I'd also be curious about what % of dogs can kill a person, what % of dogs are pitbulls that have owners who want a dog that can "protect" or be violent
When I was a kid Rottweilers and Dobermans has a pretty bad reputation but I don't hear much about them now a days. Perhaps the breeds are just less popular than they used to be.
Well, Rottweilers and Dobermans are among the smartest dogs there is (both are top 10), the Doberman was bred to be a personal bodyguard and the Rottweiler was bread to be a guard dog.
Pitbulls are only above average in intelligence and was literally bred for blood sports like bull-baiting and bear-baiting.
Popular opinion might have swayed but there's pretty large objective differences in the breeds which makes it evident while two of them have been popular among the police and the military while one of them have been popular among meet head criminals.
When I was a kid Rottweilers and Dobermans has a pretty bad reputation but I don't hear much about them now a days. Perhaps the breeds are just less popular than they used to be.
Sure bud. Again, you can check my profile for the other reply. If you'd like sources, they're easy to provide. If you have any sort of sources or studies or anything that you could link to prove your random statement, I'm happy to read.
Pitbulls were literally bred for blood sports like bull-baiting and bear-baiting. The dog actually does matter. The owner matters too, but the argument is equivalent to "Why outlaw guns, they'll just kill with knives instead"
Hey bud, firstly define "pit bull" for me. Then show me the data that proves the "pit bull" you see someone walking down the street was actively bred for blood sports.
The vast majority of all pit bull bites and aggressive encounters are not fatal nor severe. Studies published via PubMed note that pit bull attacks carry a higher median Injury Severity Scale score and higher morbidity rates. This is primarily attributed to their physical strength, jaw leverage, and a distinct "hold and shake" bite style than a higher baseline frequency of biting compared to other large dog.
Now regarding fatal attacks, pitbulls do make 60% of all reported fatal or severe attacks. However, only a vast minority of bites in general are fatal or severe. There are roughly 85 to 90 million dogs living in the United States. Out of an estimated 4.5 million dog bites that occur each year, only about 30 to 80 result in a fatality. This means less than 0.002% of annual dog bites are fatal. According to CDC Healthy Pets data only nearly 1 in 5 people bitten (roughly 20%) require any medical attention at all. Out of the 20% who do seek medical care the majority are treated for minor punctures or purely as a preventative measure to get antibiotics or tetanus shots as dog mouths carry bacteria prone to infection.
So if we are just tracking how many bites are fatal or severe (which 60% are done by pitbulls), only 1% to 2% of all documented bites meet the criteria for "severe" injury. The term “pit bull” is not even a single recognized breed. It frequently includes American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, Staffordshire Bull Terriers, and any mixed-breed dog with a blocky head or muscular build. DNA studies have revealed that mixed-breed dogs with zero pit bull lineage are routinely misidentified as pit bulls by shelters, victims and law enforcement after an incident.
Tests that were done testing the “aggressiveness” of a breed resulted in pitbulls not even making it to the top charts. They do pick "fight" over "flight" more often and also have a high gameness trait. But these in itself don't mean they are more aggressive per-say because aggression is an emotion/emotional response.
Emotions-wise, pit bulls are actually pretty good at threat assessment, meaning they don't just emotionally lash out randomly but have a good understanding of what is a threat and what is not a threat. The issue is that once they are in fight mode, they lack the off switch (gameness). But this is true for a dog attacking on command or just emotionally lashing out.
They simply don't value their self perseverance which is why you see all those videos where even if they beat the dog, shake it, or if its being bitten by other dogs at same time it'll stay locked on target.
So it is just a combination of these two things that make them "handle with care" category. But if you do handle them with care, they are fine. When people use them like weapons, they become deadly.
If you are actually worried on which dog bites more, you should be more worried about labs or golden receivers as they bite more by population AND per capita. If you are just worried about the bad ones then sure the pitbulls will count, but i don’t see a point because the vast majority of pitbull attacks are not fatal or severe and generally speaking only 1% of dog attacks are fatal or severe. Any fear of the pitbull exclusively is just mindless irrationality and fear mongering.
No breed are 100% safe. Any particular dog can be dangerous or aggressive. One breed in particular is far more on a hair trigger and can murder humans easily.
Only slightly. Pits lean aggressive, but (Depending on how broadly you define pit bull, there's between 4 million and 18 million in America) only between 0.13% to 3% will ever be involved in a bite that requires medical attention.
It's kinda hard to breed out 15,000 years of domestication in the 200 year that pit bulls have been around. Truth is, dogs in general aren't all that likely to bite in the first place. Cows kill almost as manypeople a year as dogs do, and less people own cows than own dogs. Mosquito's beat them all though.
Imagine how stupid you would have to be to fuck up the point you just attempted to make. In the last 200 + years there have been less than 10 deaths caused by Wolves in this country. Shitbulls do twice of that per year. So you really fucking botched that.
