June 22, 2006
What pit bulls can teach us about profiling.
From Malcolm Gladwell's blog whence came my last post. Interesting read about the fallacies of "obvious" generalizations and the effectiveness of statistically based generalizations.
Though I agree with what natedogg is saying on one level, I also think that it really is the case that the owner is the problem almost all of the time with respect to these serious attacks. Dogs shouldn't be left chained outside. Dogs should be taught to respect and understand people. Dogs who are known to have issues with people/other dogs should be watched very closely when in these situations. Failing to really follow up on this shit indicates to me that the owner is negligent, not that the dog breed is inherently a bad dog breed.
Tell me this dog is a "way ugly" killer
Awww, look at the little brute. And he even has that fashionable non-choke chain which I know will totally restrain him in the event he gets "riled up" by a small passing child.
And this guy is a charmer. Look at his droopy eyes. I just know he's sorry for whatever put him in that muzzle. That square head is super attractive. I can't see him needing 3 shotgun blasts to take down (note: link may not be statistical). I mean, how could something that's so cute when it's little grow up to have that natural "killer instinct" that would make it think of a kid as roaming prey?
I say let 'em all go free.
I think you're missing the point here, Nate. The article was about bans of "pit bulls", not on choke chains or dogs that need to be muzzled. People are having their pets taken away from them.
But the question is, why do people want pitbulls?
Because they are macho and aggressive. I went with Nate to the animal shelter and saw the crazy high fraction of pit bulls.
Read the article that the chronicle had in the fall. They killed 13,000 animals last year. Here are the statistics on how adoptable aggressive dogs are:
Last year TLAC euthanized 18 adoptable (defined as friendly and healthy) golden retrievers and 632 pit bulls. Two Welsh corgis and 251 German shepherds. Twenty-three Australian cattle dogs and 564 Labs.
How about a nice boston terrier?
Fits in your coffee cup (almost) and looks similar. Not aggressive.
this sucks. i dont know how to post pics. i have a lab-pit mix that is fucking beautiful. he's super sweet with us and our other dog and very submissive.
that said... we can't have other dogs in the house or he will attack them. if i pet another dog while we are out at the park he will attack it. if he is on a leash and another dog comes too close he will attack it (but not when he is off-leash). and for some reason, he will attack other pit bulls.
we adopted him when town lake told us he was a lab mix. they did NOT tell us he was half pit. we never would have adopted the little sweetie if we knew. it's bullshit that people breed these dogs. there are plenty of other breeds that are fun and cool. there is no reason to keep breeding dogs that are aggressive and injure people.
sorry our posts are off-topic Ned.
p.s. i think the reason so many pits are bred and put down by town lake is due to dog-fighting. our dog was clearly extremely abused when we adopted him, and i suspect he failed the aggression "training" and was dummped because the abuse made him submissive rather than more aggressive.
Almost any non-toy dog (though watch out for dachunds) with a bad owner is going to be aggressive. That's what happens to neglected and absued dogs, they freak out. Ones that are trained to be mean, even more so.
Just because most idiot owners want a "tough-looking" dog does not mean that all "tough-looking" dogs are bad. The whole point is that correlation does not imply causation. There is a hidden third variable that correlates strongly with the supposed "cause" (pit bulls will always go on the attack). Owners should know how to control their dog, and should socialize them properly so that there is no need to control their dog.
btw, I agree with the general point that it doesn't make much sense to be breeding these dogs anymore (or to be breeding dogs at all, really), but it also doesn't make sense for the state to take pets away from responsible owners.
i have been around a lot of dogs in my life, including mastiffs (largest breed, bred for guard duty), g. shepherds, and malamutes (naturally territorial and somewhat aggressive breed). i have nearly completed a phd in clinical psychology with a strong behavioral emphasis. we have taken our aggressive little sweetie to training and worked extensively (read A SHIT LOAD) with him to overcome his aggressive tendencies.
ain't nothin' worked. he is MUCH better than he was when we adopted him, but there is something fundamentally different about this dog than other breeds i have experience with.
we have come to terms with this and limit his activities to ensure his good behavior and feelings of securtity and love, but it will never be possible for us to bring other dogs in the house, etc.
it's the breed
Spend some time with a proper Pitbull, and you'll know why a reasonable person might want one.
