A question about pit bull dogs

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BoSoxGal
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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Stumbled on this excellent essay about pit bull dogs by an animal behaviorist - piece is at Dogsbite.org
Animal Behaviorist Responds to Statements Following Trinidad Fatal Pit Bull Attack
Denise Rackal killed by pit bulls
Denise's son shown hugging her casket during funeral services.

Natural Predators? ARCHIVED
Chaguanas, Trinidad - In the aftermath of the death of 46-year old Denise Rackal, who was murdered by a pack of pit bulls belonging to a Chaguanas police officer in early May, justice for the victim's family has stalled. A Trinidad "ethics sell-out," veterinarian Dr. Mahfouz, also infected a local newspaper reporting on the incident. Journalist Kevin Baldeosingh regurgitated the nonsense and made other factual errors that must now be corrected for the record.

Corrections for the Record
Misleading statements made by veterinarian Dr. Mahfouz and an analysis of them by author and internationally acclaimed animal behaviorist Alexandra Semyonova are the focal point of this post. Several other parts of Baldeosingh's article must also be addressed, as they show that American pit bull zealots not only flog the email inboxes of U.S. press members and lawmakers after a serious or fatal pit bull attack, but target overseas inboxes as well.1

To start, Troublemakers, by best selling author Malcom Gladwell is cited in the piece. One of the worst failures of Troublemakers is that Gladwell uses unscientific data from the American Temperament Testing Society to support his ideas. Gladwell is aware of this fact, but uses the data anyway. Critics have zinged Gladwell for his own poor sampling methods that result in "hasty generalizations and selection biases" and a heavy reliance upon anecdotal evidence.2

Baldeosingh also refers to the National Canine Research Council (NCRC) as "US Canine Research Council," as though it is a government institution. The NCRC is a pro-pit bull entity inspired by Karen Delise that became a limited liability corporation (not a nonprofit) on August 14, 2007. The following day, and under the signature of Jane Berkey, who also owns Pit Nutter Animal Farm Foundation, the NCRC became authorized to do business in New York.3

International Fatal Pit Bull Mauling
In the wake of the Trinidad pit bull mauling that left the victim's "throat and brain ripped open," not only did "ethics sell-outs," such as veterinarian Dr. Mahfouz and Malcom Gladwell4 raise their ugly heads, but alarmingly so did Trinidad womens' rights groups who cited the need to own dangerous breeds for their protection. Apparently, the safety of women in this area is that bad. Animal behaviorist Alexandra Semyonova responds to both aspects in the next part.

RE: All Dogs Are Natural Predators
Re Denise Rackal: Let’s face the facts, pit bulls are genetically programmed killers, but this has nothing to do with the natural inclinations of dogs or predators
That we are willing to risk – and often sacrifice – our children’s lives and our own lives to keep these unpredictable and uncontrollable living weapons among us is symptomatic of a mind boggling social pathology on a large scale.

What an incredible shame that anyone would try to dismiss the pathological aggression that typifies the pit bull by saying that dogs are natural predators. A statement like this betrays ignorance both of what the domestic dog is and of how predators behave, and is unfair to both.
Even if the domestic dog were a predator, which it isn’t, random killing would not be in its repertory of behavior. Even lions and tigers and bears don’t just suddenly think, ‘Hey, I’m not hungry but I feel like killing something just for the heck of it,’ to then casually attack anything that happens to be passing. Killing is a serious and expensive business in terms of energy expenditure, and Nature doesn’t allow for this kind of energy waste. Killing also entails the risk of being injured as the prey defends itself. No natural predator is stupid enough to take this risk except out of necessity. And even if it is hungry, a predator does not confuse its own kind or its own social partners with prey. Although conflicts can sometimes arise between members of the same predator group or species, even then behavior is normally aimed at settling the conflict without anyone being seriously hurt or killed. In fact, a great deal of natural behavior serves to avoid conflict and confrontation between same-species predators (e.g., scent marking the living area so that strangers know it’s already occupied and can avoid the occupants).

