Highlights: In a bizarre turn of events last month, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would ban American XL bullies, a type of pit bull-shaped dog that had recently been implicated in a number of violent and sometimes deadly attacks.
XL bullies are perceived to be dangerous — but is that really rooted in reality?
Pitbulls are responsible for more human attacks than any other breed.
Yeah frankly the statistics are pretty conclusive. You can argue about bad owners all you’d like, and theres probably at least some truth there (if you’re an asshole who wants a violent dog, you’re of course going to choose a breed with a reputation for violence), but it’s clear to any unbiased observer that pit bulls have a high tendency towards violence.
No one is advocating that we round up all the pit bulls and euthenize them (no sane person anyways), but that we stop breeding new ones. Frankly there needs to be a lot more regulation on dog breeding, besides violent breeds, there’s no reason we should be breeding more (as an example) pugs, who are doomed to spend their whole lives suffocating just because some people like their squashed faces
I’m not trying to nitpick and start an argument with you but the guy you’re replying to has conflated two very different things. Likelihood to bite and ability to damage with bite. You are most likely to be bitten by a Labrador retriever. You are most likely to be fucked up by a Pitbull. I will not deny that pit bulls have the ability to fuck you up. Just like I won’t deny the ability of a German Shepherd to rip a fist-sized chunk out of your leg.
Furthermore he is pretending to quote with a sense of authority however reading his own linked article will disprove his claim. The number one identified breed with the ability to cause damage was “unidentified”. The article claims the number two breed was “Pit Bull” which is not a singular breed and encompasses many subreads. The third was “mixed” fourth was German Shepherd.
I have owned many pits over the years. We currently own one that is 25 percent husky and 75 percent pitt that looks nothing like a pit he came out looking like a hound everybody loves him always asked to come up and pet. At the same time they are afraid and scared of our smaller mutt dog with a blocky head and call it a pit, but he’s just a mix of retrekver shepherd and terrier.
I do alot of work and give a fair amount of donations to a animal rescue facility that fits thru about 400 dogs per year. Pit bulls have without question been the most likely to be aggressive out of all the dogs that file thru. We get many other aggressive dogs but the pits are the only ones that stand out.
This may be due to their strength or due to the above average likelihood of them being raised in aggressive environments. There are also nice pits but regardless I am completely against breeding them and more so, there is no logical argument to be made breed them.
I wonder if it could be do to unconscious racial bias? I’m aware of research that shows people disproportionately associate pitbull ownership with black culture, and of research that shows white and black toddlers each view black toddlers as inferior.
There’s definitely a selection bias: you work at a place that handles neglected, abused, or unwanted dogs, and bully dogs are very popular. The selection of dogs you see doesn’t include those that already live in forever homes, where they will die of old age without ever being anything but a loyal and trusted family member. Also, I bet that if you tested the DNA of 50 dogs you visually identified as being pitbulls, maybe half of them are not actually pitbulls.
“There’s no logical argument to be made to breed them.”
I find this rhetoric extremely dangerous. This is what eugenicists say. It’s what the most delusional racists say.
I didn’t read the article the commenter linked, just OPs link, and it’s the same thing that happens with many different “let’s ban this arguments.” People get swept up and hyped on common sentiment fear, and find any “article” that supports their viewpoint, because their opinion is now a popular opinion, therefore they’re right.
I do think that there are some breeds where caution is needed, but much of that ties back into people having certain breeds that aren’t right for them. Pits are high energy dogs that require a lot of exercise, and when they don’t get that exercise, they do dumb shit. Similarly, a 125 pound person probably shouldn’t be walking a 100 pound dog of any breed, as an owner needs to be able to control their animal if something happens.
I have a Staffador (Staffordshire mixed with chocolate lab). She is extremely high energy, can jump a good 4’ in the air, and loves to play bite/wrestle. It’s been a long road getting her jumping and aggressive behavior under control, but you’re more likely to get properly bit by our plotthound with PTSD.
Yeah frankly the statistics are pretty conclusive.
From the article:
Pit bulls were responsible for the highest percentage of reported bites across all the studies (22.5%), followed by mixed breeds (21.2%), and German shepherds (17.8%).
“Mixed breeds” are just barely behind pit bulls. That’s hardly conclusive.
“mixed breeds” just means any dog that isn’t purebred, which is the vast majority of dogs, so it doesn’t say much that they account for a lot of attacks
Great, so why isn’t there a huge outcry about mixed breed dogs? I mean, oh my god, they’re essentially as dangerous as pit bulls.
Because “mixed breed” dogs aren’t a breed? That’s my whole point.
What you’re arguing is basically equivalent to this “psychopaths account for 26% of murderers, closely followed by people with brown eyes at 25%, why aren’t we doing anything about the brown eyed menace!”
Lumping all mixed breed dogs just inflates the numbers, because - again - the vast majority of dogs are mixed breed.
