perhaps a manditory registration (not fee) w/ a committee that checks in on the dog every year or so and does some tests to make sure it hasnt been trained to be aggressive. of course, this would be costly and would never happen. but it would probably work if enforced...
There is a hidden crisis at animal control shelters around the Bay Area, and dogs are dying because of it.
One day recently, at least ten cages at Oakland's animal control were holding pit bulls. Some were so aggressive that they were a threat to other dogs, even behind bars.
"The dog that was in the cage next to him slipped under the guillotine door and attacked him," said animal control's Lori Barnabe about one injured dog.
Across the bay, at San Francisco's Animal Control, "Gangsta" and four siblings sit on death row, after a mauling so severe that the victim has been referred to as "the Dianne Whipple who lived."
"The worst injuries were to her head," said animal control Captain Vicky Guldbech. "The male dog was pulling at her scalp."
But while the Bay Area has seen its share of pit bull attacks, what most of us don't see is the hidden crisis these dogs cause 365 days a year -- an epidemic of pit bulls that's straining the animal control system to it's limits.
Animal control agencies recently responded to a dog pack in Oakland, an escaped pit bull in San Jose, and in San Francisco a drug raid that ended with a shooting of a pit bull that charged an officer. And dead or alive, the dogs are all headed for Animal Control. Many have been bred for fighting, others are abandoned or abused, and finding safe homes for them is often impossible.
"Our shelter is predominantly pit bulls," said Guldbech. "It puts a horrible burden on us because we don't know where these dogs come from."
Glenn Howell of Oakland Animal Control said, "The dogs we are unable to place... really impacts our ability to hold the nice dogs."
That pressure is increasingly costing lives. Oakland was forced to put down nearly 1500 dogs last year, San Francisco 733, and in the South Bay almost 2,768. While most agencies don't track by breed, estimates range anywhere from a third to half of the dogs brought in are now pit bulls and pit mixes, and thousands are being euthanized every year.
It's all happening in an environment where vets work to save injured animals, and coordinators spend their professional lives trying to find homes for every adoptable animal that comes through.
"It's horrible for what we are trying to accomplish," said Guldbech. "We're trying to accomplish live adoption and when these dogs come in bred for aggression, everything we are doing goes down the toilet."
animal control cannot legally adopt out pitbulls over a certain age due to the unknown backgrounds of said dogs. the same goes for rottweilers and dobermans, among other breeds. because of this, if they are not claimed by owners right away w/ proof, then they will be put down.
the problem with all of this being (as giant pointed out) that there isn't enough law enforcement on dog fighting.
fees won't do anything. you think people breeding for dog fights are concerned with being legally registered?
what needs to happen is people have to get past the 20 second news blurb of "pit bulls are deadly!@$!" and put 2 and 2 together and figure out dog gighting is a big part of this problem.
but dog fighting isn't all of it. there are too many people who buy the dogs because of their reputation, and mistreat them.
In the 1980s, a Doberman was the usual star in this story; in the 1990s, the dog became a pit bull when that breed gained media prominence as the decade's fierce dog of choice. Other breeds of pooch have been known to report for duty in this tale as well -- always large, scary-looking dogs.
i'd be interested to see the statistics of AMPBT bites in 5 year increments. 1980-85, 86-90, etc.
i'm guessing the number would take a huge jump up somewhere in there. now there's no way i'm going to believe that the breed of dog suddenly turned psychotic in a ten year span. even the most aggressive breeding program imaginable wouldn't be able to do that.
rather, it's the people who buy them who have changed, and there's the problem. lock them up and throw away the key. i wouldn't have any problem with that.
as for pits being the "breed" who bites the most, that's scewed all over the place. unkown breeds are often listed as a "pit mix" if they bite someone. a lot of people who don't know a thing about dogs will say the dog that bit them was a pit. you also have the issue of percentage of population. if the number of pit bulls in the population went up 1000% whereas bite incidents went up 100%, that doesn't mean the dogs are worse now than they were before.
