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First of all I am the owner of an 85 pound American Bulldog who is often confused as a pit but the breed is not even related to the pit, and I am also the former owner of a Rottie.
What EVERYONe needs to understand is that Bully breeds, Rotties, dobies and all of the dogs that people FEAR so much and that have a history of attacking are not BORN that way, they are raised that way...similar to the crack head teeneager that may live on your block, parenting an animal is just as much a responsibility as parenting a child. If you are an ignorant parent to your children it is the same as if you are that way with a dog. Ignorant people raise their animals to be aggressive or to attack.
I have met little poodles that were more intimidating than my American Bulldog, yet when I am walking my big mush (ON a LEASH) in my neighborhood it amuses me to see how many people also walking cross the street or have a look of disgust when they see my dog.
I cannot tell you the number of people that have flat out accused him of being a pitbull and then come to find out he is not all of a sudden are ok with him and want to pet him.
It sucks what happened to this guy that got bit by a roaming pit but it is the owner not the dog. Sadly once a dog is raised to be aggressive it is too late for that dog and as the BIGGEST animal love I know, unfortunately the poor dog should probably be put down or given away to someone that is trained to raise formerly abused animals, clearly this pit was raised by an idiotic dog parent to be aggressive.
Garmin,
You are cherry-picking evidence. First, remember my claim is that pit bulls are more aggressive and dangerous. As such, I'd like to see them banned.
To support my claim, I just provided you with evidence from a study that separated pit bulls out from 9 other pit bull/mix breeds. Bite reports compiled between 1982 and 2006 show pit bulls involved in 1110 biting incidents - in their sample. This was the highest number of incidents among any breed of dog, more than twice the second highest (rottweilers at 409 biting incidents). The researcher noted the following:
"Of the breeds most often involved in incidents of sufficient severity
to be listed, pit bull terriers are noteworthy for attacking adults almost
as frequently as children. This is a very rare pattern: children are
normally at greatest risk from dogbite because they play with dogs more
often, have less experience in reading dog behavior, are more likely to
engage in activity that alarms or stimulates a dog, and are less able to
defend themselves when a dog becomes aggressive. Pit bulls seem to differ
behaviorally from other dogs in having far less inhibition about attacking
people who are larger than they are. They are also notorious for attacking
seemingly without warning, a tendency exacerbated by the custom of docking pit bulls' tails so that warning signals are not easily recognized. Thus the adult victim of a pit bull attack may have had little or no opportunity to read the warning signals that would avert an attack from any other dog."
Also, note the following evidence, consistent with the above observations:
"Studies indicate that pit bull-type dogs were involved in approximately a third of human DBRF (i.e., dog bite related fatalities) reported during the 12-year period from 1981 through1992, and Rottweilers were responsible for about half of human DBRF reported during the 4 years from 1993 through 1996....[T]he data indicate that Rottweilers and pit bull-type dogs accounted for 67% of human DBRF in the United States between 1997 and 1998. It is extremely unlikely that they accounted for anywhere near 60% of dogs in the United States during that same period and, thus, there appears to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities." (Sacks JJ, Sinclair L, Gilchrist J, Golab GC, Lockwood R. Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998. JAVMA 2000;217:836-840.)"
Also, you never adequately responded to my argument that collapsing pit bulls into a mixed category (which wasn't done in the above study), causes pit bull biting incidents to be inflated. See, if the PERCENTAGE of biting incidents is too high, in your opinion because of the collapsing of terriers into a generic category, then one of the dogs in that population should be inflating the numbers. It stands to reason, especially in light of the above evidence, that the dogs inflating said numbers are American Pit Bull Terriers.
You also failed to respond to this observation by the researcher, one you've danced around from the start:
"If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed--and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price."
Competing claims have also been made that Pit Bulls were bred to protect people, and thus don't bite people more. And, it's been argued that their breeding doesn't matter. Well, which is it? I've shown that, first, they weren't bred to protect people. They were bred to kill bulls, bear, and other dogs. Whereas other animals are bred to be tame, these dogs were bred to be aggressive. And as I pointed out in my first post, it has been scientifically established in the Russian fox studies that animals can have temperament bred into and out of them. No one has refuted that with anything substantive; they've just resorted to calling me "ignorant" and a dog "bigot" (I suppose we all are to the extent that none of us would let a Dingo around our babies!).