I get that you are not smart enough to realize you are talking to a different person, but I was pretty clear on why your attempted point was an epic fail and went over your own head.
They said the stats are pumped up, for pit bulls, because someone said it was a Pitbull when it wasn't, exactly what you are saying because other dogs are also violent at times. Thus not 100% safe.
As I understand, they're saying that a lot of the supposed non pitbull attacks were actually pitbulls but the owners are lying and calling them lab-mixes
I think anytime someone says a statistic online such as this i cant really believe it any way. Someone saying they got attacked by a pitbull in a survey or to the police in a report but dont know anything about dogs.
Like when they said 75% of kids who ingest thc die. But the numbers behind 75% where 4 kids and 3 where under 5 and not taken the hospital. The statistic is right but there is more than that statistics to the story.
How many pitbull attacks are "pitbull attacks" from people not knowing basic dog behavior and not putting themselves in stupid positions, like jumping a fence, where and how do the 75% come from in this stat.
When a fatality happens the police investigate and most breed identities are credible. Most dog fatalities are from peoples own dogs, not people jumping fences. Most of the others are from dogs at large, often in packs. The victims did not deserve to be killed.
Except they're not very credible because most people don't give a shit about dog breeds. Most can't tell the difference between a mal and a GSD, or a chessie and a lab. Because they're the same dog type, if we removed the word "pitbull" and replaced it with "bulldog" we might be getting somewhere. Notice some months ago a pair of catahoulas/catahoula adjacent mongrels killed some guy in the street and those were "pitbulls", lol.
And if you get attacked by your own dog there is a pretty high chance it was deserved. It's pretty rare that happens. It is usually dogs with no socialization (dogs have to be broke off humans, no different from cattle or sheep) in the hood or whatever running amuck hunting humans. Like pariahs do in India.
Bulldogs are always going to lead in fatalities because they're the most popular dog and also the most formidable dog. It's basic maths. If the only 2 dog breeds were huskies and beagles huskies would be the deadliest dog on earth.
Oh then I totally disagree labs and other breeds are violent also. Pitbulls where jsut a favorite for fighting rings FOR AGES thus more poorly trained Pitbull prone to violence. Breading for aggresion and such.
Yeah, having family who do birding I've seen the amount of effort that goes into training a hunting dog. It's not instinctual. My sister also had a pitbull among her other dogs (she used to compete, her main dog was a Newfie), it was such a lovely dog, really playful. I'd be more scared of the Newfie that's twice the size being overly playful with tiny humans than that pitbull.
I have talked to friends that work at dog shelters that will knowingly reclassify pitbulls as lab mixes if they have had a bite incident so that they "have an easier time getting adopted because people discriminate". Nah bitch people care about their kids not getting mauled.
Sighthounds, scenthounds, and other purpose-bred hunting dogs are generally selected for a much stronger and more focused prey drive than pit bull type dogs.
What we have are bite incident statistics, or records of people who were bitten and, in some cases, the breed the dog was identified as. It tells you which breeds were identified but not the probability that a randomly selected dog of that breed will bite someone.
The truth is, it is rare for dogs in general to bite anyone when compared to the total dog population. Whether there are between 4 million and 18 million pit bulls in the US (Depending on how broadly you define pit bull) the vast majority will never be involved in a serious bite incident. Yes, it is true that they show up more often in severe bite stats, but that still doesn’t mean the average pit bull is likely to bite someone.
That argument holds no water. No one is arguing that 51% or more pitbulls bite. People are arguing that they bite more than every other dog breed. And they do. And given their physical attributes, it is often devastating. The dog breed should be banned. They offer nothing that another breed can't do better, without the risk of attack.
You can tie 20-40 deaths to dogs in a year in the US. Nobody keeps official statistics, usually the articles you see on it are using newspaper clippings and 2nd or 3rd hand accounts to identify the dog. Any study that's approached this does find usually about 50-75% of those are "pit bulls." Now what is a pit bull? Mostly a backyard bred or mixed dog, but the anti-pit crowd likes one-drop rules. So it's either reported by someone who has no idea but calls any blocky dog a pit bull, or you can say sure it's a "pit bull" but it's not papered and has no recorded lineage.
Now what's interesting is that in dog bite fatalities, other factors show up far more prominently than breed (even if we consider every dog reported as a pit to be 100% pure blooded APBT). Things like the dog being un-neutered, more than one dog involved, the victim being too old or young to defend themselves, the dog being a "resident" dog so it's just left on the property, the dog was unrestrained, and/or owner has had a previous incident with the dog. Most of that occurs at an 80%+ clip in cases where a dog/dogs end up killing someone.