i looked into this subject extensively before we adopted a pit mix. she's one of the sweetest dogs i've ever owned. if you do a little reading, it's easy to see where the misconceptions come from.
there's is a real problem of people breeding the dogs for dog fighting who have no idea what they're doing. they think aggressive is the trait to go for, and end up breeding the worst of the worst animals together, in hopes of getting a better fighting dog. but again, it comes back to the people being the problem.
someone was just arrested up here a week ago in the suburbs for owning 10 pit bulls, treadmills, special feed etc. the dogs were intended for fighting, and no one in the neighborhood had a clue. IIRC she's going to end up serving real jail time though, so perhaps people are making progress.
do you have either personal or professional experience with pit bulls?
We've gone over this before.
The shape of a Pit Bull's jaw allows it much stronger bite force than many other dogs.
Pit Bulls are an aggressive breed. They were bred as fighting dogs from the get-go.
Doesn't mean they should all be destroyed, but you need to stop being a rah-rah cheerleader for Pit Bulls. People might get the wrong idea and think Pit Bulls are just as safe as Goldens.
Please, alcimedes, we all know your tactics. No matter what links I post, you'll dismiss them, but you'll come around and post 4 random links and try to shove them down everyone's throat as if they are an 'absolute truth.' You did it with this very subject a couple of months ago. You do it in every contentious debate you get into.
I'm a huge dog lover. I own 3 beautiful pure bred huskies( one in every color) and a beautiful 105 lb. golden retriever (irish setter red).
One thing you have to consider about pit bulls since they are aggressive by nature to begin with: There's too many stupid ****s out there who are breeding even more aggressive and stronger dogs every year. Those dogs are a ticking time bomb and have to be dealt with by SEVERELY punishing a careless owner and by destroying a dog who attacks a human or is overly aggressive towards other animals.
as for pits being the "breed" who bites the most, that's scewed all over the place. unkown breeds are often listed as a "pit mix" if they bite someone. a lot of people who don't know a thing about dogs will say the dog that bit them was a pit. you also have the issue of percentage of population. if the number of pit bulls in the population went up 1000% whereas bite incidents went up 100%, that doesn't mean the dogs are worse now than they were before.
It's not even the people who get bitten. I was walking a dog at a rest stop during a road trip when this woman noticed it, turned white, gathered her brood close around her, and hissed, "That's a pit bull."
It was a Pug. Maybe it was the huge size, or the powerful jaws, or the small, deep-set eyes that misled her?
Maybe if it had been a fawn instead of a black Pug she wouldn't have reacted that way? Who knows?
One thing you have to consider about pit bulls since they are aggressive by nature to begin with
Nope, no! See, alcimedes will now claim this is bunk. Any study you refer to will be unscientific and invalid. Pit Bull Terriers are obviously no more aggressive than Golden Retrievers.
sorry. i don't consider it cheerleading to correct someone who's beliefs on a matter are based on "facts" which aren't true.
if you have actual science or studies to back up what you're saying, i'd love to read them. i looked into this a lot, and it's just not there.
Are you saying that, according to your research, pit bulls are no more aggressive than other breeds of dogs? Do all dog breeds have exactly the same natural predisposition to aggressive behavior? It's 100% nurture and 0% nature? You know a lot more about these dogs than me, but something just doesn't feel right to me about that. Weren't pit bulls bred for aggressiveness?
Please, alcimedes, we all know your tactics. No matter what links I post, you'll dismiss them, but you'll come around and post 4 random links and try to shove them down everyone's throat as if they are an 'absolute truth.' You did it with this very subject a couple of months ago. You do it in every contentious debate you get into.
Funny, this sounds more like what you do every time you get into a contentious debate.
Funny, this sounds more like what you do every time you get into a contentious debate.
No, I just flame people.
I almost never post links to 'studies' because people always call them out all the freakin' time...like the last one in the "Animal Cruelty" thread where the health study was conducted on a total of three people...the researchers themselves. And even then I don't just dismiss them as "'facts' that aren't true."