Put another way, because I can tell you’re having a hard time grasping this - mixed breed dogs account for 53% of all dogs in the US according to the AKC. Pit bulls account for just a hair under 6% (5.8, if you want the specifics). That means according to the stats in the article, any given pit bull is 10x more likely to bite than any given mixed breed dog.
Get it?
Because “mixed breed” dogs aren’t a breed? That’s my whole point.
“Pit bull” isn’t a breed either.
American Pit Bull Terrier is a breed. It’s one of several collective breeds that people typically refer to when they use pit bull. The others being American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bully, Staffordshire Bull Terrier and sometimes the American Bulldog.
That term is also often used for mixed dogs that may have some amount of one of those breeds or that shares physical characteristics with one of those breeds, usually head and/or body shape.
Anecdotally, I have a neighbor whose neighbor on the other side called the police on him for having a “dangerous breed” dog. They told the police he had a pit bull. It was a boxer.
That’s a fair point, but “pit bull” being comprised of several sub-breeds isn’t even kind of the same sort of umbrella as “literally every dog that isn’t a pure bred”
And your neighbor being an idiot really doesn’t have any relevance on the discussion
“Reported” is the key term. In over half of all dog injuries, the breed is not reported.
The statistics aren’t conclusive at all.
In over half of dog related injuries the breed is not reporter.
Add to that, even vet staff cannot visually identify dog breed with any level of accuracy.
And when you talk about banning dog breeds, yes you are talking about rounding them up in euthanizing them. Period.
And when you talk about banning dog breeds, yes you are talking about rounding them up in euthanizing them. Period.
I’m absolutely not. I’m advocating restrictions on breeders, not owners. No one should have their dog taken away, and pit bulls in shelters should still be adoptable in my view. I just don’t believe we should be deliberately breeding more dogs with known issues, whether it’s issues with their own health (like pugs) or issues with aggression.
Please don’t presume to tell me what I’m advocating.
You are though.
You realize dogs have all the equipment to breed without any human interaction right?
So pitbulls will still breed even if you tell people not to do it.
How do you come up with pitbulls having health and aggression issues? In over half of all dog bite cases, the breed is unknown. It’s not anyone’s job to count dog bites by breed, so anyone purporting to have done so is basically lying.
You are though.
I’m not, reread my previous comment. Last time I’m going to say this before I just block you without giving you the courtesy of even replying, stop deciding for me what I’m advocating, I’ve laid out the strategy I’d like to see in my previous comment, I’m advocating for absolutely no action beyond that.
So pitbulls will still breed even if you tell people not to do it.
Yes, of course - do you actually believe this is where a majority of pitbulls come from though? No moral strategy will completely eliminate the breed, but restricting breeders will mean that your average person can’t get one, which means your average Joe/Jane is far less likely to run into them on the street.
How do you come up with pitbulls having health and aggression issues?
I never said they have health issues (maybe they do, I’m not aware of it though) - When I talk about breeds with health issues, I’m referring to breeds like Pugs that live their whole lives in discomfort because of how much we fucked up their physiology.
In over half of all dog bite cases, the breed is unknown
True, that’s why we only look at the cases where the breed is known for these discussions, without making any assumptions about the dogs whose breed is unknown.
It’s not anyone’s job to count dog bites by breed
I guess true? In that people don’t get paid, they do however report breed information as part of the reporting of the dog bite. And as I’ve said in other comments in this thread, I’m entirely sure that there is a margin of error in the reporting of breeds for dog bites. However, even if you assume as much as a 5x overreporting for pitbulls, that still puts at about double the chance of an individual pitbull biting someone as opposed to a mixed breed dog.
anyone purporting to have done so is basically lying.
Ah, the ole “I don’t like it, so it must be made up”, very scientific.
They don’t report the breed in over half of all dog bite cases. You’re kidding yourself that the resultant data isn’t worthless. Statistically, there could be another breed of dog you’ve never heard of causing over half of dog related njuries.
You’re response is:
that’s why we don’t make any assumptions about the dogs whose breed is unknown.
Well you may not but “we” do, and we know relying on something that is so underreported, as well as misreported, is not rational. Seems like you realize the data is worthless but you want to ban pitbulls so badly you don’t care. That makes me think that for you it’s about something more than public safety.
That makes me think that for you it’s about something more than public safety.
Yeah, it’s been clear from your very first comment that you feel this way lol - you’re welcome to disagree with me, but I’ve already laid out my thoughts on the matter multiple times. Unless you have anything new to add, instead of just repeating the same fallacies about the data being “worthless”, then I don’t see any value in continuing to talk in circles
A pitbull isn’t even a breed of dog. Grouping them all together as a breed is like grouping together all dogs considered hounds. It’s an umbrella term for the American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, American bulldog, Boston terrier, Boxer, Bull terrier, Bullmastiff, English bulldog, French bulldog, and Staffordshire bull terrier.
So essentially statistics on pitbull bites are either completely flawed, or just flat out wrong.
Vox did a very nice piece on pitbull stigma that changed my mind about them.