"A breed of satin and steel, pit bulls are a mixture of softness and strength, an uncanny combination of fun, foolishness, and seriousness all wrapped up in love" -D. Caroline Coile
Well, shoot, that's the personality I'm going for.
"our dog was clearly extremely abused when we adopted him, and i suspect he failed the aggression "training" and was dummped because the abuse made him submissive rather than more aggressive."
...
"it's the breed"
(emphasis mine)
yup.
there's no disconnect in what i wrote.
you can overcome early abuse, and i would say we have done so quite well. yet he still has the stereotypical pit qualities.
it's the breed.
tWitB--
I wasn't trying to imply anything about you--and actually, your anecdote indicates my point--you know your dog's tendencies, and you control the dog. And you never completely overcome early abuse, just like with people--you can ease most of the problems, but there's always going to be something that's not quite right. (though aggressiveness toward other dogs is something that the article competely ignored)
But I really believe that the owner is the culprit in most of this. And I also agree that there really is no reason to be breeding these dogs anymore. I just don't see the point in an outright ban on owning them.
I honestly would understand mandatory neuter laws a lot more than I would pit bull bans. Why are there no proposals to mandatorially neuter your dogs? That helps aggression and pet overpopulation.
amen brother on everything ya done said.
'cept i would place a stronger emphasis on interbreed differences in aggressiveness.
btw-i recommend two changes to names. in seeing my handle acronymized, i believe Twit-B probably fits. I further propose we change it to Natecat.
some evidence that dogs never really forget abuse
I've had my dog for about 15 months or so. I've had a commitment to positive reinforcement-only training with her (scolding is only very cold and neutral--'no' is used for things like her trying to run out into the street only). Her previous owner was a dog rescue specialist that found her in a horrible state.
Anyway, I was getting my stuff together for this year's stupor ball softball game, and I walk out into the living room with my softball bat. My dog, after 9 months of me, and 3 months of this gentle woman who worships dogs sees me with the softball bat, and instantly runs into a corner, so terrified that she wets herself.
Mind that I didn't look toward her (in fact, I was walking away from her at the time), and certainly not yelling or making aggressive movements. My body language was a happy sort of language. It didn't really matter, however. She saw me with a big long object that looked good for hitting things, and freaked.
it's almost like a rape or trauma victim. They might heal, they might rehabilite to some extent, but they never really get completely better.
You're right, TWITB there's no disconnect; that was an emotional post rather than a logical one. Pit Bulls were initially bred to be aggressive towards and effective in fighting other dogs (but that is no longer the goal of the official breeds). Some, like yours, exhibit these traits more strongly than others. Certainly neutering your dog helps, but Pit Bull owners do have to be especially mindful of the older history of their breed.
I believe that Am. Stafs, etc. should continue to be bred for their athleticism and sweetness towards people. Plus we can breed out aggression towards other dogs. Breeding them to be violent is wrong.
consensus on emotional discussions kicks ass =)
tonight on Bill Moyers new show he discusses the difficulty in bringing emotional discourse and rational discourse together.
Moyers rocks, I'm looking forward to the show.
I'm glad everyone had a lot to say about this post; it was very thought provoking. But the tenor and subject of your posts imply that you missed the point of the article a little. The idea is not that pit-bulls are dangerous or not, or that people who deplane in the front/middle/end of the plane are drug-smugglers or not, but that there are far better predictors of behavior that are born out statistically but are not obvious when looking at an anecdotal case of a boy attacked by a certain breed of dog.
Twit-B's pit-bull could possibly have trouble with other dogs and maybe even children, but it won't. That's because the more accurate predictors of dog-bite fatalities: owner involved with dog-fighting, dog involved in past incidences of non-fatal dog-bites, dog chained up or mistreated; they don't apply here for the most part. (I know he was probably abused in the past, but you don't abuse him now.)
As another example: when the DEA did away with all generalizations used in the past to indicate drug-smugglers (which when taken as a whole are a bewildering and contradictory lot), and used much simpler and most importantly STABLE generalizations the number of searches dropped by 75%, and the number of successful seizures improved by 25%.
Whew, long comment. Not that I don't love your comments even though they're slightly off-topic :-)
Yes, the article you posted is very interesting, and we haven't really touched on it too much. The very first comment was an opinion about pit bulls, and the explosion of comments came from that and not the article, unfortunately.
