Teddy (left), and Sampson (right)
Statistics by definition is presenting empirical data and that’s what most people think of when they hear statistics. Most scientists studying statistics actually spend much more of their time developing and studying methods of data collection rather than crunching numbers. The reason for this is you cannot have meaning statistics if the data set is not accurate. And I love you all and your experiences matter but they bear no scientific weight.
4 out of 5 dentists agree that every time you see a static it’s complete and total bullshit. Flawed data collection leads to flawed results which leads to flawed conclusions. But people sure do get excited when numbers validate their biases.
Wow, lots of people with strong feelings whose version of “I did my research!” is remembering what stories the newspapers wrote because they knew it would spark outrage and attract eyeballs, and hearsay on friend-of-a-friend stories.
So called “bully breeds” are the best dogs I’ve ever met. I fucking love cuddling with those meatheads. Cane Corsos, Dobermans, and Rottweilers are amazing, loyal, and loving, too.
I’ve been bitten and needed stitches from both a Chihuahua and a Poodle. My daughter was bit by a absolute shit of a Bichon, and my ex was bit by a Husky when she was a kid. Fuck those dogs we should outlaw and euthanize them all, right breed-banners? Or maybe it does indeed have to do a LOT with nurture, and very little with nature? (or in the case of my ex (according to her Mom) because she wouldn’t stop harassing the dog).
However, I’ve met some nice poodles and chihuahuas and huskies too (not bichons though, little assholes), but I’m not so fucking dumb and shallow as to say we need to outlaw them all, just that owners should absolutely be responsible and liable for their pets’ behaviour.
PS - OP your dogs are cute as hell. Look at those smiles!
Chihuahuas are demonic little shits, and if they were the same size as a pitbull, they’d be banned everywhere. The only reason they’re tolerated is because they’re too small to do any major damage.
Thank you, and yes, your absolutely right. Any dog is capable of violence, but I think the reason pitbulls have this reputation is because many people want them as an attack/defense dog and don’t actually know how to care for them in a way that keeps them calm.
Same could be said for Rotties, Dobermans, Shepherds, and so on. It’s not the dogs that are shitty; it’s the people that own them. Address that problem and leave the dogs alone FFS.
This is the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument.
Sufficiently powerful projectile weapons require a license, training, etc. Dogs should be no different.
I mean, it is a little bit about nature as the different dog breeds were bred for very specific purposes. That just puts responsibility on the owner to know about this and act accordingly (i possible, not every dog is a pure blood breed). And most importantly to know your dog and act accordingly.
Just wondering? How hard is it for some of you to say "aww cute, doggy"or something like that?
Every single pitbull I’ve met has been nothing but loving and kind. I understand the context about people who don’t like them as they’ve probably seen things in the media about how pitbulls act, or something in a similar nature. I would believe that the media is just trying to get you scared, as I remember one time with a different story about a city I live nearby to, and how I said I was scared to go into the city due to the gun violence, when one of the people who live in the city said that they live in the hood, and have no trouble getting to where they need to go, which personally made me feel a lot better. That’s what I currently believe this situation is like. I do understand that this may not change some opinions with some people, just think about it, please.
You’re dismissing the people who have made their opinion from the overwhelming scientific data on this subject.
I consider that “media”
I just want to say op, you have two great looking pups! I can guarantee Teddy is the best cuddler.
I just want to scritch their cute memoryfoam heads.
Its so odd how people defend the continued existence of these creatures.
What kind of twisted brain do you need to have, to defend something that regularly attacks and injures, sometimes even kills completely innocent people.
What kind of twisted brain do you need to have, to defend something that regularly attacks and injures, sometimes even kills completely innocent people.
You also just described a human.
There are over 2 million animal species on Earth, and one species is responsible for 99.9% of all lethal attacks. Ban Humans (from existing)!
A violent criminal human if anything. Would you defend murderers and people that assault others?
For humans we have prisons because they have human rights and we cant morally control their existence.
With dogs we can absolutely control their existence and there is no real moral dilemma there whatsoever. We can just stop making more of them. DONE.
I can’t really disagree there. My concern is about the dogs that exist now and didn’t harm anyone. Dogs are also dependent on how their human trains them - the fault is many times in the master just not managing their dogs properly.
Don’t put all the dogs in one basket just based on breed if you are not ready to do it with humans.
I like pitbulls and don’t know if this is bait (perhaps you didn’t realize the obvious response you’d get?) but this post should be removed either way.
