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I wish all news outlets followed that protocol. More than once I've seen online news reports of dog attacks featuring a picture of a pit bull with words such as "stock photo" under the picture in small print.
As far as I've seen the pictures accompanying reports of dog attacks are rarely the picture of the actual dog in the attack.
Also the key issue of reporting v 'pit bulls' in dog attacks is not a claim that a lot of the dogs so identified are of breeds totally dissimilar to American Pit Bull Terriers in appearance, that a lot of them are really Schnauzers or Dachshunds. That's the straw man argument that a lot of the 'pit bull' haters put up sarcastically, that people questioning the conclusions drawn from media reports are saying that. The issue is that the thesis of genetically imprinted behavior as the main explanation for such attacks is undermined if a lot of the dogs aren't from one or a few narrow bloodlines. That's breeding 101. Once you dilute the heritage of a dog even relatively little, the appearance of any given dog of that mixture can start to differ substantially from a breed standard, and likewise by inference from any typical breed personality. The thing to remember is that one dog which is x% APBT and 1-x% who knows what else, could easily look a lot like an APBT, but another dog also with the same x% APBT could look not much at all like an APBT. So going in the other direction, it makes no sense to judge mixed dogs by what they look like, especially in non-expert eyes, but that's what the reporting is based on.
Also, many other breed are not in veterinary science terms 'pit bulls' or closely related, yet still generally resemble APBT's, have short coats, muscular bodies and squarish heads. Again nobody reasonable is saying that a dog that looked exactly like an Afghan Hound was reported as a 'pit bull' when it bit someone. But a Dogo Argentino for example really does looks like a 'pit bull' to most people (the picture of a Dogo Argentino won a plurality of votes in a recent 'pick out the pit bull' poll of Fox News sites) but is not by any definition of 'pit bull' in veterinary science, though it has a short coat, muscular body and squarish head. We assume our Dogo mix also has APBT or AmStaff in her, something must explain why she's small for a Dogo (though looks exactly like a pure breed), OTOH too big especially for a female APBT. I never quibble whether she's a 'pit bull' or not, she's the same great dog no matter what you call her. The point is, making inferences about my dog's personality because of the genetics of 'pit bulls' is just a bunch of nonsense, quackery, pseudo-science, name your term. The people who do that have this idea that one bloodline in a dog is some magic potion that dominates whatever other heritage it has, and that's just not science. In general most of the anti 'pit bull' people claiming they are taking the 'scientific' or 'statistical' high road in the discussion have no idea what they are talking about, and are actually just selectively fitting random pieces of science and statistics to justify their hysteria. And while this hysteria is supposedly about dogs, it's actually uglier than that. It also has a lot to do with class/race hatred against people, based on stereotypes of who owns 'pit bulls'.
Well, you have two dogs of similar coloring there, the second I would call a pit bull. The first, in that picture, is very hard to identify as anything but a mutt, maybe part pit, maybe not. That's my honest feeling about the picture, and what I would have said if someone was just making one of those what breed do you think my dog is posts.
Similar coloring, similar build, similar head shapes, similar size, similar noses, similar jaws. If you take a same-looking dog to a Pitt only rescue, they'd have taken him. That's a Pit or a Pit-mix. End of story. I don't understand why there's this need to deny the obvious.
Similar coloring, similar build, similar head shapes, similar size, similar noses, similar jaws. If you take a same-looking dog to a Pitt only rescue, they'd have taken him. That's a Pit or a Pit-mix. End of story. I don't understand why there's this need to deny the obvious.
Pit mix? Ok how much pit?
Oh, I see "pit bull type" dog.
Yes. I see.
So, it doesn't MATTER if there is any American Pit Bull Terrier in the dog at all. If it LOOKS anything like what we 'think' a pit bull looks like, then it's a pit. Period.
Gotcha.
Makes perfect sense.
I bet you'd call all of these dogs "pit bull" or "pit bull mixes" as well.
Maybe I'm dense. I've been volunteering at a shelter with a high pit bull population for 4 years. It's a poor picture, but it's not at all obvious to me it's a pittie. The head shape isn't all that easy to see there, but I don't think the two dogs look as close as you make out. Sorry.
Edited to add, yes half the dogs in the find the pit bull poster look just as much like a pit bull as does your supposedly definitive picture.
Similar coloring, similar build, similar head shapes, similar size, similar noses, similar jaws. If you take a same-looking dog to a Pitt only rescue, they'd have taken him. That's a Pit or a Pit-mix. End of story. I don't understand why there's this need to deny the obvious.
