Dogsbite.org is a hate site that was made by a woman who has admitted to having mental problems that affect her ability to make rational judgments. She was also known by the moniker “bitbypit” a full year before she was supposedly attacked. She builds websites for a living, and if you try to post any information on her site that doesn’t fit with her agenda, you can be sure it will disappear and you will be banned from the site. She also charges money to send messages, which I don’t think should qualify her for non-profit status. Another thing, the reputable studies on her site actually go against what she’s trying to accomplish, but she took several quotes out of context and regularly uses them to make the studies look like they prove her points. Very shady, crazy woman. She has also been involved in a lawsuit because she is so hateful that she regularly writes nasty and totally false things about professionals that use pit bulls for education and assistance.
The Merritt-Clifton study has been debunked by other experts as completely useless. The man who conducted this study left out a large percentage of attacks, and for the record, is not a biologist, dog behaviorist, or anything that could possibly give him status as a reputable source. He is the editor of a dog magazine. What’s worse, in his “study”, he describes pit bulls as having “customarily” docked tails, which is absolutely wrong, glaringly so. Some will crop the ears, but the tails remain. I do believe this man was mixing up his breeds, and for someone who works on a dog magazine, that’s pretty sad, IMO.
Here are some reputable studies if you are interested:
www.cdc.gov - There is a study on here that is decades-long, not the 2005-2006 one. It does have a table of breeds responsible for human fatalities, which is what people like the dogsbite woman use out of context, but if you actually read the study in its entirety, you will see that they put owner irresponsibility as the number one cause for dog attacks.
www.atts.org - This site is for the results of tests on unprovoked aggression. You can see where dogs of your preferred breed rank against the average, as well as pit bull-types, which score consistently better than many “friendly” breeds.
www.chako.org - This site is a wealth of information regarding responsible dog ownership, as well as a section for attacks by dogs that may get overlooked by the national media circuits.
www.nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com - This site has a book that is free to read and has comprehensive information from a century ago to today regarding the dog bite issue, including information about the public’s view of the first documented “thug” dog, the bloodhound. This breed was viewed much like the pit bull is today, only in the 1800’s after it became popular with people that shouldn’t have owned it.
www.kcdogblog.com - This site lists all the dog bite fatalities from last year, including details that were left out of media reports, like the situation surrounding the attack, the poverty level of the area in which the attack took place, and the breed of dog as described by both the media and (when available) the animal control officers.
OK. Thanks for the heads up on that.
I am cautious around anything that I can’t drop kick but when a dog is known to be bred for aggressiveness, I am even more suspicious. I’ve never seen a retriever who didn’t like water, a golden who didn’t like people; a border collie that didn’t try to herd anything, a husky who didn’t love the cold and snow and pulling things.
Training can’t eliminate those inane traits in other dogs, so I am skeptical that training can eliminate aggressiveness to a sufficient degree to enable me to trust breeds like pits.
A simple bite is one thing, any dog can and does nip if it’s frightened or threatened, but the way I’ve seen and heard of pits which keep going when other breeds can be convinced to let go, concerns me.
I would never own such a high maintenance dog nor one who I wasn’t sure I could trust.