So forget about the pit bull’s energy wasting, random killing of anything and everything, including its social partner (humans and other dogs) being some kind of normal predatory behavior, even if the domestic dog were a predator.

Which it’s not. The dog stopped being a wolf because it stopped living by hunting and started eating our garbage. Back in those days (at least 14,000 years ago), humans tolerated dogs in their vicinity because the dog served a clean-up function, and only as long as the dog didn’t scare them. The entire evolution of the domestic dog was built upon the ability to live peacefully with humans, without harming us, our children, or any of the other domestic animals we keep. In the end, this has resulted in a creature that – in its natural state – is extremely reticent in the use of aggression. Normal dogs do not injure each other in conflicts beyond perhaps a scratch or a tiny puncture wound. They try to do the same with us, lashing out only when they feel they must as a last defensive resort, trying to use only as much force as is absolutely necessary to open up a flight route or get us to back off. With a normal dog, we don’t have to be in constant fear that the dog is suddenly going to explode and maul or kill us – and certainly not just for the heck of it.

The problem with the pit bull (as a biological type that includes various breeds of dogs) has nothing to do with predators or with normal canine behavior. The problem with the pit bull is that humans have applied artificial selection to preserve and intensify a hereditary brain malfunction. This brain malfunction impairs the ability of the executive functions in the brain to operate properly. It causes the same kind of unpredictable, explosive aggression in all species that have it, including humans. All of this has been well documented, including in humans, no need to repeat it here.

This brain disorder serves no purpose for the dog that has it, and normally it would have died out due to the carriers killing each other, being rejected as mates by other dogs, by the carriers being unable to mate due to outbursts of aggression when aroused (thus the rape rack to allow pit bulls to mate), and so on. Unfortunately, the mutation turned out to serve human purposes very well. This originally had to do with distorted views of masculinity, and with gambling and greed, and was limited to small circles – in the United States mostly to the Ku Klux Klan (which used dogfights to raise funds) and to the states where the Klan dominated politics.

Before the pit bull again became popular (now not only for dogfighting but also as a legal weapon), most people could do with a normal dog as a watchdog. Pathological aggression wasn’t necessary because the function of a watchdog is not to attack and kill, but to warn of an approach or an intrusion and to get the burglar or assailant to flee. The prevalence of the pit bull among the criminal element (in most places in the world, the majority of pit bull owners have some kind of criminal record) has now unleashed an arms race. If the rapist or mugger has a pit bull, it’s no use having a normal dog yourself – your dog has to be at least as aggressive as the weapon dog the criminal uses. Better yet, have two! If the rapist has two, get three! Or get a better version, something bigger than a pit bull and twice as unstable and mean! (The presa, the fila, etc)
That we are willing to risk – and often sacrifice – our children’s lives and our own lives to keep these unpredictable and uncontrollable living weapons among us is symptomatic of a mind boggling social pathology on a large scale. This human social pathology seems to permeate from politicians who are reluctant to take measures, right on through to scientists and vets who are losing sight of normal animal behavior under pressure of the pit bull lobby. Saying that the pit bull defines what the dog is, is like saying that Charles Manson defines normal humankind.

Whether Trinidad & Tobago chooses to ban the pit bull and other aggressive dog breeds and types is a choice the country has a right to make. However, the choice should not be based on faulty ideas of what predators and dogs are and do. It should include recognition of the fact that the pit bull is an artificial human creation. It should not allow the lovers of these distorted breeds to claim ‘nature’ as their excuse and their way of abdicating responsibility. The pit bull problem is completely unrelated to the natural behavior of any other animal, from lions and tigers and bears to the normal dogs who can still live among us without hurting us this way.

Alexandra Semyonova
Baltimore, May 2011

Alexandra Semyonova is an internationally acclaimed animal behaviorist and author of The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs. Academically educated in behavioral science and specialized in animal behavior, she provided a major breakthrough for the field in her paper, The Social Organization of the Domestic Dog. She has worked with dogs and their owners on a daily basis for more than 30 years. Visit her website at Nonlinear Dogs. View additional DogsBite.org posts that Semyonova has provided commentary for in the past.
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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

At the risk of being accused of flogging a dead horse let's go with some numbers.

