Posted on 12/10/2004 3:28:15 PM PST by ambrose
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ambrose, do us a favor.... find us a nice heartwarming animal story for a change eh?
It's a shame to put her down for that.
Please donate to the "Save Babs Fund"
One might as well wonder what causes the French to surrender.
The Mikulski-Pigshit Bow-Wow Subhuman!
Ownership of these dogs should be illegal.
Do you live in California, by chance? I hear they like to enact all kinds of little laws out there, to govern every tiny facet of a person's life.
How many other little laws would you like to write?
Boy! Me too.
Not to energize the pro- or anti- pitbull debate (I grew up with them so...) but I had an opportunity to get a glimpse of dog bite stats a fews ago.
I work in public health (normally on the enviro side - this was a TDY thing). I had to go over all the reported dog bite stats for my state for like three years. Imagine my horror when my own favorite breed, the Shetland Sheepdog, turned up in something like position number 11!
Now, Shelties can't inflict life threatening damage (I don't think) but they did turn up as biters. Labs were on the top 20 list too.
Essentially, any popular dog breed is going to be responsible for a large number of bites. Pits can just do one heck of a lot more damage.
Of course, statistics are small comfort if it's YOUR arm torn off or YOUR kid in the hospital.
Exactly.... People couldn't probably list more than the 20 most popular identifyable breeds in the country, so it doesn't surprise me that any popular breed ends up somewhere in the top 20. The rate of serious bites to population would be the ~more~ interesting figure.
That said.... The pit bull and it's relatives are still going to be the leader by a long shot in serious and most particularly, ~fatal~ dog attacks.
Absolutely! My data set only included "reportable" bites. That meant anything from a GP who said, "No stitches needed" to fatal attacks. Another interesting statistic would be WHERE the bites were.
I found out that in the course of my research that toy dogs inflicted a disproportional number of facial bites to children. Facial bites are often disfiguring and require numerous surgeries to attain a cosmetic ideal. An equally small chomp on the arm or leg is just an interesting story (eventually).
People make a mistake when they get a small and fragile dog as a pet for toddlers and small kids. True, they are easier for the child to handle. They are also far too easy for careless, and sometimes just plain mean acts of children. I don't have kids, but in my life, the two times my dogs have snapped at kids, they both did no harm, and the kids deserved it. (flamesuit on) But I wouldn't have pit bulls, and I wouldn't allow kids free access to pets unless they were old enough and caring enough to not corner them and poke them with a stick.
Yes, I think small dogs KNOW they are small and are less accepting of rough treatment. My runt Sheltie is the most demanding of "her" space, my over-sized guy is much more tolerant of bumps and rough-housing.
It's not even really that they are less accepting of rough treatment as an attitude, they are more easily more hurt by kids. They get stepped on, kicked or grabbed at by kids, and it hurts. On the other hand, a little kid can not easily hurt my Labrador, no matter how much he is tugged at and sat upon.
Another Pit bull turns on owner!! They never want to admit it that these dogs have a built in attack mode!!
I love my pit-bull....
All dogs do.
Well, that explains everything.
There's a whole lot of snapping going on around here !
When I had a similar situation in Dallas, I'm not sure I would have wanted a beanbag. Probably would have just set the dog off again. As it was, one 9mm round was enough.
Now, if it had been a Rot, I might have wanted a larger caliber.
ME - "these dogs have a built in attack mode"
YOU - [All dogs do.]
Wow, this is an old thread! You must be a Pit Bull owner. They have the EXTREME attack mode and it's in the newspapers almost every day.
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