So, here's how I see the problem:
Everybody seems to agree that putting certain dogs into certain people's hands is bad news. There are just some people in the world that are assholes and that's that. Therefore, the question is: how do you stop people from abusing their dogs so they are overly aggressive? Not just pit bulls, but dobermans or what have you.
Well, you can just tell people, "Hey, asshole, don't do that" but I think we can see from the main article that doesn't work wonderfully well (the person who disobeyed the order to muzzle, for one). People who are too "macho" to neuter their dogs won't muzzle or chain them. Animal welfare certainly doesn't have the time to check up and make sure every dog owner is responsible like valatan and Twit-B are. So that option is clearly out. Another option is to ban the dogs completely which I'm not necessarily in favor of, mostly because it's quite extreme, hard to enforce and hard to define what is a certain breed and what isn't. A third thing you can do is live and let live and do nothing, but I think that's a shame and here's why:
Aggressively trained dogs, like a gun, are deadly weapons. In fact, they're worse than guns in a sense because they don't need a human operator to do their thing. Gun owners, like some dog owners, advocate extensively that guns are neutral in and of themselves and that the people who are using the guns are the problem. Guns and dogs can be used for good things, too. So, how do we feel about guns? Well, not just anybody can go to a gun store and have a gun. You have to get a license, and I presume that there is some sort of screening (this is Texas, you never know). When it comes to pit bulls, dobermans, german shepherds...there is no restriction or licensing on who can adopt or own these dogs.
Should there be restrictions? Well, that's probably no easier to enforce than the owner policy. Aurora, CO is doing it. I can't say what the best solution is (or if one exists) but if you do nothing to even try to get bad dogs out of the hands of bad owners you have failed somewhere along the line.
(full disclosure: the author as a child was chased by a goose at the lake and a goat in a petting zoo. His best friend also had his face fucked up by a neighbor's dog that jumped the fence and he himself still has bite scars on his hand from another friend's supposedly friendly dog. Therefore, the author is cautiously pessimistic about meeting any organic non-human being over about 20 pounds, especially if they are very "jumpy" or "playful". This also extends to smaller animals such as rodents or cats that look like they are in a bad mood. The author also thinks Stephen Colbert is onto something when he calls bears "godless killing machines." Don't forget to not invite the author on your next camping trip.)
Also: help computer.
Pit bulls were bread for fighting. They are a very strong dog and if mistreated or trained wrong they can cause serious injury or death. Many of you are for gun control so why can't we make it illegal to breed and own dogs like this that can be so dangerous? And don't give me the BS answer that they're sweet and cute and don't necessarily have to be raised for fighting or protection. Same arguments can be used when describing why guns should be legal (ie they can be used for other things besides murder etc).
I think the best answer is to consider a serious dog attack as a felony offence perpetrated by the dog owner. If you choose a bread of dog that can be dangerous and you don't keep it under control you should be criminally responsible for the damage it does. All dog owners should be forced by law to register their dogs and have an RFID chip implanted in the dog to trace it to the owner. This would also cut down on the number of abandoned dogs as well as allow the quick return of a lost dog.
BTW, the article is really interesting ned.
"Enjoyed this bulletin. So tired of "fluffy stuff"." - Spring
"Actually I prefer being a bigot... fuck pitbulls and their owners... actually I call it having a preference... after all generalizations are based on some truth.... Any dog or human has to propencity to bite.... and regardless of how negligent a owner may be... a dog does understand pain... as any puppy or dog owner knows the dog learns that biting hurts. So for the author to come full circle to contect humanity or lack of to animal instinct is idiotic... a pack of wild dogs is a pack of fucking wild dogs regardless of breed, class or ethnicity... (just wondering if any body noticed he/she makes reference to the persecuted underclass as animals???) Gee I always wanted somebody to tell me how to think.... Heaven forbid that we should give more thought to addressing world hunger or the lack of health care in developing nations... but hey... as long as the starving childs in "X" nation are okay that people are not getting their feelings hurt I guess it's cool with me...." - Eber
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Still not a pit bull fan. I think the "obvious" generalization/perception that pit bulls are badass killers makes them more popular dogs among people who want to buy badass killer dogs. Plus they're way ugly.
When I went to Town Lake Animal Shelter to look at cats once, I was startled at the number of pit bulls among the dogs there. I bet it was fully more than half of all the dogs that were pit bulls or mixes.
posted by natedogg at 03:17PM CST on June 22