Worst comment section I’ve ever seen in this community
There’s two types of people: those who hate pitbulls, and those who’s pitbull hasn’t mauled someone yet.
Retaliation isn’t very wholesome.
Especially when some power fantasy tripping mod already removed the comments in question, so there isnt even anything to retaliate in response to.
If it needs a CW(Content Warning) tag then it shouldnt be in a “wholesome” community. And yes obviously it needs that because countless people are traumatised by these kinds of dogs.
I don’t really have a problem with any dog specifically.
But I don’t think there is any reason to have something like a pitbull unless you absolutely need it for security.
Largely they should be bred out of existence. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t include other breeds like pugs and maybe even something like a poodle.
Pretty much every dog is great but you don’t need a pitbull, get something else. For the love of god don’t get a pug or I’ll think you’re a cunt.
You want to breed poodles out existence?
No, not really. But I have heard some bad things about how they are feisty. I’m just saying the whole species needs looking at, it’s not only fighting dogs. Some dogs breeds need to be bred with other breeds to make one bigger one with more diversity and some need to stop having pups and some need a bit of attention and improving upon.
Yeah, that’s my experience too: smaller poodles are likely to be feisty. Out of all the dozens or hundreds of dogs I’ve interacted with, the only one to bite and draw blood was a toy poodle.
That didn’t stop me from owning one, treating him right, and getting a fantastic loving gentle pet out of it.
But poodles have weak teeth/jaws, and are little. Not that I’m encouraging getting bitten, nor of punting to defend yourself, but you could.
Meanwhile my current pit bull rescue is the most cuddly, gentle, but loyal and protective dog I’ve ever owned. I can confidently stick my hand in her mouth to grab the slice of moldy pizza she grabbed off the ground. But she’s big. And powerful. With jaws that destroy even the strongest chew toys. There is always that worry that if she did bite, the results would be very different from the poodle.
I really dont see how pit bulls are painted as fierce unpredictable beasts, but they are big and powerful.
My poodle and my mom’s 3 other poodles are anything but fiesty. I have no idea where you heard that, but they are great dogs that are very intelligent and obedient. At least the larger varieties.
I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the “dog temperament” being closely related to the dog breed.
The only real trend I’ve noticed is that bigger dogs tend to be way more chill and happy to engage in petting and cuddling
But I think that’s what it is. Poodles are very intelligent and high energy. They need that mental stimulation and regular activity, or they will act out.
My pitbull is more low key. She’s fine with snoozing most of the day and doesn’t want to walk if it’s raining. The positive trait that gets her in trouble is she is very protective. Woe to anyone that comes up behind me
So glad the UK outlawed these bully xl things. Not a day goes by it doesn’t maul one child or another
Fuckin dog racist.
I had two roommates who both had pitbulls. Both very loving owners. These dogs were treated right. But they could not coexist.
After one fight too many, one of the owners got mauled by his own dog after trying to break the dogs up. He almost lost his hand.
Ban pitbulls.
“BuT mY WiTtLe pRiNcEsS WoUlD NeVeR HuRt a FlY!”
I am convinced this is a troll.
Retaliation to haters posted in a wholesome sub.
Pit Bulls being the most hated breed of dog out there (and for good reason).
OP calling everyone a “Dog Racist”
Each year 60% to 80% of dog attacks are caused by a single breed, fuck these animals. A Chihuahua may be more aggressive, but a person can easily fight those things off, a pit will lock onto anything and won’t release till they’re dead.
Retrievers retrieve, Pointers point & Pit Bulls are made to fight, its in their nature.
Edit: go ahead and down vote OP. Watch as that doesn’t change my opinion.
I’d love a study on what kind of masters the bloodthirsty dogs have. I’m willing to bet those dogs had masters that encouraged the behavior or got them because the breed is macho and never intended to be responsible about it.
Plenty of breeds of dogs are bought by bad owners with the intention of being used as attack dogs. But there is no way you can write off such an overwhelming percentage of pit bull attacks to this reasoning.
Every time a pit bull attacks anything you will always see this argument brought up to defend the breed. If this was truly the case other breeds of dogs would be high up on the list too (Rottweilers and German Shepards come to mind). But they aren’t even close to the percentage of Pit attacks.
Some attacks can be attributed to this fact, but because pit bulls alone make a majority of attacks across all breeds indicates that this cannot be the case.
Additionally out of all breeds of dog, I couldn’t think of a worse breed biting me. All dogs attack, but many bite and release, pits don’t.
