Because there are more of them?
Anyway here's another take on the population vs attacks...
Posted on 11/22/2008 5:19:40 PM PST by Chet 99
The pit bull terrier breed has proven to be undeniably aggressive, with a tendency to attack people and other animals outside the turf range of "normal" canines.
The reports of vicious attacks by these animals abound in the press, and the pit bull terrier has rightfully earned the reputation of a terrorist animal.
Personally, I feel that the breed should be classified as an exotic, or wild animal, which should only be owned by people who have the proper facilities and responsibility to handle them. I'd like to see them regulated much the same way that tigers and other dangerous animals are.
There's no question now that this breed is a menace to the general welfare. The only question now, is how to best protect the public without abridging individual citizens' rights.
You can do DNA testing for under $100.
I actually looked into that, but the big two companies don’t identify pit bulls, for some reason.
“In the United States, pit bulls make up one to three per cent of the overall dog population and cause more than 50 per cent of serious attacks.”
http://www.dogexpert.com/Dog%20Bite%20Statistics/DogBiteStatistics.html
Here is a video that has a pit bull service dog in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJbZcCppFjY
There is one young lady that goes to our dog park, she has a service dog. Her current dog isn’t a pit but the one before it was.
The test are not that great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a4CDvK868w
The 1-3% is highly suspect. Talk to people involved in animal shelters, they suggest a percentage significantly larger.
Notice his little caveat...”The reader should assumed the information below is accurate, although no validation has been made by this author.”
Ahh no thanks “Doc”. The guy is a paid shill for ambulance chasing lawyers.
This low percentage keeps coming up because people are using as their source AKC registration numbers. AKC only tabulates American Staffordshire Terriers and list them as being the 63th most popular dog well under such reknown American favorites as the Chinese Crested and the Newfoundland.
The facts on the ground tell a different tale. I’m sure some of the posters here can give you first hand accounts of the preponderant number of “pitbull type” dogs that are overloading shelters in the US.
And why are they more likely to wind up in shelters?
Because there are more of them?
Anyway here's another take on the population vs attacks...
Even if we use the 10% figure, which seems very unlikely to me, that doesn’t square with “more than 50 per cent of serious attacks.”
Many small dogs may be unlikely to be capable of what he calls a serious attack.
All dogs are potentially dangerous to some degree.
It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that the larger
a dog is the greater the potential damage that can result from an attack.
It may be that "pitbull types" comprise 50 percent of the population of dogs large enough to potentially do serious damage if they attack.
It may even be that they comprise a percentage greater than 50% but cause serious damage at a rate lower that other dogs.
There is great difficulty in assigning a relative degree of "dangerousness" to a specific type or breed with having accurate numbers for both the numerator and the denominator of the equation. The numerator is the number of attacks. Many of the studies done rely in newspaper accounts that are notoriously inaccurate and retractions if given are buried in remote areas. The denominator is the population of a specific type/breed. Again a very difficult number to ascertain.
Here's how the AMVA sees it...
"Dog bite statistics are not really statistics, and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite. Invariably the numbers will show that dogs from popular large breeds are a problem. This should be expected, because big dogs can physically do more damage if they do bite, and any popular breed has more individuals that could bite. Dogs from small breeds also bite and are capable of causing severe injury. There are several reasons why it is not possible to calculate a bite rate for a breed or to compare rates between breeds. First, the breed of the biting dog may not be accurately recorded, and mixed-breed dogs are commonly described as if they were purebreds. Second, the actual number of bites that occur in a community is not known, especially if they did not result in serious injury. Third, the number of dogs of a particular breed or combination of breeds in a community is not known, because it is rare for all dogs in a community to be licensed, and existing licensing data is then incomplete. Breed data likely vary between communities, states, or regions, and can even vary between neighborhoods within a communityAnyway I don't want to quote the whole paper, you can view it at...~~
Breed or type bans—Concerns about “dangerous” dogs have caused many local governments to consider supplementing existing animal control laws with ordinances directed toward control of specific breeds or types of dogs. Members of the Task Force believe such ordinances are inappropriate and ineffective. Statistics on fatalities and injuries caused by dogs cannot be responsibly used to document the “dangerousness” of a particular breed, relative to other breeds, for several reasons. First, a dog’s tendency to bite depends on at least 5 interacting factors: heredity, early experience, later socialization and training, health (medical and behavioral), and victim behavior. Second, there is no reliable way to identify the number of dogs of a particular breed in the canine population at any given time (eg, 10 attacks by Doberman Pinschers relative to a total population of 10 dogs implies a different risk than 10 attacks by Labrador Retrievers relative to a population of 1,000 dogs). Third, statistics may be skewed, because often they do not consider multiple incidents caused by a single animal. Fourth, breed is often identified by individuals who are not familiar with breed characteristics and who commonly identify dogs of mixed ancestry as if they were purebreds. Fifth, the popularity of breeds changes over time, making comparison of breed-specific bite rates unreliable.