There are 89.7 million dogs in the US (2017 figures). That's not a peer-reviewed source but it sounds reasonable to me.

According to dogbites.org pit bulls make up 8% of the US dog population. That seems high to me based on just walking around but we'll go with it. In round numbers there are thus about 7 million of them around.

If - using your numbers - there were 521 dog-related fatalities over a 15 year period of which 66% were due to pit bulls, that's 34 a year. 7 million pit bulls killed 34 people. In case anyone is in any doubt, that is 34 killings too many.

Here in Kentucky we have 4,467,673 people, according to Wikipedia. According to Statistica we had 244 murders in 2018. (We seem to be a reasonably law abiding state compared to some but I'll run with our numbers.) Undoubtedly some of our murders were committed by out-of-staters but let's assume that it all evens out. (Mind you I don't trust people from Indiana - Exhibit A, our Vice President. They are just over the river from me.) I am sure that of the 4,467,673 people, some are less than 5 years old and some are more than 90. Let's just assume for the sake of argument and for easing the arithmetic, there are 467,673 of these too-young or too-old people and that we have 4 million Kentuckians from whom to draw the murderer pool.

244 murders done by 4 million people. That's 0.000061 each. 34 killings by 7,000,000 pit bulls. That's 0.0000049 apiece. That means that your average Kentuckian is about 12 times more likely to kill you than your average pit bull.

I think I will go and lie down. I'm definitely staying indoors today.

Edited to add: BTW, Snopes has some interesting things to say about the push to ban certain dog types, known as breed specific legislation. It doesn't seem to work out.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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You keep harping on fatalities as if death were the only metric that matters.

There's a reason why almost no insurance carriers will cover liability for attacks by pit bulls and certain other breeds, because the severity of injury (and thus the amount of payout) they cause is grossly disproportionate to their numbers.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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Jesus fucking Christ Andy, the whole fucking thread was about being prepared for the possibility of a pitbull attack so I COULD WALK in my fucking neighborhood, not hide inside for the rest of my life - that’s why your stupid fucking responses are so goddamned insulting! Whatever the stats - and on maulings resulting in permanent disfigurement and disability they are FAR higher - it only takes the one time it happens to YOU or someone you love and then it’s not a fucking statistic anymore, is it?

Did you not bother to read the posts here where I detailed the horrific mauling of a woman my age and the ripping apart of her beloved dog, not very many streets away from where I live, just two years ago? Did you not bother to read the post where I discussed how many pit bull dogs are in my city, how I was not even able to adopt a dog from the shelter here because all they had were pit bull and pit bull type dogs?

I mean seriously, what the fuck. Then you assholes wonder why I react with written hostility to your fucking egotistical mansplaining on every topic under the sun, including topics that I’ve been studying for years and which you just used your ‘better and bigger man brain’ and googled some stats from wherever while patting the woman poster on the head and saying ‘dear, dear, stop being irrational.’

Yes, go fuck yourself. :roll:
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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And rather than a Snopes article that decries judging dogs on their ‘racial parameters’ ( :lol: ) which is a clear indicator it is pro-pit bull type dog, and which glosses over entirely evidence regarding severity of dog bites and medical intervention required, how about some man-strength science that gets into the nitty fucking gritty about the efficacy of breed specific bans in reducing dog maulings requiring hospitalization?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3664365/
Results

A total of 16 urban and rural jurisdictions with pit-bull bans were identified. At the provincial level, there was a significant reduction in DBIH rates from the pre-BSL to post-BSL period (3.47 (95% CI 3.17 to 3.77) per 100 000 person-years to 2.84 (95% CI 2.53 to 3.15); p=0.005). In regression restricted to two urban jurisdictions, DBIH rate in Winnipeg relative to Brandon (a city without BSL) was significantly (p<0.001) lower after BSL (rate ratio (RR)=1.10 in people of all ages and 0.92 in those aged <20 years) than before (RR=1.29 and 1.28, respectively).

