kmarie's Liked Comments
CB, you seriously can't trust articles like that. The CDC doesn't track dog bites by breed, and they never have. For one thing, they don't trust eyewitnesses to be able to accurately ID dog breeds, and for another, they don't consider breed an important factor in determining anything about individual bites. No state in the US tracks bites by breed, either. Texas used to, but gave up after finding (yup) that breed wasn't the determining factor in bites, and most people couldn't tell what they were looking at anyway.
A woman named Marjorie Darby took a very interesting look at this and found that if even 1% of the entire pit bull population of the US were to attack someone, that would break down to (with very conservative estimates on pit bull numbers and very generous definition of "attack") more than 14 serious attacks by a pit bull somewhere in the US every day. Anyone who tracks these things - and there are plenty who do - can see instantly that this is a crazy-high number, especially considering that so many of these things get national media attention. If this number were true, you wouldn't be able to turn on CNN one single day out of the year without a serious pit bull attack headlining something. But that's clearly not the case. Keep in mind that this is what would happen if ONE PERCENT of all pit bulls in this country actually attacked. Statistically speaking, looking at 1% of a population to draw conclusions about the other 99% is so far beyond ridiculous, it really should be beneath anyone's consideration.
For the record, Ms. Darby went further and found that 80 human fatalities were linked to pit bulls in the past 30 years (she did this between 1999 and 2003). She let that number stand, even though it's been pretty well proven that eyewitness accounts can't be trusted, and when in doubt, people call it a pit bull. Factoring in conservative estimates of pit bull populations, taking into account increasing population size, estimating an average 10-year lifespan, and running the numbers again, she found that 0.0002% of pit bulls in that period had been involved in human fatalities. Don't you wish humans themselves had such a good track record when it came to not killing people?
In my experience, people who love pit bulls are the ones who've met them. Those that think they're dangerous or demonic or equivalent to a mountain lion or a loaded shotgun are people who have never met one, and only ever seen them on the news or read about them in the paper. I find it astonishing that personal experience is discounted time and again, dismissed by people who say, "Well, you've never met a bad one" or "You've been lucky so far, but don't ever trust it" or "They just randomly turn on you, you can't see it coming" - these sorts of comments, almost without fail, coming from someone who wouldn't even pet a pit bull if offered a chance. What makes that person more of an expert than me, who lives with one, every single day? Why does that person deserve a soundbite on the news, when by their own admission, they would never have anything to do with these dogs?
For that matter, why is the occasional attack (by a chained-up, unsocialized, untrained) dog treated as though it's a truer representation of the breed as a whole than the hundreds of licensed therapy dogs? Or the K9 police units that can only use this breed as drug dogs because they lack the necessary aggression to do work typically given to German Shepherds? Or the literally hundreds of thousands of dogs every single day that do not bite anyone? It's mind-boggling, and infuriating, and frequently heartbreaking, because that sort of media bias and misinformation is exactly what leads to breed-specific legislation - outlawing of pit bulls, where the innocent majority are lumped together with the handful of guilty aberrations and labeled 'Vicious', 'Dangerous', or 'Only Safe Once Dead' despite all objective and subjective evidence to the contrary.
But this? This was a good article. I can't thank the folks at Neatorama enough for it.
A woman named Marjorie Darby took a very interesting look at this and found that if even 1% of the entire pit bull population of the US were to attack someone, that would break down to (with very conservative estimates on pit bull numbers and very generous definition of "attack") more than 14 serious attacks by a pit bull somewhere in the US every day. Anyone who tracks these things - and there are plenty who do - can see instantly that this is a crazy-high number, especially considering that so many of these things get national media attention. If this number were true, you wouldn't be able to turn on CNN one single day out of the year without a serious pit bull attack headlining something. But that's clearly not the case. Keep in mind that this is what would happen if ONE PERCENT of all pit bulls in this country actually attacked. Statistically speaking, looking at 1% of a population to draw conclusions about the other 99% is so far beyond ridiculous, it really should be beneath anyone's consideration.
For the record, Ms. Darby went further and found that 80 human fatalities were linked to pit bulls in the past 30 years (she did this between 1999 and 2003). She let that number stand, even though it's been pretty well proven that eyewitness accounts can't be trusted, and when in doubt, people call it a pit bull. Factoring in conservative estimates of pit bull populations, taking into account increasing population size, estimating an average 10-year lifespan, and running the numbers again, she found that 0.0002% of pit bulls in that period had been involved in human fatalities. Don't you wish humans themselves had such a good track record when it came to not killing people?
In my experience, people who love pit bulls are the ones who've met them. Those that think they're dangerous or demonic or equivalent to a mountain lion or a loaded shotgun are people who have never met one, and only ever seen them on the news or read about them in the paper. I find it astonishing that personal experience is discounted time and again, dismissed by people who say, "Well, you've never met a bad one" or "You've been lucky so far, but don't ever trust it" or "They just randomly turn on you, you can't see it coming" - these sorts of comments, almost without fail, coming from someone who wouldn't even pet a pit bull if offered a chance. What makes that person more of an expert than me, who lives with one, every single day? Why does that person deserve a soundbite on the news, when by their own admission, they would never have anything to do with these dogs?
