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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2993 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 3, 2024

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The vast majority of his dogs went to a sanctuary. They say “adopted” and that is technically correct- but they went to the dog equivalent of a zoo....Most were never integrated into homes....

The point of the link I shared was that his dogs went to the sanctuary, received rehabilitation, and then most were then able to pass the Good Canine Citizen test and be adopted by individual families into their homes.

The fallout from all of this has been 15 years of pro-pitbull propaganda and an incredible increase in dog bite attacks, disfigurements, and deaths. We have plenty of dogs, put the bad ones down.

The crux of this issue is determining if the increase in dog bites is caused by bad dogs or bad training. I think the evidence points to bad training being the cause in more cases than not. Pit bulls were a popular breed of dog in the 1900s and earlier. It doesn't make sense that they would be popular if they were an inherently bad breed. Generally, pit bulls are intelligent and loyal which makes it easier to train aggressive behaviors into them. Some people wanted a dog trained with this behavior (people living in dangerous situations that wanted a protective companion) and just happened to choose pit bulls because they are one of the easiest to train to do this. There are certain characteristics that are specific to the breed, but others like biting are more influenced by how humans train/raise them.

Pit bulls were a popular breed of dog in the 1900s and earlier. It doesn't make sense that they would be popular if they were an inherently bad breed.

Bad for what is the question. Violence may be maladaptive today, but the past is a different country; Dangerous and aggressive to others with a small risk of attacking you was a decent deal in the past for many, but nowadays the upside is worthless (how often do you need to fight?) and the downside is amplified (society is ridiculously safe otherwise).

Seems hard to find the actual stats on their site besides that they received 22 dogs out of the ones seized.

Pitbulls were bred for fighting. In 2020 they accounted for 72% of dog attack deaths while making up about 6.2% of the total U.S. dog population. They are also the most likely to bite, period. The findings showed that dogs with short, wide heads who weighed between 66 and 100 pounds were the most likely to bite.

Pit bulls were responsible for the highest percentage of reported bites across all the studies (22.5%), followed by pit/mixed breeds (21.2%), and German shepherds (17.8%).

Pit bulls were found to have the highest relative risk of biting, as well as the highest average damage per bite.

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