be simple enough to see whether you are being overcautious to the point where you can not identify anything.
How can I know anything on the internet? The page it appears on says it’s a rottweiler.
Perhaps a better question is to ask you, who claims to be able to ID these dogs, how you conclude that it is not. How does it fail to meet breed standard?
But hey, if you really think it’s suspect then try my new list that contains three pictures of pedigrees from sources that even you can’t dispute.
You need to check #2. Yeah. the one where I claimed the wrong jaw shape for a Rotty and for which you’ve identified as a doberman cross.
I’m done with you since I clear see that you are yanking my chain.
Translation: I know that there is no way I can reliably identify rottweilers or support my other nonsensical claims.
Bingo.
What is the point of this argument anyway? Some type of dog has just attacked someone. It may be a rottweiler or a pit bull, but it may not be. If we manage to identify the dogs reliably we’d then have someone claiming that this unknown breed ‘X’ dog is actually a loving family type of dog, etc, etc, just like people are doing with these specific dogs. It doesn’t change the fact that most big dogs can do more damage than most smaller dogs.
Personally, I’d like the owners of any dog that attacks someone to be charged as if they personally went out and deliberately did the act themselves. Maybe that would limit stupid owners. I wonder that the charge and penalty would be for deliberately chewing the face off of a 4 year old?
For those keeping score at home: Flying Dutchman 1, Blake 0.
People seeing dog attacks from (probably a fairly safe) distance, probably won’t know what specific dog breed was involved, and they certainly wouldn’t go into nuances (‘oh, i’m pretty sure it was a doberman lab cross-breed, with maybe a touch of mastiff’).
However, we’re not relying on second-hand eyewitnesses for these reports. In the case of the CDC report on dog bite fatalities, people have died. They ARE going to find the dog. I would very much expect that the reporting would be considerably more accurate than it would be for (the far more common) dog bite incidents that result in less severe injury. Maybe not 100% balls-on perfect, but to assume some un-naturally high level of mis-identification seems to be a bit of a stretch to me.
The CDC report itself discusses the difficulties of breed IDing involved, and thus gives two counting methods - but notes that it doesn’t make much difference in the overall rankings (bolding mine).
If pit-type dogs and rottweilers are being mis-identified, what dogs are they being mis-identified as? No one is going to mis-identify a rottweilers as a toy poodle or an Afghan hound. Nor would I expect any significant percentages of such mis-identification to be of a german shepard, husky-type, malamute, doberman, chow how, great dane, or st bernard - all which happen to be on the list of dog bite fatalities in the CDC report.
In politics etc, when one party wants to discredit another party, they throw as much crap against the wall as they possibly can, no matter how outlandish. The key being, they hope that people will think, ‘well, not all of it is true, but at least some of it must be true - they wouldn’t be making all of it up, would they?’.
So I’m aware of making sure to avoid the same trap of assuming that, ‘well, even if some of the identifications were wrong, they can’t all be wrong’. But I don’t think it holds here. We have what one would expect to be relatively more reliable reporting accuracy in the case of fatalities. Other breeds reported as causing fatalities don’t really look like pit-type dogs or rottweillers, and even if half of the fatalities attributed to pits and rotts were actually committed by dogs looking pretty different (German Shepard, husky-type, etc), pits and rotts would still be the most common type of dog involved in a fatality. Plus, if someone wants to focus on the likelihood that if people are going to mis-ID a german shepard as a pit, we have counter that we can equally assume that sometimes people will mis-ID pits as german shepards).
I think we come back to the three assumptions that we have to draw on as above:
- Some breed-specific factors at work, or
- owners of these breeds are more likely to be irresponsible, or
- bite incidents involving these breeds are more likely to be fatal
One of the posts below said:
This suggests that pit proponents think breed-specific factors are at work. You can’t have it both ways: either breed specific factors are at work, or they’re not - and if they are, you can’t only say that ‘good’ breed factors are at work, while ignoring less-savory factors. One side things breed-specific factors make pit bulls loving, family dogs; the other side points at the data which suggests breed-specific factors make pit bulls more likely to kill someone.
The CDC data looks persuasive, and I can see nor think of any ‘hidden agenda’ it might have. It discusses all the obvious and not-so-obvious pitfalls involved. The CDC report is, in my view, the agencies’ atttempt at formulating its policy stance regarding breed-specific legislation (i.e., banning certainy breeds of dogs), which I think everyone can agree is simply a bad idea of questionable workabililty (let alone legality). The CDC’s stance seems to be, we can’t ignore other breeds that may also present a problem, and we don’t to overly focus on simply dog bite fatalities and end up ignoring the much larger problem of overall dog bites. In that context, the ‘disclaimers’ regarding the difficulty in breed IDing, with calculating population numbers, holding constant ownership reliabilty etc. make sense - the CDC wants communities to look at a broad range of policy responses rather than knee-jerk breed bands.
But the CDC can’t ignore the data either (bolding mine):
I think pit bull proponents are going to have to come up with a reasonable hypothesis that either explains the misidentification issues, explains why factors 2) and 3) above competely trump factor 1), or offer a completely different reason as to why pits and rotts would account for such a large percentage of dog bite fatalities.
Maybe in some bizarro world.
In this thread you have one anecdote a page back, followed by two drive-by postings. Do you actually have anything of substance of your own to actually add to this debate?
I’ll add something. You appear to have cited the Clifton report, which has been shown numerous time to be fatally flawed. It relied on media accounts for breed ID. It is absolutely useless.
Nope. The report in question is from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
So you say. Is there a link for it so we know you’re not cherry picking your quotes?