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That is simply not true. More injuries are attributed to “pit bull type” breeds but that is far different from “more human attacks.” It’s also wildly tainted since it’s based on self reporting and any time it’s not an obvious German shepherd, husky or golden (etc) if someone can’t quite guess what it is most people are predisposed to assuming pit bull because of bigots like you that just hate the breed.
Small dogs like chihuahuas are far more likely to attack humans than pit bulls, although serious injury is less likely for smaller breeds. Even that is skewed based on human factors and handling since small dogs like chihuahuas are often carted around and over handled with complete disregard for their comfort or tolerance level because they’re “pocket sized” and too many assholes have no problem just picking them up whether they want it or not.
The only thing your link shows is that the majority of unknown large dogs that caused injuries were assumed to be pit bulls by one person or another.
The only thing your link shows is that the majority of unknown large dogs that caused injuries were assumed to be pit bulls by one person or another.
FTA:
Essig also explained why “unknown” tops the list of breeds: “We often didn’t know what type of dog was involved in these incidents, [so] we looked at additional factors that may help predict bite tendency when breed is unknown.” Those additional factors included weight and head shape. The findings showed that dogs with short, wide heads who weighed between 66 and 100 pounds were the most likely to bite.
So if a dog is 10% pit bull, 20% German shepherd, 10% beagle 15% husky, 20% lab, 5% golden and 10% Belgian Malinois it counts towards “pit bulls” but no other breed? Got it. It’s almost like another form of historical discrimination by race said any percentage counts as belonging to the undesired race that is being targeted…
“Of unidentifiable dogs that have average dog characteristics we attributed generic criteria that meet any number of breeds but also fit the specific ones we wanted to target with our predetermined conclusion prior to executing this study. We were able to validate our desired outcome with this specific targeting.” #Science!
So if a dog is 10% pit bull, 20% German shepherd, 10% beagle 15% husky, 20% lab, 5% golden and 10% Belgian Malinois it counts towards “pit bulls” but no other breed? Got it. It’s almost like another form of historical discrimination by race said any percentage counts as belonging to the undesired race that is being targeted…
The fuck?
“Of unidentifiable dogs that have average dog characteristics we attributed generic criteria that meet any number of breeds but also fit the specific ones we wanted to target with our predetermined conclusion prior to executing this study. We were able to validate our desired outcome with this specific targeting.” #Science!
Not what the article actually said.
They’re actually right. Pitbull describes a certain shape of dog not an actual breed. If a dog is mixed breed or a completely different breed of dog but looks like we think of as a pitbull it labeled as such
“Any dog that we think might have some pitbull is listed as a pitbull.” That’s plain English for what the study says. No other breeds are singled out where any suspected percentage adds to only their tally for overall rate of attacks. Yes, common dog breeds are obviously statistically represented in the majority of average cases. The only thing unique about pitbulls is how far people go out of their way to prescribe blame solely on them. Every dog that meets their size and measurement categories almost certainly contains multiple other breeds, yet they are only counting pitbulls. If there was any academic integrity or scientific process, counting an assumed percentage as a tally for one breed means any other assumed breeds should increase their tallies as well; otherwise it’s just bad science which is par for the course on breed hating “studies.”
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Mixed breed is a separate category from pit. Your example dog would be under mixed breed.
And they deliberately set broad and abusable categories of “unknown” to try and single out pits based on weight and “wide heads.” The bottom line is that when a dog bits and it isn’t an obvious breed, due to decades of misplaced canine bigotry everyone just assumes it’s a pit or pit mix. Pitbulls are no more aggressive (and in most studies slightly less aggressive) than any other breed. They also are no more capable of causing injury than any other equivalent sized dog. There are exactly two factors that lead to the current stigma around them; bad owners who deliberately make them violent and ignorant people that mislabel any dog they are afraid of as a “pit mix.” If any other breed was categorized the same way where any wild-assed guess that it might be “part x-breed” counts as an “X-breed attack” then it would easily top the lists the exact same way.
They also are no more capable of causing injury than any other equivalent sized dog.
Not true. Pitbulls do not give up attacking as easily as other breeds. What makes pits so dangerous is that once they do decide to attack something there is very little you can do to stop them. I’ve watched video of a pit trying to attack a horse, and even after being repeatedly kicked in the had, the stupid dog just kept attacking until the horse killed it.
This is a trait that has been bred into pitbulls since they have been bred to fight other dogs. Other dog breeds are smart enough to give up on an attack.
If any other breed was categorized the same way where any wild-assed guess that it might be “part x-breed” counts as an “X-breed attack” then it would easily top the lists the exact same way
If you add up literally every other dog breed in the list of fatal dog attacks it doesn’t even come close to the number of kills by pitbulls. Combine together rotweillers, german shepherds, malinose, huskies, chow-chows, mastiffs, etc… and pits still kill more people than all of those together. And that’s not including pits killing other dogs, which is a frequent occurrence.
