I think you underestimate how often fear comes into play. I recently was at the park with some kids and I noticed a couple of dogs playing... I then realized they were pitbulls. Maybe perfectly nice dogs, but my fear factor jumped through the roof and I quickly, but quietly gathered up all the kids.
Now fear isn't something that kicks in often, but when it does it usually means you're in pretty grave danger. Not properly reacting to potentially life threatening situations, just once a year, likely greatly shortens your expected lifespan.
Pitbulls are not vicious child eaters by their nature. They are called nanny dogs for a reason. May be just the people I am around - but I have yet to see a Pit that is anything beyond sweet, loving and awesome.
Now puddles - those are a kind of beast I would never trust to act decently around my kids.
If you read what I wrote, I said, "Maybe pefectly nice dogs". With mine and other peoples kids I really didn't want to find out, especially since their owner was nowhere in sight.
Last thing I'd want to tell a parent is, "You child was attacked... sure I saw the pitbulls, but I just assumed they were friendly, I mean, JanezStupar has never seen a vicious one before".
I apologize, but to me you came over like you haven't seen a nice one before :).
I might do the same in your shoes. But the fact remains that pitbull is no more dangerous inherently than your average mutt. Probably less so. Yes when they go wrong they tend to cause a bigger mess - but so does Porsche or Ferrari. But we don't go around banning the dangerous car.
I can see now what I did there, I'm not a native speaker so formulating complex ideas is still pretty hard for me in english.
It was wrong of me to say that Pits are less dangerous than your average mutt - because that is clearly not the case, since your average mutt is NOT 100 LBS of muscle and determination.
I should of said that pits are (inherently) less likely to attack humans than your average mutt - meaning they take "encouragement" (read training) towards human agression.
So are you saying that the idea that pitbulls type dogs are the most dangerous kind of dog is bullshit? The statistics don't agree with your personal experience.
Pitbulls greatest asset and its ultimate downfall is its wonderful toned muscular body and its iron will. Thats why they get picked up by assholes who tend to abuse them and train them to attack humans. Its the owners that are problem not the dogs. These guys could make any kind of animal into a "vicious killer".
The pit is anecdotally the worst breed for guard dog. They tend to be that friendly towards humans. You have to remember that these dogs were indeed bred for fighting. Dogs not humans. So they were heavily bred to be friendly towards humans - how else can one control a powerful beast if it won't obey you and let you tend its wounds?
They are so protective of children that you can easily let one babysit your kid while you're away.
Condemning the breed because of their retarded owners is like condemning whole minorities because of gang members.
The vast majority of these deaths were <10 year olds.
> The pit is anecdotally the worst breed for guard dog. They tend to be that friendly towards humans. You have to remember that these dogs were indeed bred for fighting. Dogs not humans. So they were heavily bred to be friendly towards humans - how else can one control a powerful beast if it won't obey you and let you tend its wounds?
Yeah right that's why they are the #1 human killer dogs with a spectacular margin.
> They are so protective of children that you can easily let one babysit your kid while you're away.
shudder until your 3 year old accidentally hits the pitbull on the nose.
Had I owned one - I'd have already disclosed it. I'd love to raise a pit - it's just that currently I'm in no position to own such a demanding animal. However I love to hang around people who do own them.
I agree that pitbull attacks will result in more damage and are more prone to kill somebody. But thats not because there evil or go crazy, its because when you mistreat a poodle - you get a minor annoyance, but when you mistreat a pit - you get a 100 pound of muscle and bones bomb ticking to go off.
> shudder until your 3 year old accidentally hits the pitbull on the nose.
Pits not reacting to a 3 year old punching them is exactly the reason they are so good with kids. Pits pain threshold is so high they don't mind kids being abusive towards them (lets face it thats what kids do to animals).
I guess that asshats will keep mistreating their dogs and enjoying in making them vicious and that something has to be done. But banning the dog is the wrong thing to do. Dangerous dog handlers license or/and personality screen of owners is the correct way to go IMHO.
That blog post contains no evidence for anything whatsoever, again it's just a bunch of hunches and biases. It is also not relevant to the statistics I posted, their central claim is:
> an incident could be anything from an accidental and playful scratch or nip to a full-blown attack by a poorly-trained, aggressive dog.
But the statistics I posted ARE KILLINGS.
> I agree that pitbull attacks will result in more damage and are more prone to kill somebody. But thats not because there evil or go crazy, its because when you mistreat a poodle - you get a minor annoyance, but when you mistreat a pit - you get a 100 pound of muscle and bones bomb ticking to go off.
And again zero evidence to back up this claim. There is evidence to the contrary however: there are plenty of dogs that are bigger than pitbulls and perfectly capable of killing a kid with a single bite. Yet they aren't responsible for ~60% of the deaths.
Also it only seems logical that dogs bred for being aggressive are aggressive. In the same way I'd argue for keeping your kids away from fighting breed cocks (I've been attacked by them, and while they don't do much damage to adults, you don't want to be attacked by them when your height is such that your eyes are within their reach).
If you have any evidence to the contrary, please do post it here.
