Reply to a comment about pit bulls being bad

I had a couple comments left on my post - "Ontario Suprement Court dismisses bid to quash Ontario's ban on pit bulls"

Check this out, dog kissers: Of the 88 fatal dog attacks recorded by DogsBite.org, pit bull type dogs were responsible for 59% (52). This is equivalent to a pit bull killing a U.S. citizen every 21 days during this 3-year period.

http://dogsbite.org/

Now how many Labradoodles killed people in the same time?

and then -

My goal here is not to antagonize y'all but to make you aware of the safety and health issues surrounding off leash dogs in public areas.

I recommend you check out the site i posted above and watch the videos of pitbull attacks - truly horrifying stuff. Again, I doubt your Lab or daschund or corgi could cause this damage. My corgi never could - as far as i can tell.

I went to the dogsbite.org study. I'm not going to go into the foolishness that is the dogsbite.org website - I've talked about that myopic site before, so I'm not going to give it any more exposure that it deserves - but I will talk about the study that this commenter thinks tells us that "pit bulls" are dangerous.

The commenter says that Of the 88 fatal dog attacks recorded by DogsBite.org, pit bull type dogs were responsible for 52.

What the commenter didn't say was that at the end of the study, in the fine print it says -

"For purposes of clarity, this report depicts "mixes" as the predominant breed. For example, a boxer-mix is depicted as a "boxer," a husky-mix is depicted as a "husky" and a pit bull-mix is depicted as a "pit bull.""

As well - the study information "was gathered through media accounts that were available at the time of the attack or found through Internet archives, including: Google News Archive and AccessMyLibrary"

So - the data was gathered through media accounts - and the breed identifications included mixes - so a black and tan dog would be called a "rottweiller" if the person relating the story to the media thought that's what it looked like - and the writer of this study accepted that breed identificaiton carte blanche - and likewise - if the dog had short hair, and a square head - the person relating the story to the media most probably called the dog a "pit bull" - even if the dog was a labrador retriever.

If there's anything we've learned in the last several years - if the media can all any dog a pit bull - they will - and I don't think anyone will dispute that fact. So any study that's based on media reports without any further investigation MUST be taken with a lot of skepticism.

So in this study done by dogsbite.org - which isn't really an organization but a one woman proselytizing wishmaker - she says that 19 different breeds contributed to the 88 recorded death - but in reality - it could have been any number of mixed breeds who contributed to the 88 deaths - but because the media reports identified those mixed breeds with one major attribute - the author put them into one category. That is flawed logic on the part of the study logic.

Another point that the study tried to make was the fact that "pit bulls" 81% of the "off-property" attacks - intimating that pit bulls are the most dangerous types of dogs for people to encounter out in public - so therefore pit bulls should not be allowed to go out in public - if they aren't banned outright - we should at least do something right by imposing public space bans on them and keep them in our own backyards and basements - hopefully tethered by 6 feet very heavy chains.

The problem with that logic is that the reason why there's more "off-property" bites is that they probably ARE being chained on the owners property - and they break their tether and go on walk-abouts in their neighbourhood - and end up biting and maiming strangers and children because they're #1 not socialized, #2 not altered, #3 hyper aroused because they've never been off their chain - and they don't know what to do - so they just react. It's very unfortunate that pit bull type dogs tend to be abandoned and chained in the back yards of North America much more than any other breed of dog when they are also the breed of dog that loves being with their humans seemingly more than just about any other breed of dog.

You can manipulate numbers pretty easily - and the dogsbite.org study is a pretty clear case of this.

Using media reports only as the basis for your facts, including mixed breeds in with purebreeds in your statistics, not looking at the reasons why the statistics exist - the reasons why a certain breed would have a higher bite ratio off his own property as opposed to on his own property - just shows us that the author of the study has their own agenda. And the author of dogsbite.org definitely has their own agenda.

And that agenda is to annihilate the breed type of "pit bull" - and maybe the whole genus of dog entirely. And that is a world any responsible dog owner wants no part of - and must be exposed any time you see it.

I certainly don't want to minimize the danger of dog attacks - or to diminish the suffering of people who have been attacked by dogs and those who have died from a dog attack. Any serious bite is unacceptable and shows the negligence of their owner, and shows it in two very important ways - they didn't keep their dog safe, and they didn't keep the public safe. And I say that as a dog owner who is the owner of a dog who is a targetted breed. I do everything I can to keep my own dogs safe - and the public safe.

I have trained my dogs, I have contained my dogs, and I leash my dogs when they are in public. I have socialized them so they are good canine citizens, and I try to be a good example for other dog owners.

But my rottweiller is no more dangerous than my toy poodle - and it's because of the person who owns those dogs. If either of those dogs were owned by different people, it might be a different story. And it's the same with pit bull type dogs. And it's as simple as that.

With the sad news this week of Ontario's continuance of their pit bull ban, Karen Delisle published a new page on her website at the National Canine Research Council with some good news stories - it's at http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/dog-news/ and it talks about a horrible animal abuse case in Philadelphia where a poor pit bull was set on fire and had to be euthanized because of his injuries, how the cocker spaniel may now be the most aggressive dog, it asks the question - can YOU tell the difference between a mixed breed pit bull and other mixed breeds - and how a mother in Texas is the latest person to be charged with negligent homicide after her dog killed her child. Hopefully it's a sign of things to come - that dog owners will be seen as causing the humans death - not the dog.