Not true. Pitbulls do not give up attacking as easily as other breeds. What makes pits so dangerous is that once they do decide to attack something there is very little you can do to stop them. I’ve watched video of a pit trying to attack a horse, and even after being repeatedly kicked in the had, the stupid dog just kept attacking until the horse killed it.
This is a trait that has been bred into pitbulls since they have been bred to fight other dogs. Other dog breeds are smart enough to give up on an attack.
This is just purely false. It is literally anecdotal from people that hate pitbulls. The primary trait that benefits them in fighting is loyalty to owners where they will do things they don’t want to, such as fight and injure other living things, to please their owners. Out of the 51 dogs recovered from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation, 49 were successfully rehabilitated and only one was euthanized due to behavior. What you are saying is literally wrong and made up.
If you add up literally every other dog breed in the list of fatal dog attacks it doesn’t even come close to the number of kills by pitbulls.
“Pitbulls” are actually somewhat rare. Dogs with some pitbull in them are what are common, but they also have a bit of every other breed. It is literally observation bias mixed with selective exclusion. It’s literally a broad and generic term used to classify any number of mixed breed mutts without attributing the downsides to any other breed that is present. If you apply a single label to a broad and undefined mixture and then exclude every other component of that mixture it is super easy to say that the thing you labeled is the majority; it’s the most basic form of garbage “science.”
I’m glad you took time to take a nuanced opinion on the article that you don’t seem to have read. To be honest it sounds like you didn’t read your own article. "unknown” tops the list. This is because dog breeds aren’t identified by genetics a cop shows up says oh it looked like a pitbull it had a blocky head and it’s automatically a pit until DNA tests prove otherwise.
I read the article. It’s the same old excuses about “It’s the owner not the breed.” And “Breed is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behavior in dogs.”
Those statements just aren’t true. Dogs are specifically bred for certain physical and behavioral traits.
There was also a study done that proved breeding aggressive animal lines made their progeny even more aggressive. And docile more docile.
This post is idiotic. It’s written by someone incapable of nuance or critical thinking.
And there it is people Good old American racism.
I’m certain you’ve also followed the Russian experiment where they managed to take wild foxes and domesticate them in under 50 generations and now you can adopt one as a pet. So what you’re telling me is that a dog that has been with humanity for over 10,000 years and then went through a period of roughly 300 years of pit fighting is irrepidly damaged but the fox that went through 15,000 years of being a fox It’s just magically now perfect pet in under 100 years. And you’re telling me that it’s genetics and not nurturing and raising the animal that has an impact okay…
I mean, to my understanding, those domestic foxes, while tame, are still not quite so perfect of pets as animals that have been bred for longer like dogs are. Though there is no reason it can’t be both, while a dog raised to be aggressive will probably be aggressive, and one raised well should be far less likely to be, it’s not fair to say that there is no genetic basis for friendliness and aggression, else there would be no need for domestication in the first place. A lot of selective breeding can be done in century, so the past few centuries of what an animal has been selectively bred for probably matter a bit more than the centuries before that, to a point anyway. I doubt anyone is really arguing that pit bulls are irreparably damaged as a whole either, but if an animal has been bred for aggression for awhile, undoing that is going to require breeding for the reverse, or crossbreeding with another line that does not have that trait and selecting offspring that do not display it, or similar.
I’m not really sure what stance to take on pitbulls and similar breeds myself, I’ve known some people with rather nice ones and it seems to me that any law targeting a specific dog breed is going to be somewhat impractical given that breeds are “fuzzy” categories with ill defined edges, not clear and sharply defined, so determining what animals are close to pitbulls but are not quite, and which are considered to be pitbulls, but barely, is going to be a very difficult line to reliably draw.
Look up the search terms rat poison and pitbulls and get back to me on the fact that people don’t hate them.
I didn’t say anything about people not hating them, clearly many people don’t like them, but that doesn’t really have any bearing on if they’re unreasonably dangerous compared to other breeds or not, since it could be that people think them dangerous because they don’t like them, or it could be that they don’t like them because of them being dangerous.
Sorry, can you clarify what part of OPs post is racism? Genuinely struggling with that connection.
Did you read the original article? It explains the racebaiting that goes on with pit bulls
The idiot I’m replying to believes that The genome of a animal directly correlates to that animals behavior potential for intelligence and general demeanor.
Now where have I heard before that someone’s genetic makeup makes it so that they are not qualified to the same rights and privileges as the others. If this person believes that the parentage of a animal determines how a animal will live and act… That’s eugenics.
Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding,”
To clarify, you are directly equating dog breeds with different races of humans so you can paint op as a eugenics apologist, and win an online argument about dogs? Did I get that right??
Yes, all these ban pitbull people are eugenicist apologists. That’s facts. They might be useful idiots, but they have been tricked by pseudoscientific lies about genetics and behavior.
I dont see anywhere in the comment saying they’re making direct comparisons to specific human racial segregation. Just making an analogy using human racism as an example.
I can see how someone might misconstrue that if they didn’t like the argument, though.