You also hold me to undefined standards: "The pure breed argument is a good one. If your argument was correct, you would see a LARGE amount of these breeds attacking humans." What is the point at which the number is large enough to impress you. I've given you numbers that show pit bulls overwhelmingly bite humans more often than other dogs, and are responsible for an OVERWHELMINGLY disproportionate number of deaths by bite. Moreover, this is DESPITE their relatively smaller population (2-3% of the entire dog population!). You don't explain that.
Further, you state, "I was making the claim that the number of deaths looks worse than it is, since several different breeds were responsible for the numbers; not one breed." Without any evidence to support your bald assertion that these mixes are unfairly lumped, if for humor I conceded that they universally were (but aren't in the study cited above), the "several breed" defense isn't a defense. These breeds are related much beyond the the relationships between chimps and humans. The various breeds of terriers often lumped come from various regions of the UK, were bred for similar sport purposes, bred for aggression. Besides, your argument amounts to little more than "Lay off pit bulls, other dogs bite too." I'd like to see all biting varieties banned.
Next, you've conceded that when pit bulls do attack, their attacks are far more harmful. Combine that with the evidence above illustrating their far more aggressive tendencies and the anomalous adult-biting behavior, and you have a more aggressive, dangerous animal.
First of all I am the owner of an 85 pound American Bulldog who is often confused as a pit but the breed is not even related to the pit, and I am also the former owner of a Rottie.
What EVERYONe needs to understand is that Bully breeds, Rotties, dobies and all of the dogs that people FEAR so much and that have a history of attacking are not BORN that way, they are raised that way...similar to the crack head teeneager that may live on your block, parenting an animal is just as much a responsibility as parenting a child. If you are an ignorant parent to your children it is the same as if you are that way with a dog. Ignorant people raise their animals to be aggressive or to attack.
I have met little poodles that were more intimidating than my American Bulldog, yet when I am walking my big mush (ON a LEASH) in my neighborhood it amuses me to see how many people also walking cross the street or have a look of disgust when they see my dog.
I cannot tell you the number of people that have flat out accused him of being a pitbull and then come to find out he is not all of a sudden are ok with him and want to pet him.
It sucks what happened to this guy that got bit by a roaming pit but it is the owner not the dog. Sadly once a dog is raised to be aggressive it is too late for that dog and as the BIGGEST animal love I know, unfortunately the poor dog should probably be put down or given away to someone that is trained to raise formerly abused animals, clearly this pit was raised by an idiotic dog parent to be aggressive.
You just assume this is true. Raise a jackal and come back with evidence that this is true. I want to see someone tame a puma. I want to see people raise their kids with wolverines around the house.
The fact that you have raised these animals successfully suggests that your opinion isn't an objective one. You seem to have an agenda. I'm providing evidence, you are displaying love.
The American Temperament Test Society has a very nice website which explains what it does better than I can do here. But in brief, their tests take a look at how a particular dog within a breed handles a walk through the neighborhood with a variety of situations presented. Kind strangers, weird strangers, noises, possibly threatening situations. The dog gets a failing mark if it shows ...
...unprovoked aggression
...panic without recovery
...strong avoidance
Breed standard is taken into consideration when results are calculated. A timid dog from a protective breed would be rated lower, an aggressive dog from a usually calm breed would rate lower. Here are a few breeds. The pass rate is the percentage of animals from that breed who passed the test.
Yes, there are others who scored higher but I wanted to point out the many common breeds we encounter everyday that might be more prone to being a problem.
Newbie, your source did not state that pit bull dogs bite more often as many breeds were not included in the study. Talk about cherry picking evidence. Come back when you have a study that includes all breeds of dogs. Also, the study does not represent bite statistics like you claim. It only gives stats for bites that require "serious" medical attention, not bites or attacks in general. If you are trying to claim that a breed is more aggressive you need to show us how often they attack in general compared to other breed.
Contrary to what you say, the study does not break down the breeds. Nowhere does it give any numbers for American Staffordshire Terriers APBT or Staffordshire Bull Terrier. It just says "pit bull terrier".
As far as the observation of when a dog does attack, a person has a greater chance of getting hurt, I Never argued that. Certain breeds are generally stronger than others so when they attack, there would probably be a greater chance of injury. That does not mean that the type of dog is more aggressive like you claim.