Do you have any evidence to go with that speculation?
> You hear that, Kanawa? Diehard is willing to let you keep your dog because...What’s the reason, again, Diehard?
Because the dog he owns isn’t the same sort as the dog I’d like to see banned. He does not own what I understand to be a “Pit Bull”: there are obvious differences that stand out like, well, like dog’s bollix.
No gangsta in NZ would want to own Sam. Even tho’ Sam can fight bears. He just isn’t the “right” dog.
> My dog’s ears are pretty atypical of the breed,
Pit Bulls are not a “breed”. They are dangerous mungrel mutts bred to be vicious and dangerous. You can never be quite sure what is in them: often there is some Staffie, some Rottie, and some Ridgeback, but it really is any man’s guess.
You probably don’t own a Pit Bull, either. You may *think* you do, but you probably don’t.
So all this time and energy you’ve spent defending dangerous dogs has been wasted: “barking up the wrong tree”, “chasing your tail” and “howling at the moon”.
I love a nice hot funny, too!
Now perhaps we can get to the serious business of exterminating Pit Bull dangerous mungrel mutts, ay?
If what you call Pit Bulls are different from what we call Pit bulls
then your agitating people here to exterminate them is misplaced and dangerous.
Btw what’s a pig dog?
Nope
As I said, determining breed/type population is, to a large extent, a guessing game.
> Btw what’s a pig dog?
A pig dog is a large mutt of any breed that is specifically trained to scent and hunt wild pigs. They need to have a good crushing bite and a fair bit of weight, lots of stamina and good hunting sense. And they need to be trainable because you do not want any mucking around in the bush with untrained dogs. They are entirely unsuitable for pets.
On that basis you can imagine that you could cut-and-paste a variety of dogs together to get the right mix. Rhodesian Ridgeback is often a good place to start.
They usually hunt in pairs, sometimes in threes or more, and the objective is to run a wild pig / boar to ground. The dogs get hold of the pig grabbing whatever they can — a leg, the testicles, an ear — and hold on for dear life, while the hunter kills the pig, usually with a knife.
It is a really noisy affair, as you can imagine.
Almost always another hunter will cover the scene with a firearm “just in case”, because wild pigs are very dangerous. Once killed the pig is usually gutted and castrated on the spot, so as not to spoil the meat and to make the carcase lighter to carry. The pig dogs often get the guts as a reward.
The hunting process is really well-described in Alan Duff’s “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?”
> If what you call Pit Bulls are different from what we call Pit bulls then your agitating people here to exterminate them is misplaced and dangerous.
Is it that, though? Or more likely is it that owners of Staffordshire Terriers, Boston Terriers, American Bull Terriers and other similar Terriers persist on calling their dogs “Pit Bulls” when in fact they are nothing of the sort: they are proper breeds that have had undesirable traits bred out of them.
I’ve said many times that a Pit Bull is a dangerous mungrel mutt, and that it is not a breed. I suspect that Pit Bulls — the real ones used in fighting — in America are probably not too different to the ones here: mixed breed, vicious, unsuitable for pets or indeed for anything other than dog fighting.
If I’m right then the real answer is for owners and breeders to strongly differentiate themselves from the vicious fighting dogs, because they are giving your dogs an unfairly bad reputation.
Bingo!
That is a damned lie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.