Heh. Your posts are pretty similar to what I was saying a month ago, before arguing the position became tedious for me. Now I’m mostly just reading along looking for interesting posts among the dross, and because I’ve got a pit-bull-like tenacity when it comes to these debates.
At any rate, an excellent and insightful post, Dan; thanks!
Daniel
I have to settle for a beagle like stubborness.
Comparing crocs to dogs is just plain ludicrous. If you paid attention you’ll recall that the significance of muzzle length is the distance between jaw joint and the gripping canines.
Every tooth on a croc looks like a canine tooth. All 24 croc teeth are designed for gripping and crushing. They can’t even chew their food. So the length of their jaw is completely irrelevant except for the fact that those huge jaws can grasp larger chunks of prey.
Okay, now this is just getting ridiculous.
In the first place, it’s “pit bull” pit, with one t. Secondly, you are absolutely correct that the AmBull was bred as an all-purpose farm and work dog. Part of their work was, and always has been, both personal protection and boar hunting. It’s these two jobs that contribute to their status as “high drive working breeds”, and which puts them into the “serious dog” group we’ve been discussing.
Finally, that last line is just a crackup. Common ancestors, but not a single family line. You wanna provide some, I dunno, even remotely plausible reasoning behind the “tougher, more muscular jaw” of the pit bull? I thought not.
Sure they can.
Also, plenty of breeds clamp on to a bull’s nose and hang on. Every cattle drover on the planet is bred to do that.
Oh, sure, but let us assume as gospel the drivel pouring out of the mouths of those who have never seen any of these dogs in action, yet claim wildly specific knowledge which defies basic biology and the positions of all reputable and relevant experts. :rolleyes:
So… now your position is that the CDC, AVMA, ASPCA, AAP, and ASPS are all engaged in a conspiracy to cover up for the pit bull? And that’s why all of them are clear to state that to accept the unsubstantiated media hype surrounding the “dangerous dog du jour” is the wrong step to take in the prevention of dog bites?
…Wow.
Yes. As do I, as you can clearly see at the end in my last response to you. Again, you are remarkably persistent in foisting upon me an argument that I am not making now and never have made.
The one point of contention I have is with the urban legend that surrounds this dog, the urban legend that says “a pit bull is a ‘supernova’ like risk as compared to other breeds of dogs.” That statement is based on pure myth. They are no more dangerous than any physcally powerful, high-drive working breed. Chows, Presas, Rottweilers, GSDs, and so on. If they are more common than, say, Presas, and more frequently mishandled, this is not a fault of the breed, but of the* owners*. This is like an argument that handguns are inherently worse killers (in and of themselves) because they’re more commonly involved in homicides than machine guns.
I am sorry that you cannot accept that I have offered such a position from the start. I don’t know why, but, there we are.
http://pit-bulls.christianfunfair.org/attacks.htm It is probably sites like this that help give pits a bad name. That and the fact they actually did the acts on the site. I never saw one like this on beagles, or poodles.
So… who brought up beagles and poodles as examples?
I’m not comparing dogs to crocs. I’m saying it’s ridiculous to assume to ‘distance between jaw joint and gripping canines’ is what determines the strength any carnivore’s biting and holding ability.
Please cite any information you might have that indicates this is so.
Hey,** The Flying Dutchman** you wanna offer me any remotely plausible explanation as to why a “pit bull” has more leverage for biting than this dog or this dog or this dog?
…I didn’t think so.
Not an expert on any of this, no bone (heh) in this fight, as it were, just a dog lover (golden retrievers here). But since I’m passing by:
I would bet a lot of money that my current golden (and including the two other goldens I’ve owned) would never, ever bite any person out of aggression; the idea of my golden killing another animal is almost laughably absurd. (Quite frankly I’m actually a bit concerned that he doesn’t even fend for himself when other dogs are aggressive…).
The above notwithstanding, there is still no way I would leave my newborn baby alone in a room even for a minute where he was within reach of the dog, who was freely moving around.
I was in debate class in high school, and was a judge my senior year. Based only on what I’ve read here? CannyDan is running circles around everybody else.
That is all, carry on.
:):p:)
Heh. Your argument has always been that because pit bulls are “bred to attack child-sized animals”, that makes them more likely to indiscriminately attack children, and to attack them fatally, than any other breed.
That thread is a perfect example of how you conduct yourself in these debates. You come in with an argument that pit dogs are more likely to attack, and fatally attack, children… then withdraw that statement when presented with facts, then continue to assert such ideas, then dance around them, then insist that it’s recent working history and lack of socialization that makes a dog more disproportionately dangerous when pressed on the question of ground-quarry hunting dogs (but keep insisting that it’s true of pit dogs by default because of breeding history anyway), then…
In the pit thread you refer to pit dogs as “a type of mastiff”, in this linked thread you refer to a bull terrier as a “pit bull”, also commenting that “typical” game type pit bulls weigh 80 pounds, you clearly demonstrate that you have no functional knowledge of any breed’s working history or present working conditions…
Yeah, you’re a real wealth of knowledge, here. This totally cracks me up–you even happily state in the pit thread that you have no idea what a pit bull “is”, you happily acknowledge that the general public* also* has no idea what a pit bull is, and that they use the term to apply to anything that fits a broad phenotypic spectrum, and you’re still showing up in every pit bull thread that comes along to insist that there’s something breed-specific lurking in their DNA, some mythical “psychosis” that heightens their propensity to attack.
