Oh dear, you seem to have chosen four cases in which there was only one fatality. That fatality is an attack you have second on your list of links. i.e. the one (with more detail) that I included in my original post. So the only killer dog on your list of links is a pit bull type.
Attacks from dogs are predictable, attacks from large dogs are predictably serious. If you hear about a killing you can predict with some certainty it’ll be a pit-bull type.
What would be the response if a certain make of television was found to be fundamentally unstable? far more so than others?
Seriously? You’re trying to weasel out because only *one *of my links had a fatality?
Well, okay then. We’ll just ignore this attack. This one only put the woman into critical condition, so I guess it doesn’t count.
Until two years ago I swore I’d never, ever have a pit bull (one of my labs was almost killed by a pit whose idiot owner let loose in a dog park, and there have been other occurrences of PB aggression against my dog gang).
Then the cutest stray pit showed up . . .
Rowdy is half Bouvier des Flandres and half pit bull with some misc terrier mix (we had his DNA done). He has a PB body (gigantic head!), yellow brindle stripes on dark brown fur, a schnauzer beard, and weighs 100lbs. He is the most loving (and cutest) dog I’ve ever had. He adores people and his three adopted siblings.
The most aggressive dog I have had was a black lab who decided to start biting - people and other dogs - and generally acting scary during her last two years. My border collie is also a bit assertive and has prolonged barking fits when anything afoot passes our house.
So, I’m a former “pit bulls are from HELL and I will never, ever have one” to a big fan. My revised thinking is that one should be vigilant with any dog; after all, they are animals.
“Fundamentally unstable”? What the heck would that even mean in this context?
What we can say about television sets is that large tube television sets are far more associated with deaths than mounted flat screen televisions, especially when left in a room with unsupervised younger children and that such occurs rarely. Still if you have a large heavy television set you should not leave it where it can topple over and not leave children unsupervised where such could happen. No television set is fundamentally unstable.
The parallel with dogs is striking. Strong dogs are more associated with deaths and serious bites than smaller dogs (not with bite number but with serious bites), especially if children are allowed to play with them in an unsupervised manner. For televisions being left on an unstable surface is a big risk, the parallel with dogs is left tied in a yard or unsupervised in one or worse yet loose. That said those deaths are very rare. If you have a strong dog you should not leave it tied in a yard or alone in one or where it can get loose not leave children to play with it in an unsupervised manner. No breed of dog is fundamentally unstable.
Why are you not out trying to get the Nissan 350Z banned? It has over three time the rate of fatalities associated with it than the average vehicle. Everyone should drive Toyota Siennas - they have almost no fatalities. It has nothing to do with who is doing the driving. Oh but you are in control of your vehicle … okay maybe you should be out there campaigning against pick-up trucks which cause many more deaths to other drivers than other vehicle types (and more driver deaths than do compact cars).
I do think that fatalities are worse than injuries. Sorry if that is controversial.
Any dog large enough to kill is a worry, pit-bull types do so with depressing regularity.
I note the other killer dog in your link was a large mastiff type originally bred for hunting and aggression.
Any sufficiently large, strong dog can kill and I would prefer to see muzzling, insurance and licensing for all of them.
Pit-bulls types are fighting dogs, bred to cause damage. That is their reason to exist. Apparently they have also been bred not to turn that aggression onto humans but as we can see it is difficult to stop them doing that. When that eventually does happen (as it does with other dogs as well) the numbers suggest we have more fatalities then with other breeds.
unstable in a fundamental way?
you miss the point. What if Sony made one with a desirable feature, a fancy stand or something, that also made it prone to toppling over and killing more children than others. I would imagine a design change would swiftly follow.
I would suggest that *all *dogs are fundamentally unstable, they are animals. The worry is how often they do it and what the results of this are.
I am outraged by this. I suggest that we set an age limit on the ownership and use of vehicles. Perhaps restrict the ownership of certain type of vehicles to certain ages and levels of experience. Make people take a test before allowing them out in public. Ensure each vehicle is tagged and logged to a user, that it is fitted with the mandated safety features give them a yearly check to make sure they are fit for use and less likely to go wrong. Also we should compel owners to take out insurance to cover any losses.
Outside of that I’m content to let people make stupid choices but I’ll also feel justified in criticising them for those stupid choices.
So we come to the crux of your argument:
“All dogs are fundamentally unstable” and “any sufficiently large, strong dog” be is of such risk (the fact that the actual risk is infintessimal be damned) that all should be constantly muzzled and have required special insurance.
IMHO, that is not rational argument; it is irrational phobia. I understand cognitive behavioral theray is quite effective.
I am honestly terrified of them and if I was a law enforcement officer, I would not hesitate - not for a second to shoot to kill any one of them that was off leash in a public area and making an agressive move towards an unarmed person.
If they made any kind of aggressive move towards an unarmed person, I would not hesitate - not for a second - to shoot to kill.
If you don’t like that, just please ask yourself the following questions:
Why is the dog off leash?
Why is the dog making some kind of agressive move towards an unarmed person?
Why is their owner not present and in the process of controlling the situation?
If that is not happening, I’m not sorry. but it’s Bang! Bang! You are a dead dog!
Maybe their leash broke and the dog escaped the owner. If that happened, then sorry but you gonna have a dead dog. Broken leash is your problem. You can’t take one of those dogs out into the public on a leash that will break. Those dogs are just too dangerous.
