Reading more of the blog I mentioned earlier, there is a page on the temperament test. It puts that test in a whole new light.
http://thetruthaboutpitbulls.blogspot.com/
“Yet the pit bull advocates present the stats in such a way as to imply that higher scores equal less aggression and lower scores equal more aggression. According to Herkstroeter, “Just because a certain percentage of dogs in a certain breed fail, this does not necessarily indicate aggression. Dogs fail for other reasons, such as strong avoidance. If you look at our statistics just from a perspective of aggression or non-aggression, they can be very misleading.” Herkstroeter states that 95% of the dogs that fail, do so because they lack confidence to approach the weirdly dressed stranger or walk on the strange surface. The remaining 5% fail because they take longer than 45 seconds to recover from the gunshot or the umbrella. Still pit bull advocates continue to distort the meaning of the test.”
And like I initially suspected, only good dogs are taken for testing.
“The link to Diane Jessup advising fellow thepitbull-place.com members to enter only dogs that will pass the ATTS, was killed after I posted it on craven desires. Please alert me to any dead links and I will replace with pdfs and/or screen shots.”
Sorry I’m a little late to the party, but I must let you know that the people who made the website you linked to should be researched. Unlike countless experts, they claim that a specific breed is more dangerous than the rest, and they use expert studies out of context to try and make it appear that the studies support their position.
I think you should especially research the Merritt-Clifton study used on their site. They say that Karen Delise failed to provide proof of her claims, yet they allow this same thing to happen with the Merritt-Clifton “study”, which has been dismissed by experts as biased, intentionally misleading, and in many areas, downright falsified. Of course, both sides of this will bash each other, but it’s in your best interest to read up on this. You might be surprised to find that those who made that site you posted aren’t who they appear to be.
Here are some links I have found interesting:
www.kcdogblog.com -This site has a wealth of information, including quite a bit on the authors of the site you posted. They also have great info on the past few years worth of dog bite fatalities, including information such as the breed involved, the care the dog received, whether it had a bite history, the situation surrounding the attack, and even the income level of the area. Also on the site are several pages worth of information regarding the results of Breed Specific Legislation, showing study after study from several countries on the effects of such laws.
www.cdc.gov - There’s a decades-long study on dog bite fatalities that is a must-read. Please don’t just look at the breed table as many pit bull ban enthusiasts tend to do. The authors took great pains in explaining their methodology, and why the table cannot be the only thing to make decisions with. If it were that simple, they wouldn’t have bothered with the pages of information they have there to read.
Forgot to mention, as you have posted a quote from someone trying to explain why other dogs fail the temperament test, remember that fear, avoidance, and other reasons for failure are not implications of aggression, but rather signs of an unstable temperament which could lead to dangerous behavior. A fearful dog can and will bite when forced past its threshold, and so it is only fair to consider these things when addressing the safety of the dog. A truly safe dog should be bomb-proof, and unfortunately, many are not.
I was attacked by a pack of dogs in my driveway. None of them were pit bulls. The leader of the pack was a black lab, and soft bite or not, I ended up in the hospital. No news reporters wanted the story. Animal control didn’t even show up to find the dogs, even though it was reported and I called them several times with the address where I knew them to be living. I had to get rabies shots. However, a little over a month ago, there was a loose pit bull in my neighborhood one morning. Someone called about it, and even though no one was bitten or even threatened, police arrived in record time, shot the dog, and waited an hour while it bled to death before letting AC pick up the body.
