Based on what information?
Also, try to hone your reading comprehension skills, and quit moving the goalposts. We aren’t talking exclusively about 2013.
Should a Golden Retriever/Pitt Bull mix be reported as a pit mix or a retriever mix?
Excellent question.
The only Golden retriever fatal mauling in 2013 (none) and 2012 (one mix) was reported as a Golden Retriever mix.
Look at this photo of the “Golden Retriever”. Then google image “Golden Retriever”. compare the nose (color) width of head, and spacing of eyes.
I have owned Goldens, and this looks nothing like a Golden.
It was in fact reported as a Golden Retriever mix.
Just to be factually complete (and correct), there is also a 1974 Golden Retrevier death linked to in the comments section of that article. Here’s the link.
I agree the linked-to animal does not look like a purebred Golden Retriever, but it doesn’t look like a pit bull dog type to me, either. (In case that is your argument–it may not be.)
Here’s a Golden killing a child in 2008, but not through biting, but an unfortunate game of tug-of-war.
Sadly, I think the irony of this post is completely lost on you.
You’re actually arguing my point now and you don’t even realize it.
ETA: (and that dog absolutely does look like a golden mix)
So, in your opinion, does this count as a Golden killing someone, or not? Why or why not?
Uh, yeah. What’s you’re point?
Assuming this mish-mash is your way of saying you believe that this Golden mix counts as a Golden as far as bite statistics are concerned, can you tell me why that is? If you were to find out via genetic testing that this dog was half Golden Retriever and half Staffordshire Terrier, would you say a Golden or a pit bull was the offending dog? Why or why not?
What if we were to find out this dog actually contains no traces of Golden Retriever in its lineage, it merely looks like a Golden mix?
What if we discovered it was part Golden, but the part was very very small, perhaps less than 20%? At what point (if any) would you begin to feel uncomfortable classifying this dog as a Golden Retriever mix, especially as it concerns breed identification for bite statistics?
Again, once a point has been made I generally have no interest in continuing to repeat it to those who are too dense to (or who consciously refuse to) understand some very obvious points but I will answer a question once more pretending it was asked with an honest curiosity:
Because they believe the risk is so small as to be an insignificant factor in their decision process. Akin to why someone buys a vehicle with a slightly lower crash rating, say the BMW X1 small SUV instead of the highest safety rated Subaru Forester: because there are other reasons they prefer a BMW X1. Your question only makes sense under a presumption of “if all else is equal.” All else is not.
This. No one claimed I was incomprehensibly and recklessly putting my kid at unnecessary additional risk when I bought a Jetta rather than a Suburban (or, for that matter, a Forester).
Even though the additional risk I accrued for my child by doing so dwarfs the additional risk I’d accrue by choosing a pit bull over any other similarly sized dog. (As any given pit bull has around a 0.0005% chance of being involved in a fatal attack, as I keep pointing out to people who think this represents some catastrophically huge risk.)
Put in real-world terms, the odds of winning a $50k lottery payout on pick-5 in my state on a given random $1 ticket are twice as good as the odds of a given pit being involved in a fatal attack.
To hear **cougar58 **and **Prejteach2 **tell it, I should be buying up a few of those so I can be in Aruba next week.
First of all You do not have to pretend I am asking out of honest curiosity because it is sincere I just do not understand it.n I agree with you, the risk is small but so much higher than any other breed which is why I keep repeating the question. Using your car analogy if you have a choice of 10 cars in a used car lot and there is one that is notorious for tires blowing even though it is not common would you choose that car?
Hey, why not include maiming and just attacking, not death. Then your odds get worse for that lottery ticket
My apologies for what came off snarky.
It would depend on what the models were and what “notorious” actually meant. If the one that was “notorious” was the model that otherwise had the features I wanted and the others did not (the mpg, the performance, the style, the room for 5, etc. …), if nortorious meant the level of risk actually associated with Pit Bulls well socialized, neutered, etc. (which I at least readily acknowledge is while very very very small is non-zero, just by strength of the animal greater than most other dogs and by temperament greater risk than at least a pure Golden or Lab), and if the others did not meet my feature list well, then I would likely pick the car with reputation for tire blow outs that otherwise met all my needs and desires.
I’m one of those crazy people who has kids and a pit mix. Why? I found her as a stray (I even posted about it, if you want to look it up). She was dirty, skinny and needy, so I was only going to take her in briefly. But she’s very friendly, licks the kids all over, gets along well with our other dog, and the kids love her. If I take her to the pound, she is the least likely kind of dog to get adopted: large, black and a pit-mix.
So by getting rid of her, I would break my kid’s hearts and condemn a loving dog to death. The risk of her harming anyone is tiny, the advantage of having her is large. Call me crazy, but we are keeping our lab-pit mix.
Are you a Luddite, by any chance? Just curious.
Were you likewise miffed when BAOC nixed their fleet of DeHaviland Comet jet airliners, after 3 fell apart mid air, and it was confirmed to be an inherent design flaw that all Comets were born with ( even thou most never fell apart, and yes, your odds were in fact better of winning the $50k lotto that you referenced)
Would you fly a Comet on your trip to Aruba? By the way, 4 of the major USA airlines ban pit bulls as cargo, so Zeus and Brutus and Capone will hafta stay in Philly.
One Comet was still in service as of 1997, for cargo, but amazingly you may not be allowed to check your pit bull on the plane. No airlines ban Goldens
I would, if anyone would bother actually showing a peer-reviewed study that demonstrated the following two things:
- sincere attempts at systematic breed identification based on more than phenotype
- sincere attempts to determine the population percentages of various breeds (which includes problem 1 again) vs. their percentage as causes of bite incidents, ideally attempting to control for size and severity of bite (that is, even if I might not take my toddler to the hospital if a Jack Russell bites her, that bite STILL must be considered if we are talking about bite risk).