Conclusions

BSL may have resulted in a reduction of DBIH in Winnipeg, and appeared more effective in protecting those aged <20 years.
The pit bull lobby is strong; I wish members of it were the only ones getting mauled and killed by the worthless animals they adore.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

No - I'm "harping on fatalities" because those are the numbers which are readily available.

I'm not denying the seriousness of dog bites and I accept that pit bulls have more - much more - than their share of responsibility. But for most of us, something else will get us long before a pit bull will; and statistically, lightning strike and attack by another human is much more likely.

Perhaps I am biased by my single one-on-one experience with an intact male pit bull which I recounted here a few months ago.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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Family files suit following fatal dog attack
By MARISA HICKS Log Cabin Democrat Jun 26, 2020

ImageNine-year-old Robert “Robby” Taylor died following a vicious dog attack on May 28 in Mount Vernon. A memorial service was held in his honor on June 5.

Editor’s note: The information from the court filing included in this article gives a graphic account of the injuries sustained in the fatal dog attack that readers may find disturbing.

One of the dogs that attacked and killed a 9-year-old Mount Vernon boy last month had acted aggressively toward the Taylor family more than once, according to a wrongful death suit filed against Trey Wyatt and his girlfriend, Lisa Young.

Trey Edgar Wyatt, 26, is currently behind bars without bond and facing a felony tampering with physical evidence charge after his dogs reportedly attacked and killed 9-year-old Robert “Robby” Taylor on May 28. The sheriff’s office has said it also expects Wyatt to be charged with “multiple county ordinances including: nuisance animals and hazardous animals running at large, liability of animals that attack a human being and keeping of a dangerous dog.”

Though formal charges regarding the apparent dog attack were not filed in Faulkner County Circuit Court as of Thursday, defense attorney Robert Newcomb has requested the court issue a gag order in his client’s cases after the Taylor family filed a wrongful death suit against Wyatt and his girlfriend.

The defense attorney said he believes attorneys on both sides of the case and the sheriff’s office should be barred “from making any comments to the media or in public” regarding Wyatt’s prior assault case, the pending tampering with physical evidence case and the recently-filed civil suit.

The Vilonia man was charged with aggravated assault, a Class D felony, and second-degree interference with emergency communication, a Class B misdemeanor, in December 2019 after he reportedly choked and pinned his pregnant girlfriend down onto a bed.

Attorney David R. Hogue, who represents Robby’s parents – Robert and Lyndsay Taylor – filed a civil complaint against Wyatt and Young on Monday. The complaint accuses the couple of wrongful death, strict liability, negligence and two counts each of trespassing and nuisance.

The day Robby was attacked by Wyatt and Young’s dogs “began as normal,” according to the complaint.

When the 9-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister woke up on May 28, the two “piled up blankets and pillows in front of the TV and started to watch a movie.”

Robby had two sisters.

The family’s dog started barking as the two children watched the movie, so they went to see what it was barking at when they found an abandoned puppy in the family’s carport. Soon after the two brought the puppy inside, the 10-year-old and Robby’s 15-year-old sister gave it a bath “because it was covered in fleas and ticks.”

While his sisters cleaned the puppy, Robby asked his mother if he could go outside to check the mail.

Robby never returned from the 300-yard walk from the mailbox to the Taylor family’s home.

The young boy was attacked by “two or more dogs” at the end of the family’s driveway. One of the dogs was the same brown pit bull that broke a glass door at the family’s home two weeks prior. In the previous incident (on May 14), two pit bulls broke a glass door on the family’s porch as they tried “to get into a metal cage containing chickens,” the complaint states. The complaint also points out that the brown pit bull seen running away from Robby’s mangled body on May 28 is the same dog that killed 20 chickens on the property and “growled and acted aggressively” toward a young boy.

Wyatt’s girlfriend previously told Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office deputies that the dogs’ shock collars stopped working and that she “had ordered replacements.”

When Robby’s body was found in a field near the Taylors’ home, the county coroner noted his injuries were consistent with injuries caused by a dog’s canine teeth.

According to the wrongful death complaint, investigative reports show that Robby attempted to fight off the vicious dogs.