I am merely reading the man statements at face value. Quote" “It’s the owner not the breed.” And “Breed is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behavior in dogs.”
Those statements just aren’t true. Dogs are specifically bred for certain physical and behavioral traits"
If you do not see that as the definition of eugenics then I don’t know what to say in regards to your assessment.
You’re missing the huge difference that humans arent selectively bred for specific physiological and behavioral traits reinforced over many generations. Theres no human race thats 10 times as small as they used to be with bulging eyes and breathing problems.
Calling other people idiots and then continuing with the rest of that message is not a good look.
I’m calling red dig an idiot but go on
They didn’t even undergo 300 years of pit fighting.
Handfuls of these dogs kept by handfuls of people engaged in pitbull fighting.
The substantial majority of pitbulls out there were just living their life, living amongst families and children, not bothering anyone.
And if they were bred to fight other dogs, so fucking what?
You can read first-hand accounts from people who are involved in dog fight organizing who said over and over that dogs who are aggressive towards humans were banned from competition and often euthanized.
A lot of domestic animals can go feral, as cats will do as kittens, under one generation. Creating a dog breed requires a lot of intentionality — selective breeding and conformance to some kind of breed standard, like making some specific breed of fox into something that can live in a house.
That’s not what is going on with pit bulls in 2023. Such as they can be defined, they’re usually selected for their capability to protect. And otherwise they’re bred randomly with other breeds and maybe lose that capability, but then they’re not pit bulls anymore. and to be honest nobody really knows what their capabilities are at that point. It’s a total mess, it’s nothing like concentratedly breeding non-aggressive, non-asshole foxes relentlessly until you can tolerate each other indoors.
By the way I heard fox piss is… unsuitable for human co-habitation, is that still a problem?
Cows kill more people than dogs. That does not mean that cows are more aggressive than dogs.
Plenty of dogs referred to as ‘pitbulls’ are not particularly aggressive at all. Often they’re less aggressive than dogs of other breeds. All dogs were bred to be hunting dogs. They all have a prey drive. They can all hunt small animals. Some of the most aggressive dogs, are also the smallest, but a pekingese is less likely to cause serious damage. Being nipped by a pekingese is unlikely to merit a police report. (I say unlikely advisedly. Even small dogs can be dangerous.)
The whole ‘pitbulls are aggressive’ line is a dangerous misconception. Here’s why:
Predictably, someone encounters a pitbull type. They’ve heard all about ‘pitbulls’ being aggressive. But this dog is not even slightly agressive. It is a nice friendly dog. It is especially careful with the children. They go on the internet, and see a video of a child sleeping on a pitbull. The pitbull is incredibly careful with the child.
“People are clearly exagerating how agressive pitbulls are!” “My pitbull is a sweetheart!” “Did you know pitbulls were known as nanny dogs! I read it on the internet.”
But large powerful dogs aren’t dangerous because they’re aggressive. They’re dangerous because they’re large powerful dogs.
The owner leaves a child alone with a large powerful dog. The dog is entirely unagressive. But then firework goes off, the dog panics, the child is in the way. The child tugs the dogs tail, the dog gives what would be a corrective bite for a dog but is far more serious for a child. The dog grabs onto the child’s hand, then doesn’t let go because he thinks it’s a game.
Obviously, it goes without saying that you can train a pitbull type to be aggressive, just like you can train any dog to be aggressive. But gangmembers don’t typically train pekingese dogs to be aggressive just like the police don’t typically use a chihuahua to catch criminals. They want a dog that is dangerous because it is powerful and intimidating. They can train it to be aggressive and bite people if necessary.
As a life long dog owner, who actually knows a bit about them, here’s how you solve the dangerous dog issue:
- mandatory registration and chip
- mandatory insurance
- mandatory training at a reputable school (which will also inevitably train the human owner out of the ‘he wouldn’t hurt a fly’ nonsense or signal authorities if they notice the owner getting off on his dog being scary/dangerous)
Banning pitbull types? A short term fix which will result in another breed becoming the next aggressive arsehole fashion accessory.
Dogs are specifically bred for certain physical and behavioral traits.
Which, of course, is completely natural and has nothing to do with their owners.
I’m not going to say that Pit Bulls aren’t more dangerous than many other breeds… they are. Not just because of breeding, but also because of training and ownership.
But any dog is more dangerous than no dog. Why not just ban dogs altogether? Might as well ban cars and kitchen knives, too, those are pretty dangerous. Hell, I’ve stabbed myself with pencils, too. Better get rid of those as well.
Its not a problem that flat bans will solve. Ban pit bulls and they’ll just start breeding other violent dogs instead. Meanwhile all the mutts with a little bit of pit in them get thrown in an incinerator because people have no concept of nuance or depth. I’m sure you’re more than happy living with that.
It’s better than empty sarcasm.
Edit: Note that they edited their comment after I called them out for it.
You literally did not read the article you posted
For the data to be useful it needs to be normalized.
What’s the rate of bites per number of that breed in the country?