You keep bringing up the history. If you have actually read into the history instead of picking out specific quotes you would know that aggression towards humans was bred out of this type of dog. From one of the history articles:
"A quality that was never bred into them was human aggression. Human “aggressive” (aggression may not be the most appropriate term, it is more likely that these dogs simply had a lower bite threshold) dogs were undesirable as these dogs required extensive handling prior and during their fights - most of theses dogs were also family pets so no human “aggression” was ever tolerated.
Dogs that exhibited human “aggression” were typically killed, meaning that only human friendly lines were perpetuated and desired."
"You also hold me to undefined standards: "The pure breed argument is a good one. If your argument was correct, you would see a LARGE amount of these breeds attacking humans." What is the point at which the number is large enough to impress you. I've given you numbers that show pit bulls overwhelmingly bite humans more often than other dogs, and are responsible for an OVERWHELMINGLY disproportionate number of deaths by bite. Moreover, this is DESPITE their relatively smaller population (2-3% of the entire dog population!). You don't explain that."
You did not provide numbers to prove that they bite more often than other dogs. You provided numbers that show only a specific type of attack compared to a handful of breeds.
Also, the smaller population point. Relatively smaller population compared to what? I also pointed out that despite this "small" population of 1.5 million that only a handful of these dogs were involved in fatal bites. If you want to ban something because of a couple bad eggs, you'd have to ban most things on this planet. Blacks commit more violent crimes than whites despite a smaller population. Using your logic we should ban them too.
You go on to talk about other people not being objective. Your posts are extremely biased and are filled with half truths and outright lies.
nynewbie where do you get your info from as per pitbulls being the leader in dog attacks...i had info saying that labs and irish setters and retrievers are leading the pack with bitting.
Bazzwell and garmin seem to be the only ones that understand
As for gypsysoul22....a bit of advice in the world, never ever start acting irrational around a dog and scream...you should consider yourself lucky you were not attacked screaming and yelling...
What all PEOPLE need to learn is if you want a dog, learn to understand and act around a dog...
A good show for you all to watch, especially nynewbie.... the dog whisperer...
As per the kid that got bit...if the owner allows the dog to run that area, he has shown the dog that is his area and he needs to watch his area and protect it...so the dog is beieving he is doing right...it is the owner that has taught his dog wrong...and even if he didn't specifically teach him this is his area...by allowing the dog to have that area he believes it is his...
Also living in a neighborhood with ms13...damn i would applause the people who were using tigers to keep them safe... Sad how people are scared and allow there neighborhoods to deteriorate, and let the pos win....Take your neighborhoods back start talking to eachother and the police..get them involved....Rally in your town right at the Town hall, let them SEE and HEAR you, MAKE THEM do something..
Knowing there is such pos in the neighborhood...i would allow my dog to run a larger area keeping pos away from my house too...
Only on Long Island would someone not let you in their house to wash off after getting attacked. I'm so glad I don't live amongst the most selfish populace in the USA and was smart enough to leave years ago.
Pit bull owner here. A well raised pit bull is one of the LEAST LIKELY breeds to attack humans. They have NO WATCH DOG INSTINCT and welcome strangers into the house. They love the mailman. Don't believe me. Ask any vet or shelter person in the know.
We have two cats in our house who intimidate our pit bull. Our pit bull loves small dogs. But my dog, unfortunately, is DOG AGGRESSIVE with many larger dogs. This is often typical of pit bulls because hundreds of years ago they were bred to fight other dogs. The solution to the problem is a high tech item called a leash.
BUT THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN DOG AGGRESSION AND HUMAN AGGRESSION.
Having said that, my daughter was bit on the face by my sister-in-law's stupid Bijon and needed stitches. Dogs like Bijons, Yorkies, Poodles, etc. are much more likely to bite humans than a well raised pit bull. Honest.
And you can make any dog vicious if you want to. But if you were some hoodlum thug, you would look pretty stupid walking around with a vicious Dachshund. The pit bull has become the dog of choice for the vicious hoodlums (used to be German Shepards, Dobermans and Rottweilers).
Also living in a neighborhood with ms13...damn i would applause the people who were using tigers to keep them safe... Sad how people are scared and allow there neighborhoods to deteriorate, and let the pos win....Take your neighborhoods back start talking to eachother and the police..get them involved....Rally in your town right at the Town hall, let them SEE and HEAR you, MAKE THEM do something..
Knowing there is such pos in the neighborhood...i would allow my dog to run a larger area keeping pos away from my house too...
This MS-13 thing is sooo over blown...and concentrated in New Cassel...
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Nope - Wrong. Pit Bulls are Very Dangerous.
