Pitbulls

Great Debates
861

Yes. But in this case (as in plenty of other non-mentioned cases), common knowledge and statistical facts appear to match up.

The problem, in my view, is that, like a lot of other debates involving dogs, there is a strong contingent of people who cannot be swayed by any kind of evidence whatsoever. Which makes for an irritating and boring discussion.

The general public can at any given time can normally identify only about five to ten breeds, the currently most common. But pit bulls are in fact one of those. Yes, there are mistaken ID’s but it is usually because those are rarer related breeds who are often ALSO unusually dangerous. They look similar because they were bred for similar purposes.

I have not read one post that is even slightly convincing to me that pit bulls are not A.) a breed and B.) an unusually dangerous one. And like I say, I have no belief system to defend here.

As far as breed-specific laws, I have no opinion. Cutting down on the popularity of the more dangerous breeds is probably a good thing, if it can be accomplished. Note that they are not more dangerous because they bite more. My guess is that this type of dog bites less than more highstrung breeds. They just do a lot more damage when they bite, because they are selected to do a lot of damage when they bite.

862

So far, you are batting 1000.

863

Of course, since the actuarial tables are based on the potential misrepresentation of the “breeds” involved, they are not really that persuasive.
Banks used such tables to “prove” that certain people were bad credit risks, as a class, for years, while ignoring the fact that their own redlining policies created the data on which their tables were based.
For example, the insurance tables simply lump dogs by (purported) breed, but they make no effort to distinguish between dogs that have been raised as pets and dogs bred for fighting and dogs raised as untrained watch dogs. (Pretty much the way that redlining created self-fulfilling prophecies.)

Yes, I have noticed that about cougar58’s posts.

864

This argument is in essence a nature vs nurture one. And I am firmly on the side of nature on this one. Genes will out. Anyone who has raised a fair number of puppies to adulthood will verify that dogs are in fact different from each other right out of the box, and any dog trainer with any experience will tell you that different breeds react differently to stimuli.

If you take any random pit bull and raise it as a pet, will it become very low-aggression just because of its environment? You’d be very naive to think so. What you have there would be a dog who has not YET experienced an environmental trigger that wakes up its INNATE aggression. And, it may never experience that trigger. Doesn’t mean the genes aren’t there, and you know what? The only way to ascertain that for certain is to try to trigger them. The next best way would be to assume that a dog who is claimed to be a pit bull and looks like a pit bull, is one, and that its genes are those of a dog bred to cause damage when the trigger is pulled.

You could say the exact same thing about any random Border Collie. It may never see a sheep, and in that case you may never see it display herding behavior. Does that mean it doesn’t have any innate herding behavior? Nope. Does the dog have unexpressed herding behavior? There is no way of knowing besides showing it some sheep, but the best guess is that a dog bred to herd sheep has a high chance of showing herding behavior if it is presented with the trigger for it.

865

That is a fine opinion.

It would be nice to see some actual facts from either side of the discussion since this is supposed to be a debate. (And no, I do not regard cougar58’s tidal wave/avalanche of anecdotes, few to none of which have actual evidence that a genuine Pit Bull, rather than some untutored witness’s claim of a Pit Bull, was genuinely involved in the incidents portrayed.)

866

2013 is a pit bull defenders worse nightmare. Not only are pits on track to set yet another record for fatals. but 2013 is interesting in that all of the DBRF’s, the killer dog was caught, and its owner identified. The police, animal control, the media, neighbors, relatives of the owners, and the owners themselves have all either claimed they were pits, or did not deny it (owners). In some cases, the district atty and the judge also referred to them as pits.

in 2011, where the NCRC claims the total was only 3 pits, there were some that resulted in lengthy court cases, even with owners given jail time, and the suspect canine was named a pit.

I, too, want facts and evidence. If the NCRC was able to request and obtain photographs of the killers in 15 cases in 2011, but in each and every one of these 15 cases, they cut and paste said they could not determine if it was a pit or not.

