Why would you buy a dog that you need reassurance that it isn’t a vicious breed despite statistics that show it attacks more than any other breed?
Oppsie, forgot I wasn’t in the Pit! I’ll take my warning though.
I went looking at pitbulls to adopt. SO CUTE you guys!!! I brought my kids along to the rescue so they could play with the whole group, to get a feel for which dog would fit best in our family. So thank you cougar! You’ve saved the life of at least one pitbull. Pat yourself on the back!
I am still curious about the answers to the several straightforward questions I have asked that have been ignored.
Again why do all those professional organizations either advise the education and/or owner and control based on individual dog history measures instead of BSLs, often specifically speaking out against them? What motivates this mass denial?
Or are they all just dumb?
Why, in your opinion, have Pits become a bigger problem, such that you are so concerned that only the most recent data is used?
How do you explain your claimed association of Pit ownership with criminality? Do Pits drive owners to crime?
As has been shown BSLs sometimes are correlated with worse bite rates, never with decreased fatality rates, sometimes more serious injuries, sometimes marginally less. Accepting only the studies that show a decrease the decrease leaves 75% of serious bites, caused by other large dogs, still allowed to continue. Do you support laws against all large dogs? Why or why not?
Thank you.
There are no such statistics. See, without a reliable way to identify breed, allllll those stories being posted have no meaning. Don’t you feel better now?
You’ve got it reversed. The “many” are the hundreds of millions who don’t own pitbulls. The “few” are the ones that do.
Congratulations that your pit hasn’t killed anyone yet. But, seriously, you should have got a different breed of dog.
That’s the amazing part about all of this. The pit owners could just be lab owners and everyone would be happy. It’s not like anyone is proposing banning all dogs.
Agreed that they were bred to fight other dogs and not humans. So, why pick that trait as something desirable to have in your home? Why not a dog bred to do something not violent and deadly?
No, of course not. But banning pits doesn’t hurt anyone and makes perfect sense. Get a lab. Problem solved.
Yes. Kill them all.
Sure, problem owners are mostly responsible for bad dogs. But, yes, getting rid of the dogs problem owners desire would certainly reduce the problem. Many of them wouldn’t want a normal dog like a golden retriever.
All dogs should be neutered, with the exception of licensed breeders.
It’s an entirely sensible solution with no downside. You might mention cost: I have a solution. Tax the pitbull owners to pay for it.
You are the grand master of hand waving. Can you solve all our other problems by waving them away with a lack of definition that exists solely in your mind?
Poverty? How do you “define” poor? How do you know, with 100% certainly that a poor person in the news doesn’t secretly have a fortune buried under their house? There’s no such thing as poverty!
It’s silly to claim that one needs documented proof of a breed for every instance of an attack.
Let’s err on the side of caution and kill everything that looks like it might be a pit. Sure, some mixes and various pit breeds are going to fall into the net but so what? Get a normal dog and you won’t have a problem.
Um, no? I’m not a dog killer. I don’t get excited about killing people’s family pets. That is crazy.
Just based on the stupidity of your posts, I’m going to guess you know virtually nothing about dogs or dog breeds. So I hope you’ll forgive me for ignoring you. Actually, I don’t care. If someone like you thinks less of me, I can only see that as a good thing.
See folks, here’s the actual sides of the debate. We have a group who wants to kill thousands, maybe millions of dogs because they maybe look like they have a certain breed somewhere in their lineage. A breed NOT bred for human aggression, in fact, a breed bred to resist biting a human even in a volatile situation. And they don’t need pedigrees or genetic testing or even any kind of real evidence of a genetic predisposition to bite for this to happen. No, they want to take dogs away from the people who love them and kill them for no reason at all. Dogs that have never bitten anyone, and never would have. This is in contradiction to every major, reputable group who’s studied dog biting/aggression/killing, by the way. They just want to kill a whole lot of dogs.
On the other side you have people who have looked at the facts and see that killing and banning these dogs doesn’t result in lower fatalities or bites, but that there are other things we can do that DO reduce these issues. They want to neuter all male dogs, because research shows that DOES help reduce dog bites and fatalities. They want to eliminate backyard breeders who create a surplus of badly bred, abused animals that are more likely to be dangerous. They want to educate people on how to keep dogs responsibly.
These are the two sides. Which sounds rational?
The sad thing is that there are some really interesting questions here, but talking pit bulls has all the volatility of an abortion debate, so it seems kind of pointless to even try to engage in a cool, rational discussion.
Why would any one marry a Black man when statistics show that Black men commit more murder and manslaughter in this country than any other group? Heck I could go for pages listing gruesome details of murders in which the murderer was a Black man.
