400 stitches.

[redwitch]

A young child in our village mauled by a dog on Friday afternoon. Report says it was a pit bull. 400 stitches. She's in a wheelchair but fortunately expected to make a full recovery. What in the hell is wrong with some dog owners? Village is ready to ban all pit bull type dogs as this is the second attack in less than two years. First attack was by a pit bull on a west highland terrior out walking with it's owner. Westie was leashed, pit bull wasn't. In that case I know the owner was an irresponsible twit who has no business owning any kind of pet. I just feel awful for this child and her family who have been so traumatized. What is the answer? This is not an attempt to start a flame war, I have known some wonderful pits with wonderful owners. I just feel bad.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. There's A Small Number of Breeds Responsible For Almost All Maulings

Why take chances?

Very sad because I'm sure that most animals of those breeds are great pets, but kids (and adults) get killed sometimes.

[Scuba]

4. Yes, that breed is known as 'irresponsible owner'

Pit Bulls, Doberman's, etc. can all be trained to be loving, gentle pets... or vicious attack dogs. It's up to the owner, not the dog. Don't blame the breed.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. I'm Not Simply Blaming The Breed

You may well be right, I don't know enough about these animals to form an opinion, one way or the other, as to whether the owner contributes to the problem.

But it's certainly true that if we replaced Pit Pulls and Rotweillers with Labs and Poodles, there'd be far fewer maulings, even if the owners were irresponsible.

[flvegan]

12. Really? You base that assumption on what?

[moriah]

15. I was bit by a Lab...

... a puncture wound, the dog simply bit my arm and held it in his mouth. He was not purebred, but half Doberman, half Lab. He was a good dog otherwise and he bit because he was confused -- the neighbor lady who owned him had taken me to buy me a new dress for church, and we came back home after dark. She took me inside with her to show her husband the dress, and I was excited. I'd never been in the house after dark and the pup thought something was wrong because we were all talking loudly. Of course I screamed and cried, but I was seven years old. They paid for my medical bills.

A friend of mine was mauled by an ill-trained purebred Lab when he was a child and still has huge scars across his body. He's terrified of dogs to this day and he's 6'3.

I still have bigger scars than the one from the puncture wound from the Rat Terrier who attacked me unprovoked. The dog was tiny, but vicious and ill trained, and I had to get 16 stitches.

My sister has two rescued Pit Bulls who are the sweetest dogs you've ever met.

It's not the breed, it's the owners and training.

[obxhead]

17. I've met some mean poodles in my time

that I wouldn't go near.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

16. The owner didn't do the mauling.

The dog did. A dog that was bred for fighting. Pit bulls should be outlawed, straight up.

Saying breeds with aggressive tendencies shouldn't be punished for the irresponsibility of some owners is like saying off-shore oil rigs shouldn't be banned just because some oil companies are irresponsible. End off-shore rigs means no more BP disasters. Ending pit bulls means maulings will be greatly reduced.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

20. Sister, I'll take that bet.

That's easy money for me.

Breeding yields non-evolutionary characteristics. If we selectively bred humans to increase their physical aggressiveness, I would definitely be in favor of profiling that breed of humans!

Outlawing pit bulls will greatly reduce maulings, pure and simple. A lot of the pit bull owners are chuckle heads to begin with. I don't think doggy discipline schools will have the necessary impact to eradicate pit bull maulings. My suggestion definitely will.

[moriah]

27. That's why part of the solution is to regulate breeders.

Make them start breeding for nonaggression. Neuter any dog that is not selected for breeding so they don't pass on those undesirable traits into the mixed breed population. Shut down breeders who are breeding them for aggression, and those who train for aggression -- honestly, that should be the case for every breed of dog in my opinion. A Labrador can become just as vicious as a pit if they are abused or taught to fight.

But genetics is not all. Children of serial killers don't always become killers themselves. Children of rapists do not always grow up to rape. Nature is one thing, but nurture is usually the deciding factor.

My sister has rescued two pit bulls. They are very sweet, but they were abused. My sister and her husband have no children and live far out in the country, still they have a fenced yard for them and their other two dogs. Another friend rescued a pit bull from the shelter who was about to be put down. She had to take training classes. The pup she'd had for 7 years died recently. She adopted another one, from the shelter system, because they knew she had history with the breed and was a good owner. She also has no children. She keeps both her current dog and her previous one in a fenced yard or indoors, and never let them out without a leash.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

32. If you can modify the breed to be less aggressive

that would make me happy. But I view that as a long term solution.

In the mean time, what do we say to the next mauled child? Right now and for the foreseeable future, they are a threat to children and sometimes others, as the OP illustrates. That child's life was possibly ruined. And for what? The luxury of having pit bulls as a potential pet. I don't think that passes the social utility test.