If we are going to parade the NCRC claim as being totally misinterpreted as = 3 pit DBRF’s in 2011, lets get these photos and debate them, right here.

I cited numerous cases in 2011, where family members of the pit bull owner, as well as neighbors and friends, and even the owners, stated it was a pit bull they owned for X number of years. I am rather sure they would know, especially the owners and/or their next of household kin.
Worth noting is that not in one single case, absent of a pedigree document (which was the 3 DBRF’s claimed as pits in 2011 by the NCRC) not one case in 15 could they tell from a photo, if it was a pit, or more importantly , if it was NOT.

Rather peculiar, since they often flash the 12 dog photo line up on the general public, and belittle the average Joe for not being able to tell which photo is or is NOT a pit.

For years they faulted the media for not posting photos in cases of DBRF’s by pits; yet now that they have the photos, they won’t publish them.

PS - the owners of pits involved in DBRF’s, who owned them for many years, and/or house hold family members, who make the same claim, are hardly " untutored witness’s"

As Adlai Stevenson once told the Russians (Cuban Missile crisis) ;
“I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over.”

867

It would be interesting to see a citation for this claim, particularly broken down by which person made the claim regarding the breed. (For example, I have no reason to believe that the typical D.A. or judge could identify a genuine Pit Bull or had even examined the dog, as opposed to simply taking the word of a witness who labeled some mutt a “Pit Bull.”)

868

Interesting request. Sounds like you are asking for a Gish Gallup. But then when I provide a line item response (like I did for the NCRC 2011 claim) I get called out for dishing out a Gish.

Sorry, no photos, - no Gish. I asked first.

869

Examine tonight’s news from Ohio:

Ohio lifts its pit bull legislation, and now shelters are flooded with pits.

http://www.ohio.com/news/ohioans-reluctant-to-adopt-pit-bulls-1.422074

So what do they do? They outsource their pit bulls to pit rescues, who " have more time to evaluate their behavior before deciding if they’re adoptable."

But then, this week, a Florida rescue has a pit bull seriously maul the lady adopting it, as well as the owner.

Helping Paws 22, a non-profit rescue in Fort Myers -

“From the day this dog arrived, she was really a sweat heart,” said Agnello. “She was exposed to the other dogs, to people, to children.”

Worth noting is that Ohio shelters doe not spay or neuter pits bulls that they outsource to pit rescues.

Looks like the Ohio pit lobby got their wish.

870

Bullshit. You made a claim that in every reported Pit Bull attack, this year, there was a positive identification of the Pit Bull involved.

A Gish Gallop would be a list of oddly disjointed lies, often contradicting each other. (Your odd citation to Cesar Milan followed by your disclaimer that you did not put much stock in him, while not being a lie, is closer to an example of the Gish Gallop.)
All I have asked for is are the links to stories that support your claim. If you cannot provide those links, it is no big deal, I had not expected them, anyway.

871

Now this is more of a Gish Gallop post.
You post the claim that Ohio lifted its “pit bull legislation” (without identifying what actually changed), and then claim that shelters are “flooded” with Pit Bulls–a point the story does not actually make. The shelters are not flooded and nothing indicates that there has been a change in the Pit Bull populations since the legislation. The phrase used is that shelters trying to adopt them out find that they “remain a hard sell,” meaning nothing has changed.

Sending a Pit Bull to rescue groups for evaluation is certainly prudent, since there is no way to know, when it is sent to a shelter, whether it was raised as a fighter or a mis-trained guard dog. I also notice that one of the shelters treats German Shepherds in the same way, yet I do not see you going on about them.