“Robby was unable to overcome the dogs and eventually fell in the field,” the complaint reads in part. “The dogs ripped his face apart, including detaching his right eye and removing it completely from the socket. There was major trauma to the left side of his face as well. There were severe and deep wounds to his right upper arm, as well as puncture wounds on the right arm, neck, and chest areas. Robby succumbed to his injuries while laying in a puddle of water in the field.”

Robby asked to check the mail around 9 a.m.

His mother called 911 at 9:17 a.m. as she and the boy’s sisters searched for him. Robby’s mother found his shoes and the umbrella he was carrying when he left to check the mail in the driveway, and his 15-year-old sister found his “bloody and mangled body” around 9:29 a.m.

“[The 15-year-old] screamed when she came upon the gruesome sight, alerting Lyndsay that she had found something truly terrible. She, too, went into the field and saw her child’s mauled body. She stayed with him until well after law enforcement and first responders arrived,” the complaint states.

Since Robby was killed by the vicious dog attack, his parents and sisters “have suffered from nightmares and difficulty sleeping,” Hogue said.

Robby’s parents and his 15-year-old sister, who saw the boy’s maimed body up close, now suffer from flashbacks and also have panic attacks.

The Taylors are seeking a jury trial against Wyatt and his girlfriend, alleging the two caused the wrongful death of their 9-year-old son.

“The value of this young man’s life, the future lost, and the lifelong anguish of the siblings and parents is far too great to put into words,” Hogue wrote in the complaint against Wyatt and Young.

A motion hearing regarding the wrongful death complaint and the defense team’s request for a gag order is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. July 1 in Faulkner County Circuit Court.

Staff writer Marisa Hicks can be reached at mhicks@thecabin.net
I would love to sic some vicious monster pit bulls on the two waste of space human beings who let their aggressive pit bulls roam free in the neighborhood after they’d already killed chickens and shown aggression toward kids. This poor child just wanted to walk to the mailbox for the family’s mail and for that expectation of safety on his own property, he suffered a horrible death.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Dogs kill people and yes, pit bulls kill people. Let's be clear - I would not own one and I would be leery of my neighbor if they owned one. And, let's face it - some pit bull owners keep them for the same reason that some drive a Ferrari - it shows the rest of the world how tough and manly they are and pit bulls are more financially accessible than a Ferrari. On those grounds alone I would be wary of the neighbor and more so of him and his self conceived image as macho man than of the dog.

AMVA is against Breed Specific Legislation (BSL). And I took a look at the paper which described the Winnipeg experience. I am a little troubled by the statistics but there is not enough information for me to rerun them. Briefly, in Manitoba they assessed the DBIH (dog bite injury hospitalizations) in towns with and without legislation banning certain dog types for the period 1984 to 2006. For towns with such legislation the DBIH rate was 2.92 per 100,000 person years with a 95% confidence interval of 2.66 to 3.19. For towns without the legislation the numbers were 3.62 with 95% CI 3.25 to 3.99. They claim that this has a significance at p <0.001. You have two wide 95% CIs which almost overlap and a p of better than 0.001? I really do not believe it. The confidence intervals are around 0.5 to 0.7 wide and the overlaps are a lousy 0.06 apart? It's possible and it has been peer reviewed so I guess (hope??) they checked the stats.

My basic point is this, absent the ad hominems. Dog bites are terrible (a friend of mine is undergoing rabies shots as we speak - not pit bulls but some unknown mongrel type a month or so ago - I think he has one shot to go but I'll ask him) and one death or injury is one too many. I had a friend who was (probably - that's what we all think, anyway - his body was never found) killed by a shark. He was a marine biologist - a good one - and he would never have suggested or even contemplated that there were too many sharks in the world. When the animal control officer came to pick up my 'pit bull' (referenced above) he said that he could not be sure of the breed just from its looks. I don't know if they ran some sort of test or if they changed their minds down at AC but when it appeared on their website for reclaiming the owner it was described as a pit bull mix. But a lot of things are going to get you long before a pit bull does and much of the teeth-gnashing about the breed is misplaced.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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BSG you ought to visit https://www.reddit.com/r/BanPitBulls/ as you will find kindred spirits.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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No, none of the teeth gnashing about the breed is misplaced - except that from the idiots who defend the breed and say idiotic things like ‘there are no bad dogs, only bad owners.’

