Does it strike anyone else as strange that in the gallery of “most dangerous dog breeds” in this post at The Daily Beast, several of the pictures in the gallery are not of the breeds they claim to be? So, for example, the bull mastiff is not a bull mastiff (it’s a Dogue de Bordeaux) and the malamutes aren’t malamutes (they’re Alaskan huskies).
The collie doesn’t look much like a collie to me. More like a BC.
There are some other factual errors in the gallery. For example, counting registrations severely undercounts the actual number of dogs of some breeds, e.g. greyhounds, border collies. Racing greyhounds are almost never registered and a significant number of the greyhounds you see out and about are retired racers.
Additionally, there are some subtleties that are elided. Chows have very poor peripheral vision. If you come at them from the side, they’re pretty likely to snap at you. Is that a problem of the breed, ignorance of people approaching chows, or stupid owners who shouldn’t have chows in the first place?
I think this highlights the problems with breed-specific laws: too many people aren’t able to report the actual breed of the dog that attacked them. How many people can distinguish between a pit bull, an Am Staff, a Cane Corso, and an Argentinian Dogo?
While keeping in mind the underlying reporting may not be accurate, I am shocked to see some of the dogs identified in that gallery. Sure dachshunds and chihuahuas can be annoying, but they’ve killed?
I’m inclined to think pit bulls are different enough that they should be treated separately from dogs, but I see the slippery slope here.
Dachshunds are misunderstood. A standard sized dachshund is not a small dog—it’s basically a European field dog (like a Weimaraner or a Vizsla) with short legs. A medium sized dog. Look at their jaws, not their legs.
Chihuahuas are definitely small dogs but they’re, uh, feisty. Never cared for them myself.
How about the statistics? 2,683 registered “pit bulls”? I’m thinking the author is an idiot. Probably unaware that the AKC does not consider the American Pit Bull Terrier to be a breed. Needless to say, the actual number of APBTs in the population, given their overall popularity, is probably larger than most other dogs. So its hard to judge the overall dangerousness of any given breed, and for the “pit bull” I would say that the actual population is far larger than many suspect since it tends to includ the following breeds:
American Pit Bull Terrier
American Staffordshire Terrier
Staffordshire Bull Terrier
Bull Terrier
Dogo Argentino
American Bulldog
Presa Canario
Cane Corso
A Pomeranian killed an infant a few years ago.
Also there is the bigotry angle. Dogs are not all alike. Different dogs will behave different. The same dog with different owners might also behave differently. So the crude statistics are hard to use.
Good goddamn few that’s how many. I could probably do it, but even if I am attacked I might still get it wrong due to the stress and getting breed right wont be at the top of the list at that moment, and I’m an APBT fancier.
So…another bullshit article that feeds into the hype and hysteria.
Steve, I know pit bulls are not a precise term, but it is generally a legal term defined in statutes and regulations and in insurance policies, though I believe by reference to more specific breeds.
By the way Karen DeLise (I think) did some work on this and she found that as any given breed became associated as the “devil dog” of its day, its popularity increased as did the number of attacks/bites/fatalities. In other words, as the number of dogs in the general population increased along with the perception of the dogs dangerousness, the measures of a dog’s dangerousness also moved in the same direction.
The underlying data generating process is far more complicated than any of the researchers who have looked at this truly understand. The honest one’s admit it and urge caution when using their research. The dishonest ones, like the dog bite lawyer you can find on the internet (linky), on the other hand skip over such problems and make pronouncements with certitude.
Actually in looking the dog bite lawyer his statistics page has improved quite a bit. I still have issue with his claim about propensity of a dog to attack other dogs being an indicator of a dog’s dangerousness to biting humans. APBTs are notorious for not liking other dogs. Yet a well bred APBT should never attack a human under any circumstances. To see why this is, dog fighting typically included a referee and two handlers in the pit with the dogs. Handlers would often separate the dogs. As such, any APBT pup that showed any level of aggression towards humans was culled from the litter (i.e. killed). That is tremendous selection towards dog/animal aggression and away from human aggression.
Sadly many of todays APBTs are the result of backyard breeders producing unstable mongrels with distorted body features and unstable behavior.
steve, I really don’t have any beef w/ pit bulls or APBTs, but it does seem to me that the numbers on the linked piece indicate that they are reported to be the cause of serious injury and death on at least an order of magnitude over other dogs. I can see treating them differently than other dogs, if for no other reason to regulate the “backyard breeders,” though I don’t know how effective that is.
