Children Need Pit Bulls: A Picture Book

[DirkGently]

223. Oh dear. You understand what an "anecdote" is, right?

Last edited Mon Jul 7, 2014, 02:42 PM - Edit history (1)

No amount of individual "stories" proves a generalization about groups of individuals. True of people. True of dogs.

You're the Australian Shepherd fancier, aren't you? Good to see you.

But as we've discussed, that excellent breed has its own deadly anecdotes, too.

Your logic is a perfect example of the confirmation bias illogic at work here. It's quite the same as racist logic. Interpret actions of members of your own group as the misdoings of an individual. Attribute acts of another group to inherent problems with all of "them."

Right?

A 3 year old Worth County is recovering Sunday from a dog attack. The little girl was playing at her neighbors house when an Australian Shepherd, a typically friendly dog, mauled her face.

"He bit me," says Summer Gray, Dog Attack Victim. 3 year old Summer Gray is recovering from a dog attack. "He has sharp teeth," says Summer Gray.

She was playing at a neighbors house Saturday afternoon in Sylvester when an Australian Shepherd mauled her.

http://www.walb.com/story/16679796/dog-attacks-3-yr-old-girl

BRADENTON, Fla. - Two Australian Shepherd dogs are the Grinches who managed to ruin the Christmas holiday for Justin Curtis and his family.

The dogs left him with stitches and on crutches after attacking him on Christmas Eve as he tried to give the mailman a letter his father forget to send out.

http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-sarasota-manatee/bradenton/deputies-man-steps-in-to-help-13-year-old-boy-being-attacked-by-dogs-both-bitten

Anyone can play games with anecdotes. It's the bias with which they are intepreted that matters.

Do you actually imagine you couldn't find the same kinds of stories with all kinds of breeds? The two Aussie Shepherd stories took about 20 seconds to find.

The Facts

According to the American Veterinary Medicine Association, “controlled studies have not identified this breed group as disproportionately dangerous.” The American Temperance Testing Society (ATTS) puts thousands of dogs – purebreds and spayed and neutered mixed-breeds – through their paces each year. The dogs are tested for skittishness, aggression and their ability to differentiate between threatening and non-threatening humans. Among all of the breeds ATTS tested – over 30,000 dogs through May 2011 — 83 percent passed the test. How did pit bulls do? They showed an above average temperament, with 86 percent making the grade. Pit bulls are the second most tolerant breed tested by ATTS, after only golden retreivers.

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/in_defense_of_the_pitbull_partner/

A fistful of anecdotes does not add up to the kind of anti-breed paranoia argued for now. Plenty of other dogs have been subjected to the Super Murder Dog myth.

As Karen Delise details in her book, in the 19th century, bloodhounds were believed to be inherently vicious, having a taste for human blood. “Eventually,” she writes, “these bloodhounds fell from view, and we pushed other dogs into the spotlight, including the German Shepherd dog and the Doberman Pinscher.” (Dobermans were widely believed to have abnormally small brains, turning them into mindless killers, but this, like the pit bull’s “locking jaws,” was simply a myth.) Other breeds that have haunted the popular imagination in the past include mastiffs and Newfoundlands. In Canada, Siberian huskies have often played the role of killer-hound

So it remains the case that making "Pitbulls" as the Super Killer Murder Dog is a new thing, born of the same biases and mythology that made bloodhounds and Shepherds and Dobies and so many others the canine bogeymen (bogeydogs?) of the past.

Thanks for implying people who don't fall for this silly anti-dog bigoted mythology nonsense "nutters," by the way. I assume you are including the CDC and the American Veterinary Medicine Association in this thoughtful observation.

Although, I think a better case for defective reasoning or mental imbalance could be shown where someone who owns one kind of dog resolutely discounts anecdotes of that breed's "dangerous" behavior as irrelevant, while trying to make a case that similar anecdotes about another breed prove its inherent inferiority?