[depakid]

34. That's about the worst strawman I've seen yet on this issue

The problem is with the breed irrespective of the owner- though the owner can certainly make matters worse.

Frankly, I'm glad that I live in a sensible state that's ensuring that these deadly and unpredictable dogs are eliminate from our region and hopefully over time, from the entire continent.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

11. exterminate them and the dogs too

[flvegan]

13. Hitler...is that you?

:rofl:

[donco6]

2. Large, powerful dogs versus small defenseless children.

Wonder who wins that match-up? And people set these matches up on purpose? Hmmm . . .

[TexasObserver]

7. Large, aggressive dogs are a danger to kids and the elderly.

The bigger and stronger the bite, the greater the danger. Small dog, small bite. Big dog, big bite.

[Dr Morbius]

24. Breeds are not inherently aggressive.

Except, perhaps, for some of them little dogs. Nasty little buggers.

I have a friend with three pitbulls, and another coworker with one. I've gotten to know their dogs, too; playful and obedient. NO ONE, I repeat not one single person, who's a trained dog professional will tell you pitbulls are dangerous. They are not. However, laws do not require dog owners to know what they're doing. Large dogs combined with unprepared or even bad owners are a danger; the dogs themselves are not inherently dangerous.

The worse the owner, the greater the danger. Not the bigger the dog. Make it illegal for people to own pitbulls and the danger won't go away. Require pet owners to demonstrate some capacity in training their animals and no more mauled kids.

[roguevalley]

29. my pippin is a dachshund who is a fear biter and he has nearly

disemboweled dogs twice and crushed the larnyx of one nearly to the point of death. He's a rescue who is now one of the nicest dogs you would ever see. Took the owner to change the dog.

[flvegan]

10. What matches?

And if the dog was a pitbull, media bias and nonexistent breed aside, the pitbull is not a large dog. Nor is the breed that powerful, considering.

[Warpy]

3. The irresponsible dog owners are the problem

The dogs, not so much. In this case, I hope that dog owner is sued and put into debt for the rest of his or her miserable life.

However, it won't do any good for the "Muffy wouldn't harm a fly" as Muffy is chewing on your leg crowd. They will always, without exception, blame the victim for provoking poor Muffy, completely oblivious of dog psychology that tells Muffy that everybody outside the pack is a potential threat. They are also stupid people who think Muffy needs her freedom and it would be cruel to keep her fenced and away from kids, other dogs, and cars.

I don't know what we as a country can do about these terminally stupid people. Strict leash laws and fines for unlicensed breeding can certainly help, but they won't discourage all the nitwits out there.

Unleashed, unconfined and untrained dogs are a public nuisance. Even in the dog park, the dogs should be trained well enough to follow owner commands.

I'm just sick of these stories, but banning the dogs won't help. We have to find a way to ban idiot dog owners.

[TexasObserver]

5. This.

[moriah]

14. +1000

[Admiral Loinpresser]

22. I agree with most of what you said, but

I didn't get how banning pit bulls would not help. Wouldn't you agree that banning pit bulls would greatly reduce the mauling rate in the USA?

[JoeyT]

30. I don't think it would.

In most of the "OMFG PIT BULL ATTACK!!!!" stories I've seen the dog wasn't a pit bull at all.
There's a whole slew of dogs called "pit bull" when the media thinks it will stir up more controversy.
I've seen Mastiffs, Rottweilers, Chows, several of the larger terrier breeds, Catahoula Cur, and Bulldogs labeled "Pit Bull". Generally after enough people write in complaining that the reporter clearly doesn't know their elbow from their ass they'll issue a correction on page 16 in tiny font. I've even seen an Akita called a pit bull attack in a newspaper article. (Even if you shaved an Akita it still wouldn't look like a Pit.) Pretty much any big dog, as long as it'll sell more papers.

Some of the statistics also classify several dogs that most people don't think of as "pit bulls" as pit bulls, including Bull Terriers, which are more unpredictable than American Pits. (Bull Terrier = Spuds Mackenzie)

[Admiral Loinpresser]

31. In my experience, pit bulls are more aggressive.

Both at the dog park and in my neighborhood. Usually when I see somebody with a chain leash: pit bull. I believe they were bred to fight, hence the powerful jaws. The mauling is real. Maybe the stats pointing at pit bulls aren't accurate, I don't know, but I've never seen any documentary evidence that pit bulls aren't the number 1 offenders, by far.

[Dr Morbius]

33. Pitbulls are thus guilty until proven innocent?

Nice.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

35. Based on the mauling stats, mosdef. n/t

n/t

[Dr Morbius]

36. Suppose I say I haven't seen adequate proof that:

Sarah Palin isn't an alien from the planet Dumphuq.

Barack Obama doesn't have blue tights with a big red "S" on his chest under that suit.