Yeah, pitbulls aren’t dangerous for the occurrence of attacks but because when they do they cause the most damage. Most people don’t report a small dog if they cause no major damage.
This graphic lumps together at least 8 breeds under the umbrella of “pitbull”, which is rather strange. Sure, if you group many breeds into the same category before comparing it to a singular breed it’s going to look bad.
Also, you need to show per-capita to prove anything here. Sure, the absolute number may be high, but how does that compare to the absolute number of pitbulls? How does that compare to the per-capita of other breeds?
A breed can contain multiple dogs, here is a Wikipedia definition -
Pit bull is an umbrella term for several types of dog believed to have descended from bull and terriers. In the United States, the term is usually considered to include the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bully, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and sometimes the American Bulldog, along with any crossbred dog that shares certain physical characteristics with these breeds.
People just assume breed means a singular type of dog; it doesn’t. This applies to all breeds of dogs (Retrievers and Shepards for example). There are over 300 breeds and this one causes more deaths than the rest combined.
Again, this is why we need per capita instead of an absolute number. We are comparing an umbrella term to something more specific.
We need data that shows they are more likely than other dog breeds. This does not show that, as we don’t know the percentage chance one pit bull may attack vs any other breed based on this information.
This is the problem with statistics. If we select the right method, group things the right way, from the right time, and use specific methods we can prove anything we want. That’s why an understanding of how the field works is so important.
Sorry for the late reply btw, and thank you for continuing this conversation in good faith
breed was responsible for 22.5% of bites across all studies. Mixed breeds were a close second at 21.2% and German Shepherds were the third most dangerous breed, involved in 17.8% of bite incidents.
where the fuck do you get 60-80%???
also, 100% of dog fights use pit bulls…
abused dogs lead to bites….
aka, it’s the owner’s fault.
This is bullshit. In more than half of dog bites the breed is unknown. So that’s the end of your line of reasoning. You simply don’t know and cannot say their “nature.”
They were bred for hunting. Some people used some of them for fighting dogs years after they were first bred and used for decades as hunting dogs. Of the few that were used in fighting, dogs that bit humans were not allowed to fight and so were euthanized
Edit: abject know-nothings and science deniers downvoting me.
Just a head’s up but not a single police department in the nation DNA tests or even has a spot on their reports to label which specific breed of dog caused the attack, there is also roughly a dozen different breeds on the list of dogs commonly mistaken for pits.
Anybody telling you pits are responsible for any percentage of dog attacks is lying by giving a number not scientifically achieved.
In 2009, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia released a five-year review of dog-bite injuries. The review states that 51 percent of attacks were made by pit bulls.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19644273/
In 2009, another study was published by the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. The study ran for 15 years and it has concluded that pit bulls, German Shepherds, and Rottweilers are among the most common breeds that cause fatal dog attacks in Kentucky State.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19696575/
In 2011, the Annals of Surgery published a study, which concluded that Pitbull attacks lead to more expensive hospital bills, higher risk of death, and higher morbidity rates compared to other breeds of dogs.
Found the bot with the copypasta.
Your data was true 13-15 years ago, doesn’t mean it is true today.
Doesn’t mean it’s wrong either; try to provide something to say otherwise.
Also how old does data need to be before it’s dismissed as ‘too old’?
That’s up to you.
What other subjects do you accept almost 20 year old data on? Do you go back 50 years? What is the cut off for you in all subjects, or is pit bulls the only subject you don’t have a standard for?
did pitbull behavior change in 20 years. they suddenly became goody good dogs?
i’d say it’s relevant until today and well into the future.
there is also roughly a dozen different breeds on the list of dogs commonly mistaken for pits.
Do you have any evidence to support this statement? It would need to be pretty substantial to offset the large proportion of Pit Bull breeds.
I dont say this to be dismissive, I would actually be pretty interested in reading what you have.
Here is a list of 10.
https://pethelpful.com/dogs/10-Breeds-Most-Commonly-Mistaken-For-Pit-Bulls
Just a head’s up but not a single police department in the nation DNA tests or even has a spot on their reports to label which specific breed of dog caused the attack.
Your link doesn’t address the point you made above, it’s just a list of dogs mistaken for specifically “American pit bull terriers”, it doesn’t mention police DNA tests or reports, it says nothing.