I don’t know much about animal injury liability, but I am constantly surprised at the number of appellate decisions in this area. I figure that the extent of the injuries must be pretty serious, or a beloved pet’s life is at risk, or there is crazy insurance money floating around. But I wonder if those decisions would be useful to identify the species of dog involved in an attack.
PD,
Again, statistics without the underlying population are meaningless. Are there 10 dogs? 10,000 dogs? 100,000 dogs?
Back in the late 1970s the AKC had about 10,000 registered rottweilers. By the late 1990s it went to 355,000. The number of bites, maulings, attacks, fatalities, etc. associated with the breed also increased? Shocking? No. Registered dogs is also not a measure of the true size of the population as not all dogs are registered. But you can see the point. Unless you normalize the data then the resulting statistics are at best biased and should be used with considerable caution. Failure to do so makes one a liar…with statistics.
And on top of it there is the simultaneity problem with the data. We should expect the number of attacks/bites to increase as the underlying population increases. But if inexperienced or stupid owners are acquiring dogs they simply shouldn’t own then we’d expect the increase to also be larger than simply the increase in the population. And as stories of attacks increases there are those people who see owning that type of dog as a way to enhance one’s own status amongst his peers. “I have a bad ass dog that will rip you up man!”
And here we see yet another glaring example of ignorance. Sorry PD, but you just really are out of your depth here. Suppose you are a backyard breeder of pit bulls. Suddenly your operation is declared illegal for pit bulls. Do you:
A. Keep going.
B. Stop.
C. Switch to a breed not covered.
If you answered C that is the most likely result. If you are going to regulate any breed regulate them all to prevent the problems associated with backyard breeding which are:
1. Breeding unhealthy dogs.
2. Breeding unsound dogs.
3. Breeding too many dogs.
Same goes for puppy mills as well. I’m not saying there is no problem here, but that the problem isn’t addressed by passing breed specific legislation. Veterinarians oppose such laws, humane society workers tend to oppose such laws, dog trainers/handlers tend to oppose such laws and so forth. The only people who support such laws are those who have a superficial understanding based on data that has serious short comings for any serious statistical analysis. Yes, even the CDC’s data is seriously wanting. For one thing the data is often completely lacking in context.
BTW, if you look at the CDC data and start lumping breeds together you can surpass the “pit bull” as a dangerous “breed”. This is why it is really not statistics, but instead pseudo-statistics.
See an example of how a lie makes it half way around the world before the truth even has its boots on. PD reads a sentence or two and thinks, “Gee, maybe they are a problem.” I have to resort to a wall of text as to why those two sentences are of questionable worth.
Oh another problem is the one Dave cited in his opening post: identification. The CDC relies on Lexis-Nexus searches and reported dog breed. But as we can see, people often mess that up. Hence the CDC data really is questionable. Was it really a pit bull? How do you know? It looks like one? Great that is one of at least 8 possible breeds and even then it still could be totally wrong. I even saw one news article that indicated the dog was a rottweiler…the picture looked like a rhodesian ridgeback…wtf?!?!?!
I like dogs, but I’m saddened that dogs bred for dog-on-dog violence enjoy such popularity among the disempowered.
Perhaps a genetic test will appear to supplant the “breed” guess. In the meantime, get an affable dog from a shelter, too many of them are put down.
???
Whatever, Steve.
Look PD, if you want to be suckered by bad statistics, that is on you. So yeah, whatever.
And even worse, since such dogs are not typically aggressive towards humans they often will cross breed them to get the desired traits. And all the hype probably makes the situation worse.
Absolutely, there are online tests/guidelines that people can use to evaluate any dog they are thinking of taking home. Any dog that doesn’t pass the test should probably be put down as an unsound dog.
Steve, you are engaging in pretty obvious sophistry.
We know that certain breeds have been bred, recently, for violent capacity. We know that others have been bred, recently, for more harmonious interaction with a community.
Your argument is that since statistics of this sort will always be fuzzy, the breeding must have had no impact.
Absurd.
BTW, it is perhaps of equal importance whether a dog’s jaws can be defeated by a human grip. Those dogs that an adult human can pry off himself or a child are much lower in the stats than dogs built for head and jaw strength.
“Violent capacity” is not just mental.