Michelle Bachmann isn't a succubus from hell.

Now, you can't prove I'm wrong, can you? One cannot prove a negative. I can't prove I'm not a monster; does that make me a monster? Can you prove you're not a subversive Republican plant? Hmm?

No one can possibly prove a negative, so requiring one in argument is unfair. Requiring someone to prove a negative to make a judgment call leads to bad judgments, because you're abandoning logic. It is, literally, putting the burden of proof on the defense; it is manifestly unfair.

Do you have actual statistics or merely a collection of news stories? Even if you do have statistics, how does that prove the breed is the problem, when it is clear that some people are breeding these dogs to be savage?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

37. My original implication was that I had seen stats

indicating that pit bulls are the disproportionate offenders. I couldn't find the stats I'd seen before, so I googled a sample corroborating what I implied. Some of the studies are cited at the link below. Pit bulls are responsible for more attacks than any other breed. Hopefully this link will take care of your can't-prove-a-negative issue.


http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html#Thedogsmostlikelytobite

[Dr Morbius]

39. That "can't prove a negative issue" is basic logic. Came from Aristotle.

Who no doubt wrote it better.

And there's this, from your link:

Any dog, treated harshly or trained to attack, may bite a person. Any dog can be turned into a dangerous dog. The owner or handler most often is responsible for making a dog into something dangerous.

An irresponsible owner or dog handler might create a situation that places another person in danger by a dog, without the dog itself being dangerous, as in the case of the Pomeranian that killed the infant (see above).

Any individual dog may be a good, loving pet, even though its breed is considered to be potentially dangerous. A responsible owner can win the love and respect of a dog, no matter its breed. One cannot look at an individual dog, recognize its breed, and then state whether or not it is going to attack.

I read through it, and the study draws no conclusions about the nature of the attacks; it simply counts the number of canine homicides. Pit bulls have been more successful in killing people than other breeds. This to you means pit bulls are more dangerous. I get it. To me, it counts but means little. The study doesn't count dog attacks which aren't fatal. So it is possible, in theory, for another breed to be twice as likely to bite, as long as that dog can't actually kill very well. It is possible for other breeds to be as dangerous, if not more dangerous, because the study was only concerned with lethal attacks.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

40. That pit bulls are more lethal is indeed part

of my concern. I think the fact that they kill more people (presumably disproportionately children) is a big deal. SO I guess we'll just have to disagree on that.

At the risk of hijacking my own thread, I notice in your profile that your hobby is philosophy. What is your take on Socrates. For example, since he left no writings, how valid is our "Socrates prism" through the primary and secondary sources?

[Dr Morbius]

41. I think Plato had a thing for Socrates.

But Socrates was put to death, out of fear his amazing ability to always win arguments made him too powerful in their "democracy." There was a Socrates, we know this; there was hemlock, we know that. I suspect Plato embellished, a bit. It's known Plato was gay, and the dialogues almost romanticize Socrates. And yet it seems clear that Socrates was a formidable intellect. There is a fairly amazing string of men here: Socrates taught Plato, who in turn taught Aristotle, who in turn taught Alexander. Is it possible that Alexander made sure all this got written somewhere and embellished it along the way? He was certainly powerful enough to have done something like this. Hard to tell, a couple thousand years distant.

Aristotle was pretty obviously an extraordinary genius, for he wrote extensively and invented the science of logic. He was dead wrong about some things, like the Earth being the center of the universe, and his today-laughable defense of human slavery, but his logic was impeccable.

My philosophical focus is on law, government and the limitations of freedom required by society. After Mill, I suppose. When it comes to metaphysics or existentialism or such matters, I have an extremely pragmatic philosophy. If someone asks me the nature of reality, or whether what we perceive as real is actually real, I tend to ask them if they need something to do.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

42. I'm reading a biography right now.

"Socrates, A Life Examined."

In the chapter I'm currently reading he says that Socrates was in some senses like the sophists of 5th century BC Athens, but by focusing on virtue and ethical inquiries he diverged because the sophists tended more toward moral relativism. Also the author (a classics prof from NY Institute of Technology) says Socrates was primarily focused on the human condition or the subjective, as opposed to previous Greek philosophers who were more oriented to natural philosophy (astronomy, cosmology, etc.), i.e. the objective.

He also puts more credence in the validity of Plato's earlier dialogs for reflecting Socrates' actual teachings and opines that the later dialogs of Plato merely uses Socrates' voice as a rhetorical device to promote Platonic theories.

He also puts some stock in Aristotle's assertions of the nature of Socratic teaching, even though Aristotle was a secondary source. Aristotle was less invested in Socrates than Plato and he would have heard numerous stories at Plato's Academy in Athens.