If the dog was “under control” but escaped from the owner, same deal. Those dogs are just too dangerous for you to have them escape the owners control. If it happens, you can expect there is a good chance to wind up with a dead dog.
If the dog is just as sweet as pie all the time and never hurt a soul, but is just making an aggresive move towards someone because they are afraid, same deal. Dead dog.
You need to walk your dog in some kind of enclosed space where they cannot get away from you and make some kind of aggy move to an unarmed member of the public. If you cannot do that, you should expect to wind up with a dead dog.
If you think I am just too harsh and uncaring, all I can say is that I have seen pictures of the result of pit bulls attacking members of the public and ripping off their faces or worse.
If you think that they should not be killed and should be allowed to rip off the faces of unarmed members of the public, I’m sorry but we just have a serious disagreement and all I can say is that I would shoot to kill and not think twice.
Bang! Bang! Dead Dog! Not a second thought. Not a problem. Not at all.
The crux of my argument was clear from the very first post I made, don’t try and make it seem like I’m being sneaky here.
My position hasn’t changed. Big strong dogs can be dangerous, they can kill and they can be unpredictable. I don’t see muzzling, insurance or licensing as an irrational argument. Do you think dog ownership should come with no legal responsibilities or requirements at all?
Well, there are safety requirements for vehicles. There’s no such thing for dogs. I mean, there’s laws and liability on the personal level (just as there’s driving laws) but nothing at the breeding level remotely like requirements for automobile manufacturing and sales.
It seems you could spend your life advocating for mandated safety requirements for breeds of dogs to exist and not be hypocritical for not crusading against a vehicle that meets federal safety standards.
Indeed there are safety requirements for drivers and for responsible dog ownership and both should be enforced not by whether the vehicle is a sports car or a minivan, a labradoodle or a Pit, but based on the behavior of the owner and the individual car or animal.
That is what virtually every, if not every, expert panel has advised. Focusing on breeds is documentably ineffective; focus on problem owners, on individual problem dogs, and on facilitiating good responsible ownership whatever the breed. That approach works. And not just on the rare newsworthy event, but on the more common serious bites as well.
There’s also safety requirements just to make a car roll off the assembly line and onto the lot. Regardless of WHO drives them, you can not legally produce and sell cars that fail to meet safety standards. When they crash or fail to protect their occupants, you go back and ensure that the car should be on the road in the first place.
On the other hand, there’s zero safety requirements for what sort of dogs you breed. Regardless of WHO buys them, you can freely breed any sort of animal you want with any sort of size, strength or temperament. Then, when someone gets hurt, you just shrug and say “Must have been the owner, whatcha gonna do?”.
Saying that someone opposed to a particular breed of dog needs to also been opposed to a specific vehicle which is already far more stringently tested and restricted is, frankly, pretty silly.
Compare death rate per unit owned per year of dogs, any breed, and the death rate per unit owned per year of the average car, let alone the riskiest models … if only cars were up to the safety standard that Pit Bulls are at. As a product goes they are a very very low risk product.
What is very silly is the lack of basic risk assessment that some here evince.
Mind you I am no fan of the backyard breeder. Some are indeed scum breeding for traits that make dogs unsutable to be pets. I’d rather have a limited pool of people breeding established breeds who must be certified in some manner and have most of us get our dogs as rescues. Again, I am a greyhound fan myself. I think pets should all be neutered. I’d strongly support laws that proposed that.
But the risk of dog, model one of the official Pit Bull breeds, is tiny overall. Its potential increased risk compared to average dog model is likely no more of an increase than the risk of stringently tested sports car or pick-up truck is over the average vehicle. In both cases some of it is who owns the models and how the models are used. We at least have good data on vehicular fatalities; the data on dog bite fatalities is OTOH widely acknowledge to be garbage, based on incomplete and often inaccurate reporting and with no norming for how the model is used.
With any dog, it depends on the owner. Pit bulls are not special in this regard. And everyone seems to have a different definition of a pit bull anyway. It seems like “pit bull” gets used to describe about 20-30 different breeds of dog.
This is maybe a dumb question, but I’ve heard in this thread the comment over and over that pit bulls are “large dogs”. How are they large dogs? They stand at most 2 feet high at the shoulder and weigh about 50 pounds. Those aren’t toy dogs by any means, but they’re smaller than, I dunno, golden retrievers or poodles, neither of which get called large dogs.
What you are missing is that there are Pit Bulls and pit bulls. That is the real breeds that are referred to as Pit Bulls, typically the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the American Pit Bull Terrier the American Staffordshire Terrier, and the Bull Terrier, and the broad category of strong muscular scary looking with boxy heads of unknown heritage usually large (at least in imagination) dogs. The Hound of Baskerville was a pit bull, donchaknow?
BTW, this is an interesting read. It the latest and most comprehensive best designed dog bite fatality study done to date. Its findings?
First of all “the breed(s) of the dog or dogs could not be reliably identified in more than 80% of cases.”
But while breed, when actually investigated, had no significant correlation, there were other factors that did.
Interestingly while the actual data found nothing that put any breed as more risky than others
So yes, “if you hear about a killing you can predict with some certainty it’ll be a pit-bull type” you are hearing about. And fairly likely what you are hearing is false information.
From the article abstract itself:
I can’t see the full paper so can’t comment on how they distinguished between breeds. Was “pit-bull type” mentioned anywhere in the 18% of dogs breeds they could identify?
“Pit-bull type” is not a real breed.
So were any “pit bull” dogs identified as causing deaths in that report?