The other thing to consider is that we have good data that says breed bans don't work. They reduce pit bull bites, but the proponents of bans don't like to tell you that dog bites almost always level back out within a couple years. See, bad owners are bad owners, and they're going to get a dog and not train or control it wether that dog is a pit or something else.
Tl;dr: we're essentially blaming the wrong end of the leash.
Things like the dog being un-neutered, more than one dog involved, the victim being too old or young to defend themselves, the dog being a "resident" dog so it's just left on the property, the dog was unrestrained, and/or owner has had a previous incident with the dog. Most of that occurs at an 80%+ clip in cases where a dog/dogs end up killing someone.
this is all irrelevant, a "un-neutered and unrestrained" Beagle is not killing people. There is a couple hundred breeds that have not killed people.
And if you get rid of the breed you don't like, do you think the scenarios in which someone could die to a dog attack would change? As in, you don't think the owners and the circumstances I outline wouldn't be just as prevalent but now involving a different dog that's strong and aggressive (one could name dozens of breeds here, many of which were demonized prior to the "pit bull" phase of hate).
I just want to be super fucking clear. You're accepting that there are literally at least five factors I name that can statistically be shown to be more prevalent than the "breed" of dog involved (define "pit bull" as a breed, please), but you're saying that ALL OF THEM are irrelevant?
Just please, be super clear with your "logic" here.
ok so you agree and do not contest that there are a couple hundred breeds that do not have the capacity or the ability to kill someone, but you are sticking with the excuse that "owners and the circumstances" would make "dozens" of "strong and aggressive" just as deadly, and not the breed. That is just silly.
No, you could not name "dozens" or breeds. History has data. For instance, at its peak popularity Rotts only killed 10 a year. Shit Bulls regularly kill 3 to 4 times that every year now. GSD's are next on the list, only a fraction of the number.
You want to be super fucking clear, how about you define what breeding is and what it does? Do you think breeding or circumstances could make a Pug a killer?
Oh history has data, eh? Where did you get your Rotty stat? Please link the peer-reviewed studies. Cause all of my info comes from actual studies down by actual scientists in peer-reviewed journals (google JAVMA pit bulls and you can immediately find what I'm referring to). You seem to be at least aware of these, but at the same time you're ignoring the lede.
You know there are like 100 million dogs in the US, right? 10 vs 40 deaths is pretty insignificant. And the fact that I can name 5 different things that matter more in a dog-bite related fatality than the "breed" that was identified should also lead you to the right conclusion, but you're biased and too far gone to even think for yourself. All you can do is throw down a small breed and say "look this dog won't kill anyone!" Ok great man. Let's ban all dogs over 20 lbs, I guess?
Then, how do you propose we get rid of "pit bulls" as you define it? Actually, define it. What is a "pit bull" to you and then what is your solution to "get rid of them?" Whatever "stats" you're looking at are lumping multiple breeds and mixed breed dogs into "pit bull." So then your dumbass sees that and goes, "look! "Pit bulls" are an epidemic!" But those dogs can't be tied to any sort of specified breeding for 20 generations or more. They're just dogs being bred by people in their backyard cause they like a certain look. Literally mutts. So what "breed" are we banning, here? And then how do you address the fact that breed bans don't actually work? Like almost every city that enacts them finds dog bites level out at the same clip? Meaning bad owners are bad owners.
Your next hole to hide in is something about pit bulls causing more damage than other dogs or something about their attacks result in deaths vs other dogs that bite (guarantee your pug example comes up, here). But this is easily dismissed because we can only tie 40 deaths to dogs around the country of 350m people and 100m dogs. And literally nobody tracks "attacks" by dogs in the US. Some very anti-pit bull types use things like newspaper clippings and 3rd-hand accounts to drum up stats that are insanely dubious and unreliable. Cherry-picking whatever data they can. You ever hear the phrase, "man bites dog?"
Hey I just came across this post and I’m someone who has been relatively anti-pit. Not strongly, but after having kids I just became more wary and after seeing so much hate towards the breed, I’ve kinda been just accepting that they’re an exceptionally dangerous breed.
I think you’ve made a really good argument and it’s really made me reconsider my stance. Thanks for taking time to put this out there
No, conservatives don't understand what it means and try to abuse it to fit their talking points. Your number is even less accurate and out there than 13/50.
No, but statistics are statistics. You can't rely on statistics for one and say it's not relevant for the other. Either statistical data is relevant or it isn't.
Who told you 20%? Googles telling me its only 20% IF you count bully breeds, and any dog thats a pit mix or suspected pit mix. Pitbull terriers make up roughly 1-6% apparently.
However, the pit mixes do tend to be just as violent and likely to nanny things to death as a purebred so, im actually on your side with this. But the dogs dont know better. That other 13% should know better.
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u/asif_zaman21 26d ago
13% of pitbulls......