> I guess that asshats will keep mistreating their dogs and enjoying in making them vicious and that something has to be done. But banning the dog is the wrong thing to do. Dangerous dog handlers license or/and personality screen of owners is the correct way to go IMHO.
I'm arguing for keeping kids away from pitbulls. Do not let your kids play with them. Whether it is the right thing to ban pitbulls depends on how you value the joy they bring their owners over another dog breed against the deaths they cause.
Correlation is all you need when it comes to safety. 50% of reported dog attacks that resulted in injury over the past 20 years were performed by pit bulls. I don't care what the causation is- pit bulls are obviously correlated to a higher number of attacks, so I don't think it's unreasonable to avoid them.
"Correlation doesn't necessarily imply Causation" is an important fact to remember, but you should also remember it doesn't mean correlation is meaningless.
So you're in favor of banning any car with more than 200BHP? And lets ban all the other dangerous shit (skates, bicycles, open fires,...). Cause its ok in the name of safety.
Talk about a huge leap. "It's ok for a person to elect to avoid a dog they do not trust" => "Ergo, we should ban fast cars, skates, bicycles, fires..."
What, do you think we should FORCE people to hang around suspicious dogs or something? So the dog doesn't get lonely, perhaps?
Bicycles are not dangerous. Skates and racing bicycles are only dangerous to their riders. Open fires are not dangerous at all. I've been making/playing with camp fires since I was 1 year old, and I can tell you that a game of soccer is far more dangerous. Of course this doesn't go for open fires in a forest and yes I think those should be banned (and are).
And yes, I'm in favour of physically limiting cars to the maximum allowed speed (or just over).
There - it says that more than 20 times more people got killed (750 in 2005!!!) from performing an in your opinion safe activities than from aggressive dogs.
I really apologize if I'm bashing you too much - but this is a perfect case of primal fear overcoming rational reason and I expect people here to be open towards other people pointing out their different POV.
Comparing the total deaths caused by two different activities is nonsensical. A comparison that makes sense is deaths caused per minute of the activity.
Whether cycling is safe depends on whether you live in a cyclist friendly or cyclist hostile country. It is also known that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks in expected life span: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.0901...
In the Netherlands there are about 1.6 deaths per 100 million kilometers cycled (that number in the US is about 10x as large). If we generously assume an average velocity of 20 km/h, that's 3*10^6 hours of cycling giving on average 1 death. The human life span is about 10^6 hours. So even if you cycled day and night for your entire life, the probability of dying in a cycling accident would be about 30%. And note that only tourists wear helmets in the Netherlands, wearing a helmet is not worth the additional safety.
But really the important point is that when you're cycling you are taking the risk. Cyclists cause much fewer other deaths per km than drivers. When you let your pitbull play with a kid, other people are taking the risk.
> I expect people here to be open towards other people pointing out their different POV
I am open to other people's point of view, but when I find out that all the evidence is completely contrary to their point of view, like that pitbulls are not more dangerous than other dogs, then I decide that perhaps their POV is wrong. Note that I'm not saying that dogs are dangerous. I'm just saying that pitbulls are more dangerous than other dogs.
I am extrapolating from experiences with a tibetan mastiff and a bull terrier. I think dogs in this family are less temperamental and less snappy.They do have a lot of aggression for other dogs or animals of similar size. But a lot depends on how they were trained. A poorly trained pitbulls can be verydangerous. But they are extremely obedient even if it comes to following orders when they are in pain. I think this is the reason they are the preferred breed for dog-fighting. There a participant is disqualified if it continues to attack after a round has ended. I am sure that trait was bred in.
puddles? Is that a typo (poodles), or an attempt at humor?
I should mention that according to record, in 20 years poodles have been responsible for one (uno) reported attack resulting in injury, and according to the report there was reason to suspect the dog had been given a controlled substance.
Could you not observe the potentially dangerous dogs and then logically conclude that it may be prudent to leave the area? Why would you have to be afraid?
Logic can fail to put 2 and 2 together. Logic isn't always fast.
Fear is very, very fast and almost never fails. It allows the danger to command your attention in a way logic alone can never achieve. It also stimulates the whole fight-or-flight response, souping you up with chemicals in case you need 'em. It has it's limitations, but on the whole it does a much better job than logic would alone IMHO.
Being geekish myself, I totally understand the desire to replace everything with cool, calculating logic, but our basic instincts usually do a pretty damn good job. An easy example is if you put your hand on a hot stove, you will instinctively pull away, often even before you feel pain or heat. If you relied on logic (gee, this stove is hot and my hand hurts! I should pull my hand away) your burn would be much, much worse.
> fear isn't something that kicks in often, but when it does it usually means you're in pretty grave danger
Fear is a very bad advisor. That's why some people have to rehearse disaster scenarios over and over until reacting to them becomes a routine activity - so they can properly react to the threatening situation.
Now fear isn't something that kicks in often, but when it does it usually means you're in pretty grave danger. Not properly reacting to potentially life threatening situations, just once a year, likely greatly shortens your expected lifespan.