Besides im talking about Pit Bulls in general which (Per the statement I made previously to another commenter on this post) is an umbrella term for several types of dog believed to have descended from bull and terriers. In the United States, the term is usually considered to include the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bully, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and sometimes the American Bulldog.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_bull
Additionally the list you provided is half-filled out by the dogs that come under the pit bull breed. It even states that many dogs fall under the pit bull specification, which is why it singles out the American pit bull terrier in order to draw a distinction to them rather than say American Bullies.
The world’s first ever police DNA program started in the UK in 2021, and it was created for dog thefts, not dog attacks.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-57578701
And seeing that there is no national database of all precinct’s police reports, you will have to go to your police department and see for yourself that they are not even cataloguing the breeds per attack.
As for your comment that there are 5 dogs that fall under the umbrella term of pit bull, that actually helps my original point that these lists are unscientific. Chihauhas aren’t lumped together with Mexican shorthairs when the numbers are tallied, neither is any dog lumped with their types. These lists also don’t break down which of the pit types are most responsible for the most attacks.
- because the numbers aren’t collected by anybody, meaning the lists are lying, and
- if the pit types were separated by their actual breed, the numbers would show an average or a slightly higher rate of aggression, not the majority of all attacks.
I would also point out that almost none of these lists you read online include German Shephards, which is strange since they tend to be the only dog in the US that is commissioned as Police Officer and are frequently attacking people as part of their job. Further evidence that these lists are unscientific and politically motivated.
The American Temperament Test Society tests aggression in dog breeds in controlled environment. Participants self select, so there’s that, and ultimately I think the test says more about the owners than the dogs. Nonetheless, per the ATTS , the american pit bill terrier passed 87% of the time while the Australian shepherd only passed 83% of the time.
not a single police department in the nation DNA tests.
So you made this statement without knowing if it was true or not as you go on to say that “there is no national database of all precinct’s police reports, you will have to go to your police department and see for yourself”.
Bad faith arguments always end with “go and find out for yourself”.
Can I ask what do you think the word breed means? It’s not a specific dog, it’s a term to describe a grouping of dogs (Shepards for example). And out of the 300 plus recognised groupings/breeds of dog, Pitbulls kill more than all of them combined. Even if you split it down to each sub-grouping, the dogs under the umbrella term “Pit Bull” still vastly outstrip all other dogs in attacks and fatalities.
I would also point out that almost none of these lists you read online include German Shephards, which is strange since they tend to be the only dog in the US that is commissioned as Police Officer and are frequently attacking people as part of their job. Further evidence that these lists are unscientific and politically motivated.
In this post I provided another commenter a breakdown of fatalities caused by dogs and the graph shows German shepherds specifically cause less than 3% of fatalities over 16 years. Meanwhile the 5 dogs that make up Pit Bulls are responsible for an average of 67%.
Again, there is no database of dog genetics that police maintain in the US, unless it was created after 2021.
Meaning all the stats you have are based solely on media reports of dog attacks and not actual dog attacks.
You can also contact the people compiling the lists. If they respond, they will admit that they do not track the rate of attacks committed by German Shepherds in the line of duty.
We also know that Cane Corso’s probably attack a few people per year, yet almost every list excludes them… Because they are counted towards pit bulls.
If you can provide an actual scientifically validated list, I am happy to see it. Otherwise your numbers are fiction and you know it.
< crickets >
When my dumb ass downstairs neighbor hears the kittens playing, she flies into a rage about my pitbull making noise. The hate causes the statistics, not the breed.
I did not call everyone a dog rasict, I called the person say it was good that pitbull were being put down in the UK a dog rasict. But by your logic, we should have killed all Germans in WW2 because Germany was the home on the Nazi party and killed millions of people, but that’s wrong because not every Germany killed a person. And to say that we should kill something because it’s “in there nature” is harmful to all life because it sets an unrealistic expectation of what it is like. I’m not gonna deny that pitbulls attack people, but a dog rarely attacks people for nothing, and often the reason is out of fear or abuse.
Dogs aren’t people. We kill it eliminate troublesome breeds/species all the time. Ex: Japanese hornet
Japanese hornet was an invasive species to the Americans and thus was removed, but it’s not being exterminated in mass in Japan and other areas the hornets call home. And for you to say that because an animal isn’t human is basically saying it has no soul and doesn’t feel emotions, or at least that how you come across.
- No proof souls exist
- Are you a strict vegan? Otherwise you recognize animals are below humans.
- Animals obviously feel emotions.
Dude if you have to bring up Nazi Germany to defend your stance then you have already lost.
There are over 300 recognised dog breeds, and one of them is responsible for more than half of all attacks.