PIT BULLS ARE GENETICALLY PROGRAMMED FOR UNSTABLE, UNPREDICTABLE SEVERE AGGRESSION - THAT IS THEIR FUNDAMENTAL NATURE WHICH CANNOT BE TRAINED AWAY

Heritability of Behavior in the Abnormally Aggressive Dog

Pit bulls and other bully breeds and fighting breeds serve no purpose in modern society other than to aid and abet criminality. The movement of bleeding heart rescue organizations and adopters that have aggressively lobbied AVMA and other veterinary organizations is entirely misguided, and I am grateful that more and more municipalities are refusing to be bowed to that movement but act instead to protect their residents by banning the breeds.

They should be culled from the panoply of dog breeds entirely. Period.

There is no comparison whatsoever with shark attacks because sharks are in THEIR ecosystem, and humans are the intruders. Same with bears and lions and other wildlife, including hymenoptera - those encounters are a risk humans accept for the choice to be in natural settings where carnivorous apex predators and stinging insects reside and hunt.

Every single death and mauling by a pit bull or other aggressive breed dog is 100% preventable. Their propensity for unpredictable aggression is well documented for decades and selected for over centuries. If these dogs are to be allowed to exist by a polite society, then they should be always secured by 6’+ fences buried 6-12 inches into the ground, or when kept indoors, behind a secured door with an antechamber between it and the outside door, or when walked outside, on a double or triple leash and harness system with a solid heavy duty MUZZLE affixed at all times. And the people who choose to keep such dogs and expose their innocent children to them should be criminally prosecuted for felony endangerment when the dogs mutilate and/or kill those children.

Or get a fucking beagle.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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ex-khobar Andy wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 3:17 pm
he would never have suggested or even contemplated that there were too many sharks in the world
That's a piss-poor analogy Andy. There's a world of difference between a person voluntarily diving in the ocean where sharks live and a person involuntarily being assaulted by vicious dog. All pit bulls should be exterminated. Then we'll run the numbers again and see what results.

(Sneak peak: where there are no pit bulls, there are no pit bull attacks).

We need tougher home insurance inspection. Possession of a "naughty" breed must be grounds to cancel a policy, industry-wide. Make the owners pay through the nose. The dogs will disappear.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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No doubt there can be poorly trained and kept dogs of all breeds. And it is unfortunate that there are still neighborhoods where dogs are not kept on their property. (When I was a kid dogs roaming about was the norm, Henry and Ribsy anyone? But now it is a rarity to see a dog on the street without a leash. Similarly, dog poop is almost 100% picked up from neighborhood sidewalks when a couple of decades ago it was common to step in it). However, the expert organizations in this area, the veterinarians and the Humane Society do not believe in breed exclusion/characterization. Ihatepitbulls.blogspot with its purely anecdotal stories is not exactly going to convince anyone except those who have made up their minds and chosen to ignore the experts.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by TPFKA@W »

I was once bitten by a dachshund, right on the ankle. I punted the little shit halfway across the room. It was visiting a patient and had been left off leash. It was summarily banned from visiting the facility. Had it been a pitbull it doubtless would not have ended so quickly as they are not punt-able. Just because all dogs may bite is not indicative that all dog bites are equatable. Pitbull apologists are extremely deluded and suck.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by Scooter »

You could have a pack of dachshunds biting at your ankles and be able to send them airborne with a good kick. A pitbull might rip off your foot.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

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MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 3:57 pm

That's a piss-poor analogy Andy.
Agreed, but disagree with the rest of your unsubstantiated opinion. Andy is right that there any number of risks that are far more likely to occur than a dog bite, let alone a dog bite from a higher-potential-harm dog. For example, a car accident is far more likely to impact any of us than a dog bite. Given this much higher risk, it would make sense to get the safest car possible to provide protection against this relatively high risk. How many have really safe cars that they drive around, versus whatever was affordable at the moment? In fact, why don't we outlaw any car that does not have the safety features of a new Volvo -- take them all off the road since they are too dangerous and if someone gets into an accident they will suffer far more injury than if they had a really safe car. We can't take the risk.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Classic "what-about-ism". What about naughty people with knives? What about yellow lines that people trip over? What about.... what about.... what about?