For that matter, why is the occasional attack (by a chained-up, unsocialized, untrained) dog treated as though it's a truer representation of the breed as a whole than the hundreds of licensed therapy dogs? Or the K9 police units that can only use this breed as drug dogs because they lack the necessary aggression to do work typically given to German Shepherds? Or the literally hundreds of thousands of dogs every single day that do not bite anyone? It's mind-boggling, and infuriating, and frequently heartbreaking, because that sort of media bias and misinformation is exactly what leads to breed-specific legislation - outlawing of pit bulls, where the innocent majority are lumped together with the handful of guilty aberrations and labeled 'Vicious', 'Dangerous', or 'Only Safe Once Dead' despite all objective and subjective evidence to the contrary.
But this? This was a good article. I can't thank the folks at Neatorama enough for it.
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Ted, if you're frightened of dogs that are friendly with owners and no one else, then pit bulls should be your favorite breed. Anyone who knows them can tell you that these are easily among the most people-friendly dogs available. As always, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, these are the worst guard dogs in the world. Many don't even bark at visitors. The only warning they'll give you that someone is coming is to wag their tails so hard they whack against the walls.
Church, you are correct in that many people will consider their pit bull the exception to the "rule", but this is symptomatic of a much larger problem. Regardless of breed, MY dog is never a bad dog. There's always a reason MY dog behaved aggressively. It wasn't HIS fault, it must have been the fault of whoever he went after. THEY must have done something wrong. In other words, it's not MY responsibility to identify, correct, or control my dog's behavior, because if he's wrong, then so am I, and we just can't have that. And that's how bites happen. And with pit bulls, it's much easier to say, "I thought he was that rare exception, but now I know everyone was right and you can't trust them not to turn on you" because that absolves you, as the owner, of all responsibility. It wasn't your fault, it was the breed. Of course, if the dog that attacked was any other breed, then everyone falls all over themselves to make excuses for it. "Well, Timmy shouldn't have pulled Rover's tail," or "He was just startled."
Which leads me into a rebuttal for Limboslam. Jill Harness is absolutely correct - the reason you hear about pit bulls is because that's what the media wants you to hear. A pit bull bite is treated differently than a bite by any other breed, regardless of severity. I'd like to expand the point a bit.
In my county a few years back, there was a front-page headline - "Pit Bull Terrorizes Neighborhood." According to the Animal Control Officers on scene, most of whom I know quite well personally, what they were actually dealing with was a friendly, playful puppy, eight months old, who had gotten out of his yard and spent about an hour playing the best game of chase ever with his owners and the two ACOs. He was never once aggressive, and absolutely no one was hurt. Several neighbors readily joined in to help catch him. But some residents of that neighborhood barricaded themselves in their homes and pestered the Animal Control offices, the police, and even 911 with frantic calls about a vicious dog who wouldn't let them leave their homes. And because it was a pit bull, they were taken seriously, and it became front page news. Never mind the fact that he was merely playing, or that his game was to get away from people, not to rush at them. Nope, something happened with a pit bull, so it was newsworthy.
Less than a month later, a lab quite literally tore the face off an elderly man, who required years of reconstructive surgery just to be able to chew again. One of the directors of the local shelter where I volunteer called the paper (same one as above) to report on the incident, and was told (exact quote), "Nobody wants to read about that. Call back when you have an attack by a pit bull." And then they hung up.
And that, Limboslam, is why you only read about pit bull attacks.
These are just some of my personal experiences, but this sort of thing would seem to be common practice. There are some pdfs on this page - http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/dog-news/ - that illustrate just how wide a gap there is between reporting on pits and reporting on any other breed.
I contend that such irresponsible reporting is a far bigger problem than dog bites by themselves. By labeling pit bulls and rottweilers as "bad breeds", and by focusing only on the worst possible examples of those breeds, by painting that as typical of the whole, the media is saying that these dogs are the unsafe ones. By unspoken-but-universally-assumed association, all other breeds are therefore safe. Not only is that completely untrue, it's a dangerous misconception, particularly when children are involved. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people make this point, and it's completely right - the difference between an attack by a seventy-pound pit bull and an attack by a thirty-pound collie doesn't make much difference when the baby only weighs fifteen pounds itself, lives on the floor at the dogs' level, doesn't understand warning signs, and can't run away from them.
And, statistically speaking, the overwhelming majority of dog bite victims are children. But breed is not the common denominator when it comes to bites. The ONLY common denominator is that most dog bites occurred when the parent was not supervising either dog or child. Children and dogs do not come with an inborn set of instructions on how to relate to each other, and unless BOTH are taught how to respect each other, you run the risk of tragedy. Now, if THAT could be put into the public mind as the main reason for dog bites, then I daresay we'd see a drastic drop in the number of bites. But as long as people keep thinking that this will never happen to them as long as they steer clear of certain breeds, it will continue. This question of breed is nothing more than a fear-mongering, paper-selling, sensational distraction from the actual problem and its actual solution.
If you want true, factual information about any of this - this breed, dog bites, dog behavior - sadly, you cannot trust the media to tell you the truth. You're going to have to do some research yourself, and maybe even go out and meet a pit bull before you issue a blanket condemnation of the breed based on what you read in the paper or saw on TV.