Before reading this book, I didn't realize that Sparta had defeated and occupied Athens only five years before Socrates' trial. Apparently the satirical play featuring an actor playing Socrates (written by Aristophanes decades before) came back to haunt him. Some of the indictment about corrupting the youth seemed almost lifted from the play.

BTW, this weekend my wife & I watched a series on the Medici and there is a parallel in the great number of talents working in sequence (viz. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander). I can't recall the names of them all, but Michaelangelo, Da Vinci and Galileo were all launched by Medici patronage in Florence. An incredible story.

[Warpy]

43. No, it wouldn't

The only problem with breeds like pits and Rotties is that when they do bite, the bite is likely to result in more severe injury. Most of them, and those owned by responsible owners, never get a chance to bite a stranger and thus don't do so.

Again, it's not the breed that's at fault, it's the stupid owner who doesn't understand dog pack psychology.

[flvegan]

8. How horrible for that child.

I'm happy that its expected she'll make a full recovery, though I doubt that psychologically the horrors of the mauling will ever leave her.

"The answer" without knowing the facts of the attack are to have people be responsible dog owners. The dog that attacked this child obviously wasn't properly restrained for some reason. Breed really doesn't come into play here.

[EFerrari]

9. Sometimes I think dogs made a mistake when they started bonding to people.

:(

[Radical Activist]

19. Mid to large size dogs don't belong in a city anyway.

They're a public nuisance. Noise, fecal waste, attacks like this one. If you want a dog then move to a farm in the country where animals are kept.

[EFerrari]

21. What? My Labs have never been a public nuisance

and they lived in a city.

Some *people* are public nuisances. Good dog owners abate noise, waste and behavior.

[Radical Activist]

23. I'm sure they weren't a nuisance to you.

But you can't speak for your neighbors.

[EFerrari]

26. My dogs were trained to be quiet. I clean up after them

and they are always either leashed or under voice control.

My neighbors not only have no complaint, they also enjoy these guys.

[Radical Activist]

46. Maybe we can pass a law

that only allows the good owners to have dogs. If only that were possible.

I'm willing to bet there are a lot of people out there convinced that everyone loves their dogs but who also has neighbors too timid or polite to say what they really think.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

25. A lot of people (especially poor people)

use dogs for security. If you can't live in a gated community, what do you do if there is significant crime in your area? The lower the socio-economic status in the neighborhood, the less reliable the police protection. That leaves nothing but guns and that's an expensive and risky method.

Also a lot of old people (many of whom are also poor) rely on dogs for companionship. That is very important, as well.

[moriah]

28. Actually about the only breed where I think it's cruel....

... to keep them in the city is the Great Pyrenees. They are livestock guardian dogs, very gentle but very big, and they like a lot of territory. I love the breed but I wouldn't have one unless I had 40 acres for them to patrol. Twenty acres is just barely enough for them to be somewhat happy. In the city they bark like mad because they hear so many noises they want to investigate and they cannot.

The person I knew who had a Pyr on just 20 acres rescued her from a woman who was keeping her in a one bedroom apartment. The 20 acres was barely enough for her, but she was certainly better off than in an apartment.

But poodles can bark just as loudly and poop just as much. The only difference is the poodle will not do as much damage -- but they are still vicious, and many people don't bother to train small dogs to not be aggressive. Had a nasty experience with a Rat Terrier I mentioned before -- the dog was smaller than most poodles.

[Radical Activist]

45. Your line:

"In the city they bark like mad because they hear so many noises they want to investigate and they cannot."

I believe this describes many dogs of various breeds who need more room than they have. They bark constantly, making them useless as a guard, and become a nuisance because they aren't meant to live in such a small area.

I agree that small dogs can be a nuisance as well and would be happy if they were banned from cities too.

[MadHound]

47. Sorry, though I don't plan on living in a city anytime soon,

When I did, and if I do again I will have a large breed dog with me. Best deterrence to crime and break in ever.

I lived in a high crime neighborhood for ten years, the neighbors on all sides were broken into at one time or another. I wasn't, I suspect because of my large dog who like to make her presence known.

People are much more of a public nuisance in a city. Not just the noise and fecal waste, but all sorts of annoyances. I would much rather get rid of them than large dogs in a city.

[JCMach1]

38. Seems to me bad owner + bad dogs = bad things happen

Was nearly mauled as a child by a dog with a very, very responsible owner... So yes, THERE ARE BAD DOGS too.

It would just seem logical to me to work on both sides of the equation. Eliminate, or breed out the traits for the aggressive dogs and educate owners.

And yeah, if that means banning certain breeds where there are too many elderly and children so be it.

[redwitch]

44. UPDATE

The dog dove through the door of the home to attack the little girl as she was playing on the sidewalk. A police officer saw it happen. He was in his car, put on the siren and drove up close, the siren was enough to startle the dog away from the child who would more than likely be dead if the officer hadn't been there.