Unfortunately that’s a high bar to clear, for a variety of very good reasons, but which make it almost impossible to actually assign a bite risk to any given dog breed or cross.
Senior IT Engineer, actually. As you may have surmised by the fact that I actually understand statistics and risk analysis.
In your world “3 out of 114” is the same as “1 in ~200,000”? (Cite: de Havilland Comet - Wikipedia, see “Number Built” in the handy info-box). Actually, that cite count includes all four models of Comet, not just the Comet 1 with the design flaw, so I’m actually spotting you a fair bit on this and you’re STILL four orders of magnitude off.
Er, of the US Airlines that ban pit bulls, of which there are only three since United lifted their ban in 2012, American and Delta ban ALL dogs of the brachycephalic type due to the inherent higher risks to the dog’s health in a low-pressure, low-temperature environment. Similarly, Southwest bans ALL dogs that don’t fit in a carry-on because they don’t allow dogs in cargo at all.
Cites:
http://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/specialAssistance/travelingWithPets.jsp#TemperatureRestrictions
Now, if I were you, I’d point to Delta’s ban page and make a snide comment about how OBVIOUSLY Delta thinks Persian cats are as deadly as pit bulls, since they are ALSO banned. Instead, I’ll just joke about it. 
Incidentally, if you would take the time to read and research your own material, you’d find out how badly you were distorting your statements of “fact” BEFORE you embarrassed yourself.
I wouldn’t subject any dog to air travel in any event, given that unless they fit in a carry-on they ride in cargo, which is IMHO a terribly cruel thing to do to an animal.
In any case, the post-refit Comets have an exemplary safety record, and the leading-edge air intakes are one of the cooler features of British large jets of the time period–I’d ride a Comet in a heartbeat. The same basic airframe design went on to be the Hawker Nimrod, which was the RAF’s premier maritime patrol aircraft for decades (they only completely retired them in 2011).
Automotive Quality Engineer. And I assure you, those in my field are far more versed in statistics and recalls and public safety, than an IT engineer. When you toss out random figures as being acceptable, such as pit bulls killing 32 people a year, or even the odds of winning a states 50K lotto (which is 1 in 180,000 in Nebraska) or 5 ppm…
Chrysler, in 2009, sold 2.5 M cars, so 5ppm = 12 per year. Their recall for fuel tanks exploding showed 51 deaths in 14 years, or 3 per year.
This is why Dog Bite Attorney Ken Philips ( dogbitelaw.com )
It’s Time for the Pit Bull “Recall” Too - dogbitelaw
made the correlation that if 51 people were killed in 14 years, (or 3 per year) and the government is asking for a Chrysler recall, pit bulls should be recalled as well. Your position is that even 12 per year would fine - or, even if they matched pit bulls at 32 per year you wouldn’t see a recall as being needed.
I can assure you, I have seen recalls (called “campaigns” ) where there were no fatalities, when a known defect made it to the car dealers show room. Just the possibility of even an injury due to a defective design or manufacturing issue, will warrant a recall. I have seen similar recalls / bans on one make of window blinds (not all) and one type of baby cribs (drop side) - but not all cribs. and they were far fewer in deaths and amputations of not just children, but adults as well.
I can assure you, you are not at all familiar with the term RPN, which is Severity X Occurrence X Detection for calculating risk. Deming would turn over in his grave at what you are saying, and about 30 people per year would needlessly enter their grave as their Toyota Camry accelerated off a cliff.
Says the guy who expected me to believe that the rate per unit of failure on a de Hallivand Comet 1 made it less risky than 1 in ~200,000 per year.
Pretty funny, that, since I’m using that figure to give YOUR claim every possible benefit of the doubt (32 is the average per year in the US since 2005 years per wikipedia, and I expressly said I was doing the math as though they were ALL pit bull-types just to give you the most possible benefit of the doubt). I took an estimate of between 6-7 million pits and pit mixes in the US from various sources online both pro- and anti-BSL, since there isn’t ANY actual data on pit mixes in the US or even total dog population.
If you don’t like the numbers, why don’t you bring your own?
Frankly, we’re all noticed that you don’t ever actually address counterarguments anyway, you just gallop on past them. Or did you somehow decide to not notice that I showed your Philadelphia Hospital Study entirely useless for determining the relative risk of pit bulls (as it has no figures on how common pits are compared to the general dog population in the hospital’s service area). I showed your assessment of the de Hallivand Comet was both ill-informed AND four orders of magnitude off in terms of risk per airframe per year. I showed that your statements about pits being disallowed from flying were a red herring, since no United States-based airline bans them for reasons other than the health of the animal.
And in your latest post, you try to move the goalposts from “incidents per car” (the statistic I cited) to “deaths per year”.
In other words, you have nothing and you’re trying to cover it with bluster and useless appeals to authority.
Incidentally, Deming would laugh you out of his office if you claimed that sloped-hood midsize sedans that LOOKED like Camrys were causing deaths, without having some engineering data to back it up, and we both know it. The difference between automotive recalls and dog legislation is provable causation–I can point at a Jeep’s gas tank and say “This is why it fails”. You don’t have that ability with dog breeds, and your attempts to claim mere phenotypical resemblance is good enough are frankly laughable, in addition to having been tied in knots repeatedly. There’s a reason why experts in animal care (ASPCA - Breed-Specific Legislation | ASPCA), law (ABA - http://www.abanow.org/2012/06/2012am100/), and public health (CDC - http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Dog-Bites/dogbite-factsheet.html) all have positions AGAINST breed-specific law.
But of course, let’s all listen to the automotive safety engineer! And his shyster lawyer cite!