You do, I hope, recognize immediately why that is a goofy asinine statement. Why some here fail to recognize that the conclusions drawn from the reported as Pit stats are equally stupid is beyond me.
The actual official breed American Staffordshire Terrier (aka American Pit Bull Terrier) by itself is one of the three most popular breeds in a majority of American states. Put them together with the other breeds and mixed breed mongrel dogs that look somewhat Pittish … that’s a pretty big number of “Pits” out there. Of all dogs that size and larger, the dogs whose bites are more likely to cause serious harm, these Pittish dogs are a pretty sizable chunk. And they are indeed over-represented as the dog chosen by people who do not want a pet but want a statement, a personality projection, or a guard dog … and dogs that are not well socialized with humans are an increased risk without question.
Why do all the regular people adopt and buy Pits as pets and raise them as such? Because they are indeed renown for being loyal and fun and goofy. They have on many occasions saved the lives of their owners and no doubt deter some home invasions and muggings. They want a big dog and while Labs and Setters are fine, some prefer the Pits personality. Me I love greyhounds and we’ve adopted two former racers … but they are large dogs that have not been socialized well their first two to three years … bites can happen with them too. And do. The saving grace is the work the agencies do when these dogs go into home to train the families and to ease the dogs into a family pet role.
Debaser, it is hard to call a group of dog breeds and many mixes which includes one of the three most popular dog breeds in most American states a “not normal dog” don’t you think?
Again Pits have many positive features. Labs are not for everyone. (And while rare, Labs can kill too. No large dog is completely safe.)
Ban Pits without banning all other larger dogs and another animal will be used as the dog of choice for tough guy image making - Rott, Doberman, German Shepherd, Malamute, Husky … the list is large.
Banning Pits makes no sense. Again, the overwhelming balance of the evidence is that BSLs do not work. No improvement in bite fatality rate, as much chance of being associated with more bites both serious and not as of being associated with a decrease in them. And in the best case only reducing a small fraction of serious bites. To get at the remaining 75% of serious dog bites you’d need to ban all dogs or at least all dogs over a certain size. But sure - “kill them all.” Anything over 40 pounds. Take no chances. Sure a few gentle dogs will get killed. So what? Get a normal dog, one under 40 pounds, a pug! Everyone is happy!
pulykamell I think you (and miss elizabeth’s last comment are correct. It is a bit pointless. It just seems wrong to allow a thread to be one poster’s personal blog to post scary anecdotes uncontested.
Shit, I remember when that happened. I live (and was living at the time) less than a block away from their house. Obviously, everyone was stunned. We had rottweilers, huskies, dobermans, and pits in the neighborhood. Nobody would have guessed the labrador is the one that would have killed. I simply would not trust any dog, especially a medium-to-large one, to be alone with any child, no matter how good its supposed reputation with children is.
I’ve been wanting to make this comparison for pages, but I was afraid it would come across as dehumanizing (comparing Black people to dogs), although I obviously wouldn’t have meant it that way. I think it’s a valid comparison; not dogs and Black people, obviously, but the media’s ability to skew perception by selectively reporting. Another example would be the way people think crime and child abductions are way up, even though factually they are at an all time low. I could post dozens, no, HUNDREDS of pages of scary crime stories, and an uneducated reader would feel like we must be living in some post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare. But again, that’s selective reporting. The fact is crime is down, and dog bite fatalities are rare.
The idea that it’s rational to kills hundreds or thousands of beloved family pets because of a few outliers of murky provenance is just appalling to me. This sort of reactionary cruelty is a plague on the discourse of our nation. I realize you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into, but I dunno. I just thought it was natural to be against dog killing. It seems like that would be the default.
DING DING DING DING DING!!! WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
Dogs are animals and they should never be unsupervised with kids.
I have a healthy respect for pit bulls and other medium-to-large dogs (frankly, it’s the bull mastiffs that make me a little nervous, just by sheer size alone.) But when I look at the numbers, even with the dogsbite.com estimation that 5% of the dog population are “pit bull types,” we have about 3.5 million pitbulls. Of those, we have 30 that kill a year, or about 1 in 120,000. Honestly, that’s not a number that, to me, justifies killing off 3.5 million dogs, and I am just taking, for sake of argument, all numbers reported by dogsbite.org, as given. YMMV.
The interesting question for me is what the hell is going on? Were dog fatalities underreported before or is there a real uptick in them? Why are most of the dogs reported as “pit bulls”? Is there really that much misidentification ? Or are there that many more “pit bull types” these days to account for the jump in pit bull fatalities? It doesn’t make sense to me. Up to 2004, we only had 3 or 4 pit bull bite fatalities in a year, usually just 1 or none. Then in 2005 onward, it jumps to 10+ a year. Has the pit population exploded that much?