Pit bulls are shit dogs and should be exterminated. Unlike cars, they are designed to kill and maim.
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by Joe Guy »

This thread is supposed to be about how to be prepared for a Pitbull attack, not about the odds that it will happen.

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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by Long Run »

MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 8:22 pm
Classic "what-about-ism".
Actually, a classic misuse of the new annoying term what-about-ism to avoid having to deal with an illogical and inconsistent position.

And again, there is no response to the fact that the AVMA and ASPCA do not agree with breed restrictions. The two leading experts in the field disagree with your position, and the response is to roll out the same old unsubstantiated opinions and cite to the same no-credibility blogspot.

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Long Run
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by Long Run »

Joe Guy wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 8:26 pm
This thread is supposed to be about how to be prepared for a Pitbull attack, not about the odds that it will happen.
Fair point, actually. Because it appears that BSG has a specific individual dog that concerns her. In her case it appears not to be a hypothetical, but a known risk. Back in the bad old days, as we headed out for a run, we would grab a few big rocks in case we needed to fend off unruly and vicious dogs. Of course, back then, calls to animal control actually led to visits and fines. I think that still is a reasonable option in most places.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: A question about pit bull dogs

Post by BoSoxGal »

Pointing to the AVMA and Humane Society on this issue is just dumb;

the former is an organization that despite the modern and definitive science of the last few decades on the lasting effects of pet vaccines refuses to issue a position statement recommending a reduction in the yearly vaccination schedule - because the majority of veterinarians, who make money from bringing in clients every year via vaccination reminders and administration of unnecessary vaccines and then upsell them on various flea/tick products and overpriced and overprocessed ‘prescription‘ foods and this and that etc. would be up in arms if they did. The AVMA puts the health of pets secondary to profits, pure and simple. By so doing, it also puts the well being of human clients secondary to profits at the same time. The science regarding cancers and autoimmune diseases caused by overvaccination of cats and dogs is well established - hell vets are so aware of this that they vaccinate cats in the back leg where they used to administer to the back area - why? Because when the cats get the cancer frequent vaccinations trigger, they can have their legs amputated and still survive. Who cares about all the horrible disabling autoimmune illnesses and cancers caused in our pets by having every year another round of vaccines that overstimulate the immune system when the first two rounds they received in their youth are in almost all cases protective for a lifetime - just like in humans.

And the Humane Society? They do good work, but the temperament tests they give to shelter dogs to screen for adoptability are considered by many expert animal behaviorists to be a joke, and it’s worth noting that many of the folks who work at animal rescue facilities are not animal behaviorists or trainers of any skill. They’re far more often underpaid or unpaid volunteers who just love all dogs and think all dogs are cute and cuddly and deserve to live and WOULD NEVER EVER EAT THE FACE OFF OR RIP THE THROAT OUT OF A HUMAN. There are no bad dogs! Only bad owners!

Just like a great many doctors don’t know jack shit about nutrition and do a piss poor job of diagnosing complex health issues in their patients, so too a great many veterinarians don’t know jack shit about nutrition AND behavioral issues in pets. To assume that just because someone did the requisite undergraduate science coursework to get accepted to veterinary school and then completed a DVM means they know ANYTHING about dog behavior only means you are entirely unfamiliar with the coursework at veterinary school. A great many vets know ZILCH about managing problem behaviors in dogs. Fact.

And calling Dogsbite.org not credible on the issue of fatal dog maulings and non fatal dog maulings is only revealing your own ignorance. You clearly haven’t even bothered to look at their statistical methods or the sources they gather information from - all of which are very reliable sources. YOU clearly have an agenda to support and promote pit bull and other highly aggressive dog breeds and I can only therefore assume that you value monster dogs more than human lives. Good for you.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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