You can say 'end of story' if you like at to whether most people would agree with you that a dog of that appearance qualifies a 'pit bull'. I would also say mutt. But it's not really the point. The point is that a mainly genetic explanation of the vicious dog problem doesn't fly scientifically if a lot of the dogs called 'pit bulls' are as mixed as one in the first picture. And that's 'end of story' as a matter of fact, not a polling of opinion, which is basically what your 'end of story' amounts to. Most people think that dog is a 'pit bull', fine but most people are ignoramuses and any genetic theory would amount to applied to dogs like the one in the picture would be work of ignoramuses.
I don't directly compare dog issues to race issues (except insofar as one influences the other, and a lot of 'pit bull' hate is driven by racial and class hate of dark/poor people presumed by many haters to be the pit bull owners, are you going to deny the obvious in that case I wonder?). But, having a genetic theory of why 'pit bulls' supposedly are aggressive or 'unpredictable' when the term is applied to lots of highly mixed dogs is kind of similar to genetic theories of social/economic facts wrt to 'blacks' in the US when lots of people who are identified/self identify as 'black' have only a minority of African heritage. 'Pit bull' (wherein someone would insist the first dog is 'obviously' a 'pit bull') and 'black person' are both social constructs. I don't say that either term can't be used to communicate an idea based on a generally understood meaning, but you have to understand the limits of that meaning. 'Pit bull' as in the dog in your first picture is not a meaningful term in the context of a genetic explanation of animal behavior.
Last edited by Turkey Soup; 04-05-2013 at 03:52 PM..
So, it doesn't MATTER if there is any American Pit Bull Terrier in the dog at all. If it LOOKS anything like what we 'think' a pit bull looks like, then it's a pit. Period.
Gotcha.
Makes perfect sense.
I bet you'd call all of these dogs "pit bull" or "pit bull mixes" as well.
That's ridiculous, most of the dogs in that pdf look nothing like a Pit. Many of them are probably shepherds/Boxer/hounds. It's like the Pit defenders think they are the only ones who can tell what is a Pit. I can understand where some of the links posted where the dog obviously looks nothing like a Pit being categorized as a Pit. Fine. Score one for the defenders. But when a dog looks very much like a Pit and then there's this use of semantics to deny the dog's breed because "if a dog looks just like a Pit doesn't mean it is a Pit..." The Pit defenders are not doing themselves any favors when they use this line of defense.
When a dog is obviously a Pit and it attacked, just own up to it. The dogs in question sound like they are raised poorly and not socialized enough. So let's focus on the environment of what caused the attack rather than this complete denial of a dog's obviously breed. Again, it'd help the defenders' cause if they acknowledge that a tiny fraction of the breed has problems and deal with it rather than pretend said problem doesn't exists.
Yup, saw this before and picked out the real Pit on first try. Most of the dogs don't look like Pit anyhow (Trying to trick me with a Jack Russell? Really?) but it is interesting to see some other breeds that kinda look like Pit at first glance, but on close inspection look pretty different from Pits.
That's ridiculous, most of the dogs in that pdf look nothing like a Pit. Many of them are probably shepherds. It's like the Pit defenders think they are the only ones who can tell what is a Pit. I can understand where some of the links posted where the dog obviously looks nothing like a Pit being categorized as a Pit. Fine. Score one for the defenders. But when a dog looks very much like a Pit and then there's this use of semantics to deny the dog's breed because "if a dog looks just like a Pit doesn't mean it is a Pit..." The Pit defenders are not doing themselves any favors when they use this line of defense.
When a dog is obviously a Pit and it attacked, just own up to it.
You're just going around in circles. Let's go over it one more time. I don't GAS what other people think looks like a 'pit bull', or what they think of 'pit bulls', if they leave me and my dog alone unless we do something wrong, not pass stupid, unjust unworkable BSL's. Otherwise, to each his own. But the justification for BSL's is some idea that the general appearance of the dog, to an uniformed layman, has some underlying significance in terms of the behavior of the dog. It doesn't. That's just science. Does. Not. And that is the important context in which it's meaningless at best and grossly misleading in general to create some pseudo-breed of 'pit bull' which is any dog a plurality of the (ignorant) general public thinks 'looks like a pit bull'. Again, once the stupid, ignorant, pseudo scientific attempt to attach a narrow set of genetic behaviors to this *wide* variety of breeds and mixes (which could not plausibly have a narrow of set of genetic behaviors in common) is dropped, I couldn't care less what people call a 'pit bull'. They can call their mothers 'pit bulls' for all I care, once BSL is completely dead as a concept.
I think it's time to take a breath and say every one of those 31 fatalities from 2011, no matter what breeds or mixes caused them were tragedies. Taking steps to prevent them, like outlawing tethering, reporting animal abuse and neglect, and increasing spay/neuter rates is the best way to prevent more deaths, and to honor those that have lost their lives.
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