Pit Bulls Rip Off Tenn. Man's Left Hand

Two pit bull dogs ripped off a man's left hand and badly mauled his right arm before other people were able to beat the dogs away.

"I couldn't believe I wasn't dead," James Chapple said from his hospital bed. "I'm going to church every day when I get out of here and talk to the man upstairs."

Here's a good link about fatal dog attacks.

While breed matters a little, the most important factor by far is having an unneutered male dog.

If you fix your pit, he is going to be a fairly safe dog.

From the link you provided, it seems that breed matters more than a little. I noted that the leading dog breed for fatal attacks (21%) were our good old friends, the pit bulls, followed by 13% by mixed breeds (how would you like to bet that those mixed breeds included a lot of pit bulls in the "mix"?).

As for neutering, I don't know about that but will accept your knowledge that it has an effect. Nevertheless, how many guys in the 'hood do you think neuter their pit bulls? Be honest now.

No sir, in my humble opinion this is a dog breed that should just disappear from the earth. The British understand this and have banished the breed from their nation. Good for them.

The CDC study everyone talks about is flawed, even admittedly so by the experts that conducted it. The biggest problem with it is the phrase "pit bull type". That means anything from real American Pit Bull Terriers to to Yellow Labs.

The people who did this study admit that all of their numbers came from the media and asserted that because of the media's ability to stretch the truth and still profit from it, and the unreliability of not only witnesses and police officers, but poorly-trained animal control officers that consistently call any mutt with pointy ears a shepherd mix and any muscular, short haired breed a pit bull.

The number one biter is the Cocker Spaniel. Does that mean they are all mean dogs? NO. It means their popularity has made great flaws in the temperament of the breed. It happens with all breeds. The difference is that these dogs are not strong enough to take a full-grown man down. It doesn't mean the desire to do so isn't there.

I went to a fairly decent shelter just today and was astounded by the misidentification of the breeds. There was an obvious pit bull there labeled as a shepherd mix (!) and a dog with doberman body type only all black was also, you guessed it, a shepherd mix. There was also an overfed beagle they were calling a basset hound. Go figure. These are the people we rely on to identify dogs when they attack people also.

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