Canny Dan’s straw man (which you’re now pretending to have adopted) is different than an argument for pit bulls carrying some mythical, biology-defying physical traits, or a genetic “psychosis”. Pick one and stick with it, won’t you?
Indeed. Ridiculous is the only word for your misrepresentation of my statements. This I cannot allow.
I said nothing of the kind. I stated what is a clear truth, that the quotations you offer in support of your assertions are position papers and are therefore political statements and not scientific works. They themselves offer no commentary on “unsubstantiated media hype”, but instead advocate a more comprehensive approach to dog bite prevention than the simple and simplistic but often popular breed ban. Their positions, as the politically sensitive positions of national organizations, offer generalized suggestions rather than specific actions.
Now you not only misunderstand me, but you misquote me as well. I said
This was merely a different analogy to my previous statement likening statistics for bites from “Pit-type dogs”, from Clifton, to a mountain (Everest, to be exact) among molehills. It does NOT say that Pit Bulls represent a supernova like risk of ownership. Most Pits, most of the time, are fine dogs, suitable as pets. However, it does say that the statistics in Clifton show Pit-types to be disproportionately represented in bite cases, especially in seriously damaging bites, and the numerical disparity between this and all other breeds is huge. I argue that, despite shortcomings in Clifton’s methodology, this has some meaning in the real world. You reject Clifton out of hand, and argue that it does not.
Meh. :rolleyes:
It seems to me that any attempt to mitigate the national problem of dog bites must include public educational efforts regarding suitability of certain breeds for certain purposes (e.g., hunting, companionship, guarding, etc.), for certain situations (e.g., city, country, apartment building, ranch home, etc.) and for certain people (e.g., assertive personalities, liaise faire personalities, milquetoast pushover personalities, people with or without kids, large people, small people, strong people, weak people, etc.). It must be emphasized that ownership of ANY dog entails ownership responsibilities, some of which are more difficult to provide or achieve than others. For some breeds those specific responsibilities may be to provide specialized grooming, while for others it may be to include an exercise component for a high energy animal. And for some breeds, definitively including the Pit Bull, responsibilities include proper socialization, an ability to exercise continuous control (control of the situation and surroundings as well as control of the animal), and a recognition of the potential for danger.
It has been amply demonstrated that Pits should only be considered suitable for a small subset of the entire set of possible dog owners. Your adamant rejection of this reality, and your tu quoque statements about other breeds, suggest to me that your own “nuanced approach” is deficient. But then, that’s just me.
Since Clifton relied on media accounts of witness IDs to establish whether a dog was a Pit or not, how in the world can his methodology be anything but fatally flawed? That is about as far from a “scientific work” as you can get.
Sure. Agreed. This again is something I’ve never disputed, and setting it up as an argument for you to knock down is the classic definition of a straw man.
/snicker
Here you go again. Did you miss all those posts where I talked about “high drive working breeds” and how they need more attentive handling than sedentary, companion breeds? Your adamant rejection of this reality suggests to me that you need to go back and figure out what exactly we’re arguing about.
Clifton’s numbers are rejected (by me and the CDC) because they’re presented as a “definitive media survey”… which was not conducted by any scientist, but by a* tabloid editor and animal rights activist* who provides no verification of his claims whatsoever. When referring to useful cites such as the ones on the CDC bibliography, the numbers are a little closer to reality. Your assessment about high-drive working breeds, their greater need for more attentive and knowledgeable handling, and that this is a complex issue with far more than breed to consider, we agree upon. I still can’t quite figure out what’s got your panties in a twist, except that I reject Clifton. Otherwise, I have no contention with the CDC-approved cites, or their assessments of the complexity of this issue.
So now you agree with me. Or perhaps not.
:rolleyes:
Yawn.
Nevermind. Continuing isn’t worth the effort.
I agree, setting up those straw men is hard work!
You may have the last word, since that seems important to you. I’ll be satisfied with knowing that my arguments, unlike yours, actually make sense.
Which arguments, the ones you made up or about the tabloid editor’s fine methodology? I agree, you make a compelling case for high-drive working dogs needing more active management than other breeds, and that fatal attacks are due to a complex range of issues which involve both genetics and environmental factors. Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, wait…
You reject Clifton because it is against your poorly defended stance. A compilation of dog attacks and the kind of dog involved is not hard to do.
http://images.google.com/images?q=beagles&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=8xYUS5yVMdL7nAfK_ZDCAw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQsAQwAA If someone said a beagle was involved in a biting, I would not claim we need DNA to verify that it is one. Most of us know damn well what most dog breeds are. we do not need a syringe to determine that a dog is a pit. Are there pit mixes that attack. Yep, but we would have to admit that the reason it was bred with a pit was to further aggression. If they crossbred with a beagle they would make it less dangerous.
You need to stop saying this crap, especially the stuff about DNA. No one is saying that every dog whose heritage is questionable needs to be tested. What we are saying is that the Clifton report is fatally flawed, not because most folks don’t know what a beagle looks like, but because it relied on media accounts of witness reports. And it admittedly does not and cannot address the question of how many pit bulls comprise the total population.
It doesn’t even rise to the level of junk science. It is useless as a citation.