The problem is that breed ownership numbers are only drawn from voluntary club registrations, which isn’t particularly representative and going to be biased against low income owners and rescues.
Did pit bulls bite the most often because they are the most violent, or just because they are very common? Are there environmental factors, such as pit bulls being more commonly a rescue dog and rescue dogs being more likely to bite?
Are there breeds that are much more prone to biting that just aren’t as popular in ownership such that absolute numbers on bites doesn’t reveal them?
The article is 1,000% right that the existing numbers and studies suck and are next to worthless.
Edit: Apparently 84% of fatal bites are from dogs that aren’t spayed or neutered, and 76% are by dogs that aren’t kept as a family pet which are the types of environmental factors that might be quite a bit more relevant than breed, especially given that only 20% of dogs aren’t spayed or neutered and yet represent 84% of fatal bites. Also, glossed over in the link I was responding to is that 82% of the fatal bites are an “Unknown” breed, which is wildly higher than one might have expected.
Edit 2: Additional resources - apparently the data point from the commenter below is from a poor 2000 study that relied on tenuous breed identification and the research world has been trying to correct ever since, with the 2012 study cited above being by one of the same authors of the 2000 study and presenting a very different picture, and more recent research such as:
- Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes (2022) from a joint Broad Institute and MIT research project
- Comparison of behavioural tendencies between “dangerous dogs” and other domestic dog breeds – Evolutionary context and practical implications (2022)
Pit bulls are estimated to only be about 6% of the dog popualtion, and account for 70% of fatal bites.
By your logic pitbulls would have to be 70% of owned dogs, and let me tell you walking around 7 in 10 dogs are not pitbulls.
First off, you’d need to also factor in the percentage of large dogs, as no matter how vicious a toy breed or even medium sized dog is, it isn’t going to have a high fatal bite count. So out of the 36% of dog households that have a large dog, pitt ownership might be more than 6% of the total.
Then again, we need to look at other factors as well.
Maybe 70% of rescue dogs are pitts and 100% of fatal bites were from rescues? (Or vice versa, that 100% of fatal bites were from rescues and 70% of the rescues that went on to bite were pitts, which is a more subtle but still very different picture of events which might reflect fairly narrow causal environmental factors like prior fight training.)
Without the additional layers of data, the best we can do is draw potentially misleading conclusions around causative factors when we barely have correlative ones.
And the ways in which this could be dangerous in terms of social policy is if actions are taken around the mythos of it being a breed specific trait, it not being that, and then unexpected outcomes occurring, such as a popularity shift towards an even more dangerous breed as pitt ownership declines or ignoring or even exacerbating underlying causal relationships to environmental factors.
We’ve seen how bad data science applied to human crime rates can lead to supremely (supremacist?) misleading claims around the contributing factors with an over representation of demographic data that’s simply correlative to underlying causative environmental factors.
So if we both know full well that saying “XYZ demographic is 2-3x more likely to commit violent crimes so we should get rid of XYZ demographic from the population” is an outrageously bad faith argument predicated on poor data analysis, I’m curious what you think is materially different about the data evaluation aspects that you support the analogous claim here?
Pitbulls were specifically bred as fighting dogs to fight and kill other dogs in pits.
Don’t apply human logic to dog breeding. Dogs are specifically bred by humans to have specific traits. Humans are not bred to have specific traits.
And at least one study I’ve read showed that bad ownership and rescue status only account for 20% of dog attacks, so most attacks are not a result of bad ownership.
The closest I could find to the study you mentioned was the following:
https://positively.com/articles/fatal-dog-bites-share-common-factors/
Where yes, it says that in 21% of cases the dog was subject to abuse and neglect (one out of five is a rather large number by the way).
That same study says that in 37.5% of cases the owner had previously ‘mismanaged’ the dog in the past.
And then you have numbers like in 76.2% of cases the dog was not kept as a family pet.
Or that in 84.4% of cases the dog was not spayed or neutered.
Including this gem:
Interestingly, the breeds of the dogs involved in fatal attacks could only be identified in 18% of the cases. Often times, the media’s report of the dog’s breed conflicted with animal control reports.
So please, tell me more about how we shouldn’t be looking at environmental factors because dogs aren’t people and with dogs it’s all about breed and nothing else…
Edit: Ah, we also have this study’s results:
Frequency distributions revealed that 100% of the owners of High Risk dogs had either one criminal conviction or traffic citation. Furthermore, 30% of the High Risk Cited dog owners had at least 5 criminal convictions or traffic citations (range 1-37) in comparison to the 1% of owners of Low Risk Licensed dog owners (range 1-6).
Yeah, the source for that webpage doesn’t exist, so not going to believe a word on it.
Oh, a traffic offense, oh goodness they must be horrible dog owners. Seriously, nearly everyone has a traffic offense, if that’s in the criteria, then no shit it’s at 100%.
the source for that webpage doesn’t exist
You mean this?