872

Luckily, for those with reading comprehension issues, another media source, puts it right in the title, while covering this same story of same date.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/19/pit-bulls-clog-shelters.html

“Pit Bull dogs CLOG shelters”

“In Cincinnati, the majority of the dogs up for adoption at the SPCA’s two shelters are pit bulls”

873

A light went on for me: breed-specific laws are just like gun control! At least, for me they are. The familiar sense of frustration when the side that feels things are perfectly fine as they are, refuses to consider any argument or any statistics as valid, and are utterly unmoved by the endless parade of horrific tragic stories.

I don’t know if the same people oppose control of both, but it seems to me that the emotion they base their beliefs on is similar. What isn’t plain to me is what the emotion is, and why it is so important to them. Just as with gun control, the certain death of more innocents is not too high a price to pay.

It isn’t the fault of the animal that he ripped your child’s arms off. If he had been gently nurtured and properly trained it would never have happened. Therefore we cannot even try to change the rules of this country so that this isn’t liable to happen quite so often.

It isn’t the fault of the gun on the table that your teenager accidentally shot his best friend through the heart, it was a lack of proper storage and training in gun handling. So we must not even try to change the rules so that the situation won’t happen so often.

These arguments are not fact based. At all. They are emotion/belief based. So the discussion will go absolutely nowhere, ever. Which is why I am bowing out, because the last thing I need in my life is more things that go nowhere.

874

Yes, you’re right, because in every instance you cite in the first paragraph, it is quite easy to show data indicating that the ‘common knowledge’ is wrong, while with pit bulls…oh, wait, that’s right, your claim is full of shit, because all the data show pit bulls involved a vast majority of the time when people get chewed to death.

When come back, please bring argument.

875

Please present your scientifically determined basis for asserting (albeit indirectly) that pitbull attacks are fundamentally a result of pitbulls being pitbulls, biologically, physiologically, genetically, vs. pitbull attacks being a result of the way pitbulls are treated and trained. Because you said the arguments are not fact-based, as though you have access to facts disproving the argument that pits are treated and trained into being aggressive towards human beings. If you can show that pit bulls are genetically different from other dogs in that they can, no matter what their life experience, become unpredictably vicious and aggressive towards humans, then produce it, please. Cougar needs it.

Scientifically valid evidence about their biology only- statistics prove nothing about their fundamental natures. Nor do anecdotes.

876

A gun has never escaped from its owners gun cabinet, and ran down the street, injuring and killing innocent pets and civilians. A gun has never escaped from its owner, and crashed thru a front door plate glass window, to kill a human and /or pet in the safety of their own home.

877

Actually, I am not persuaded one way or the other on this topic. I have just been interested to discover that all the anti-Pit Bull posters are failiong to supply genuine evidence for their positions. Anecdotes galore, nut the plural of anecdote is not data.

I was just hoping that for once, we would see a thread on this topic in which actual objective information was presented.

I notice that you are following cougar58’s practice of flailing about with anecdotes (mixed with a bit of ad hominem), while failing to provide actual evidence, as well.

I don’t need to bring an argument as long as you fail to do so.

878

Has there been a novel point or bit of actual evidence introduced into this discussion in the past dozen pages? (By any side of the discussion.)

How many times can you all just repeat the same things to each other?

879

Actually, for those who are paying attention, changing the title on the same story does not change the content of the story.

I see no reason to deny that Pit Bulls and similar looking dogs are hard to place from shelters. With all the bad press they receive, it would be unlikely that they would not be the least adoptable dog. I would be curious as to what the ratios of adoptable breeds were in the 1970s and 1980s when first Dobermans and later Rottweilers were the poster dogs for bad behavior.

I have also already acknowledged that sending Pit Bulls to groups who would evaluate them for temperament is a good idea, since those that wind up in shelters may have been bred for fighting or as “junk yard” type watch dogs.

However, the story that fascinates you says nothing about the breed. It only discusses the reactions of the general public to the campaign that people like you wage to denigrate the breed.
You might even be correct. I would just prefer to see actual evidence rather than the hysteria laden anecdotes with which you are flooding this thread.

880

Which is true of just about all debate-y threads that go beyond a couple hundred posts.