And I’m using these numbers. I mean just total dog bit fatalities from 2001 onward takes a weird jump from usually single digits into the double digits, and it’s not all attributable to dogs reported as pit bull types.
There’s just something really odd going on there.
I’ll join! :)
Cuz I’m new to having a pit and it was a major decision that I thought about a great deal, precisely because I do not feel confident dealing with aggression. I did a lot of research, I had more than one conversation with my trainer/teacher, many more. We are still having those conversations. I don’t believe they are exactly like any other dog, and I don’t believe they are satanic freaks of nature that need to be annihilated. Obviously.
I have learned a great deal about aggression in dogs in the last six months because of this, a lot it surprising. Which is why I asked cougar about what it means when dogs lick and yawn and wag their tails. I’ve been devoted to learning about dogs for years and it is only by delving more deeply into the subject of dog aggression that I learned some very basic and surprising things about what most of us do NOT understand about canine communicaiton, which is what leads to people being ignorant about their own dogs and saying “gee, he was perfect until the moment he bit!” Well, no, he wasn’t - you just didn’t know how to read the signs. Unless he was injured or ill, it’s guaranteed he communicated his intentions before he acted.
That’s why it is crucial that ALL dog owners, but of course particularly those with very powerful dogs of any breed, get a solid understanding of what dogs are signaling with various behaviors, as well as what dogs generally do not like and what might lead to aggression. Education. Responsible behavior.
Also, as I learned, preventing aggression from developing is best done from the earliest possible age - leave the puppies with mom for a good long time (10-12 weeks, 8 minimum), handle them from the youngest age, expose them to sights, smells noises, make sure the exposure is positive. Expose them to all sizes and ages of people and dogs, make sure all such exposures are positive. Not just neutral, positive. If it isn’t rewarding in itself, add some rewards.
You don’t want fear! Fear is a straight line to aggression. Maximizing this for the first 4-6 months of life, combined with plenty of exercise and positive training, as well as neutering before puberty, and you shouldn’t have any issues with aggression in any dog.
The media tends to mis-identify dogs a lot, plus there are just a lot of pit-type dogs these days. It’s mostly a media-created scandal though, and I think it has a bit to do with racism as well honestly. That’s why reputable organizations stopped breaking down bites by breed; without a reliable way to identify a breed, it was pretty much meaningless.
The uptick in bites is interesting though. This thread is pretty much shot, but personally I’d love to read one like that- fact based, not hysterics.
Knock it off or take it to The BBQ Pit.
[ /Moderating ]
It is an interesting question.
The problem right off is that the numbers seem to rely on media reports, which is unlikely to be a reliable marker, subject as it is to media editorial judgment of what the public is interested in at any particular time. Hence there may, or may not, have been more fatalities before that were just not “newsworthy” and there may be more bites now that are by breeds that don’t make for the story the editor thinks will attract the eyeballs … or not. The sudden uptick beginning in 1995 is highly suspicious. Maybe a consistent 40 is a real number.
“Pit,” as used in these reports, is also a very fuzzy edged category. People want Pits so disreputable breeders sell them “Pits” whatever the actual background may be. A dog bites and many will see it as a Pit if it has any characteristics of one at all. We cannot know what the n for Pits was or is; we can only make WAGs.
There is an interesting graph in this report (pdf), figure 2. It’s on page 11, dog bite hospitalization rates. Hospitalization rates seems like a more reliable data set than relying on media reports. Years 1993 through 1996 were volatile, jumping from 2.0/100K to 3.4 in two years and then right back back down to 2.4, but from 1997 to the end of the data set in 2008, an eleven year span, the rates were pretty steady, starting off at 2.9 and ending at 3.1 with the range being 2.7 to 3.1. (Interestingly enough while BSLed UK has had consistent year on year increases.) Of note the number of dogs owned in the UNited States has increased over this time.
It does cause one to suspect that the “epidemic” is one of reporting more than of reality.
I think I saw this link in this thread, didn’t I? If not, it’s very enlightening. I’ve been studying what is and isn’t a pit, and at least half those dogs would be called pits or pit mixes by a huge number of people. I’m very chagrined to report that I missed the true pit entirely! I had to apologize to Zusje…
After reading this thread carefully, I have decided I really want an American Pit Bull Terrier. They seem like warm-hearted animals, and with proper training are likely to be very disciplined and well-suited to a loving home. I don’t quite have the space for one now, but should I get the opportunity I will certainly take it.
I dedicate this choice to couger58.