Patronek, G. J., Sacks, J. J., Delise, K. M., Cleary, D. V., & Marder, A. R. (2013). Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite-related fatalities in the United States (2000-2009). Journal Of The American Veterinary Medical Association, 243(12), 1726-1736. doi:10.2460/javma.243.12.1726
“The source that disagrees with me doesn’t exist after not even a single Google search, so I won’t believe a word of it!”
If you don’t think that dog breed is a good predictor of behavior, you have not spent enough time around dogs.
For thousands of years dogs have been bred for specific purposes. These behaviors are innate. They do not need to be taught. Sure, you can train them to be better, but the behaviors are written all over their genes
My grandparents had shepherds. The dogs had never seen sheep or been taught anything about herding, but they would attempt to herd all my cousins when they were children, then get agitated when the children wouldn’t herd. Here’s some puppies doing it
Here’s some pointers pointing. They have not been taught this (and frankly I can’t imagine even training most dog breeds to do that)
Here’s a boxer dog boxing. Here’s one spinning. They aren’t taught this, and they all do it.
There’s hounds rolling in stink. There’s sight hounds and smell hounds. There’s retrievers retrieving, being irresistibly drawn to water, and carrying around things very gently. There’s huskies being extremely energetic and vocal.
I could go on.
Do you really think that dogs that have been bred to fight other dogs to the death and bear enormous amounts of pain (game) before giving up are not dangerous? You’re mental.
Sure they’re sweet to their owners. That’s because people who breed animals for blood sports are not the kind of people who would have trouble immediately removing from the gene pool any of their animals that are disloyal.
It’s not like it’s just pitbulls. Dobermans are implicated too. They’re guard dogs but for humans rather than predator animals.
People with agendas can play all kinds of statistical games to show what they want to show. In the scientific world, these kinds of tricks stand out. That’s why any non-trivial summary statistic is useless without a large text explaining the methodology.
This is one of those things that is so obvious it boggles my mind that people even question it.
Of course dogs that are bred to murder are dangerous.
It’s not just the genetic predisposition (which is arguably made worse with bully XLs due to so many of the lineage being bred from a small number of very aggressive specimens). It’s the size of them. They are orders of magnitude more dangerous than most other breeds when they go feral.
There is also definitely a factor at play where the sort of person to want a scary looking dog is also the sort of person who’s less likely to properly socialise and train them. But it’s mental to argue that say, a 7-foot tall gladiator is no more dangerous than a 5-foot tall gardener. Size and bite strength matters.
I do think there are more humane options available than just destroying them all. Muzzles in public; all dogs should really be on a lead in a public space, but especially v strong breeds; mandated training and chipping as a prerequisite of owning a dog; tougher laws that reflect if you own a deadly weapon on 4 legs that causes harm or death, you are responsible as if you carried out the attack yourself.
Absolutely.
My cat regularly draws blood. Cats are much less human bred than dogs, but, in any case he can’t really maul a child. Same with chihuahuas and plenty of other small dogs.
Your last paragraph seems pretty extreme to me. I agree in principle and do advocate for trying to remove these genes from the gene pool, which may involve careful breeding and/or letting them go extinct.
I’m curious if there’s a story behind that paragraph?
Not the person to whom you replied, but there are many stories behind that paragraph. The problem is that a dog bred to be strong is likely to be strong enough to ignore a leash when it wants to. A few minutes on your search engine of choice can give you headlines of pits and other powerful breeds getting away from their handlers even when leashed.
The resulting advocacy is that criminal culpability should still lie even in the absence of negligence on the part of the owner. In many states, tort liability will lie on a strict liability basis (i.e., the owner is liable for damages incurred by the victim of an animal attack even if the animal exhibited no prior dangerous behavior)–in other states, the owner must be aware of the danger of the animal, for instance from prior bites, before liability will attach. That’s generally not true in criminal cases, however, where theories usually require a finding of negligence due to the higher burden of proof and the higher stakes (i.e., incarceration).
The best analogy I can think of would be statutory rape–you can be guilty and incarcerated even if you consented, the victim consented, and you genuinely had no idea that the victim was below the statutory age. The position would be that we should adopt the same for animal attacks: You can (and should, advocates would argue) be incarcerated even if your animal injured someone through no fault of your own and you had no previous reason to believe the animal would become dangerous.
Reading about some of the attacks in which the owner exercised their best efforts to control the animal and failed, I can see the argument: Merely owning the animal at all is accepting responsibility for its actions, full stop. Personally, I think current negligence theory is basically sufficient for this (i.e., if the dog can get away from you, you have a duty to know that and prevent it), but the benefit of this kind of strict liability legislation would be that all the bickering in these threads about which breed is good, which breed is bad, and who knows and doesn’t know dogs would evaporate. Put your money where your mouth is. The dog you can count on never to kill someone is the dog that can’t.
Love, the owner of a small yappy type dog who is harmless because he’s tiny and trivially easy to overpower.
Not everything needs to be a crime. Strict liability in tort is more than adequate to compensate victims of animal injuries.
Criminal law is about intent. The defendant has to have intended the crime. How can a dog bite be intentional on the part of the human?
Ok. So I’m not sure why you seem to think I disagree with you.
That’s a huge extremely legalistic seeming argument that I can’t seem to see as a different argument than mine.
I wasn’t arguing at all, nor agreeing or disagreeing with anyone. Just talking through the reasoning, since you asked for the story to justify it. [Again, not the person you originally responded to.]
Asshole cat is biting me right now. We went on vacation for a few days, left him with a friend, and then had him stay alone for about 36 hours (with his automatic feeder and fancy waterer).
He’s just the most social cat I’ve ever had.
What a load. Most ppl (including you) don’t even know which dogs were breed for fighting. Anita’s (yes doge dog) were breed for bear hunting and fighting in the 1600s. Same for shar-peis.
Practically every dog breed at one point was breed for fighting.
Esit: I stand corrected
I think you meant Akitas, but it autocorrected. The doge dog is actually a Shiba Inu, which are much smaller than Akitas
Doge is not an akita, she’s a shiba inu.
That’s quite the non sequitur.
Statistically pit bulls and closely related breeds are responsible for the most attacks. Anyone bringing human race into this is silly.
I don’t think the occurrence of attacks are more, just the severity. It’s probably less likely a chihuahua attack causes enough damage to warrant a report. Pitbulls are dangerous, not because they’re more prone to attack, but because when they do, they cause a lot more physical damage.
I think the occurrence is somewhat more. While some smaller dogs may be aggressive and are aggressive, they also tend to learn rapidly they do not have the size to be aggressive. Thus that trait becomes less common overall.
I think that people should be able to own them, but they need to be put in the same class as foxes, wolves, hyenas and wild dogs. I met a sweet pit bull at a friend’s house but the first thing she did was jump on me and scratch my stomach, which drew blood.
My friend met a sweet pitbull, and then it bit her on the neck. They aren’t just strong, they are unpredictable as hell.
people who cannot control their dog when outside, should rethink owning said dog.
It’s more complicated than that. If your can’t stop your lab from licking a stranger to death, that’s completely different from not being able to stop your pitbull or doberman from mauling a toddler.
Yes, people should be responsible dog owners, but only certain breeds regularly snap and kill or maim.
Nah either way it’s just negligence. It’s up to the dog owner to take appropriate steps, or face liability.
When you may not be able to get homeowners insurance because of the dog you own, it’s not likely to be an issue is prejudice. They do everything by statistics.
the thing about prejudice in the title is absolutely, deeply, fantastically true. I, too, think that it’s a prejudice to believe that is possible to control animals bred with the precise intent to maul.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a bizarre turn of events last month, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would ban American XL bullies, a type of pit bull-shaped dog that had recently been implicated in a number of violent and sometimes deadly attacks.
That came shortly after videos emerged of a dog attack that injured an 11-year-old girl named Ana Paun in Birmingham, England.
Noel King, host of Vox’s daily news podcast Today, Explained, wanted to know more about why this dog breed is so controversial.
It was all kind of folklore, myth, and media sensationalism — and that gave me a window to talk about a lot of other different subjects, using the pit bull as a lens.
Because they were popular and they were associated with these social changes, people believed that they bit more and that they were kind of poisonous and they transmitted rabies.
In the early ’90s in Boston, there was a pilot program where ownership of a pit bull was used as kind of an excuse for a stop and frisk with law enforcement.
The original article contains 1,944 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
One thing that bears mention is that dogs are humankind’s best friend. They have a special and sacrosanct relationship to humans; in our evolution, in our history, in our law, in our communities, in our homes, and daily in our families. I’m skeptical of any government action intended to interfere with a person’s right to keep whatever dog as they fit, absent inhumane treatment. I view breed bans the same way I view bans on oral or anal sex, homosexual sex, gay marriage, interracial marraige, and abortion: so central to family decisionmaking, and private, and personal as to be beyond the government’s reach. In other words, don’t come talking about banning breeds and then say any hypocritical bullshit about how you love small government, freedom, or liberty. Like if you have ever said “Don’t Tread on Me!” and you want to ban people having dog they want, you need to stfu because you sound so obviously stupid.
Is it animal cruelty if i simply do not get a pitbull? If a group of people dont get one? At what point does it become cruel to breed less and less pitbulls?
Pretty sure that’s the opposite of cruelty mate. Dogs need a loving home and if you can’t take care of it then we shouldn’t make more. More people should spay and neuter but they don’t.
So lets stop breeding them
I’m not breeding them their dogs they fuck.
People need to spay or neuter their animals.
Me who lives in a part of the country with wild dog packs: yes, that would be nice.
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The audacity of the people in these comments is just 👨🍳🤌 Mamma mia. I mean it’s a real grab bag of crazy in here. You got tankies trying to equate black people to dogs, galaxy brains who think banning pits is a solution, and the rest of us just stuck in the middle asking ‘wtf?’.
The race thing is explained in the article