Most of my arguments are opinion (RotK<TTT<FotR) or technical (Megapixel Myth), not based on third party studies that say Pit Bulls are cuddly.
actually there's a standardized test for aggressiveness in dogs.
IIRC, pit bulls passed just fine.
if you're some wanna be thug you don't get a golden retreiver and train it to attack people because it doesn't look as cool. you get a big, scary looking dog and go from there. that doesn't mean the big scary dog is more likely to attack people (all other factors being equal) than your typical cuddly dog.
planes crash, people rape, rob and kill each other, dogs attack strangers, life is full of unexpected tragedies. that's life. if someone is negligent sue/punish them, then get on with life.
i say we eradicate the parasites who use tragic incidents (like dog attacks) to line their pockets with revenues earned from the hysteria they create. then we can eradicate the losers who want to make everyone elses lives as lame and deprived as theirs.
Comments
I just did a news.google.com search for "pit bull". This one leapt off the page:
http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/2004..._Shelters.html
Pit Bull Epidemic in Bay Area Animal Shelters
By Sherry Hu
There is a hidden crisis at animal control shelters around the Bay Area, and dogs are dying because of it.
One day recently, at least ten cages at Oakland's animal control were holding pit bulls. Some were so aggressive that they were a threat to other dogs, even behind bars.
"The dog that was in the cage next to him slipped under the guillotine door and attacked him," said animal control's Lori Barnabe about one injured dog.
Across the bay, at San Francisco's Animal Control, "Gangsta" and four siblings sit on death row, after a mauling so severe that the victim has been referred to as "the Dianne Whipple who lived."
"The worst injuries were to her head," said animal control Captain Vicky Guldbech. "The male dog was pulling at her scalp."
But while the Bay Area has seen its share of pit bull attacks, what most of us don't see is the hidden crisis these dogs cause 365 days a year -- an epidemic of pit bulls that's straining the animal control system to it's limits.
Animal control agencies recently responded to a dog pack in Oakland, an escaped pit bull in San Jose, and in San Francisco a drug raid that ended with a shooting of a pit bull that charged an officer. And dead or alive, the dogs are all headed for Animal Control. Many have been bred for fighting, others are abandoned or abused, and finding safe homes for them is often impossible.
"Our shelter is predominantly pit bulls," said Guldbech. "It puts a horrible burden on us because we don't know where these dogs come from."
Glenn Howell of Oakland Animal Control said, "The dogs we are unable to place... really impacts our ability to hold the nice dogs."
That pressure is increasingly costing lives. Oakland was forced to put down nearly 1500 dogs last year, San Francisco 733, and in the South Bay almost 2,768. While most agencies don't track by breed, estimates range anywhere from a third to half of the dogs brought in are now pit bulls and pit mixes, and thousands are being euthanized every year.
It's all happening in an environment where vets work to save injured animals, and coordinators spend their professional lives trying to find homes for every adoptable animal that comes through.
"It's horrible for what we are trying to accomplish," said Guldbech. "We're trying to accomplish live adoption and when these dogs come in bred for aggression, everything we are doing goes down the toilet."
» 02-13-2004___
The next step is having your community deal with it. 2-4 cops for all of chicago simply isn't enough.
fees won't do anything. you think people breeding for dog fights are concerned with being legally registered?
what needs to happen is people have to get past the 20 second news blurb of "pit bulls are deadly!@$!" and put 2 and 2 together and figure out dog gighting is a big part of this problem.
but dog fighting isn't all of it. there are too many people who buy the dogs because of their reputation, and mistreat them.
Snopes gives us a perfect example of this.
In the 1980s, a Doberman was the usual star in this story; in the 1990s, the dog became a pit bull when that breed gained media prominence as the decade's fierce dog of choice. Other breeds of pooch have been known to report for duty in this tale as well -- always large, scary-looking dogs.
i'd be interested to see the statistics of AMPBT bites in 5 year increments. 1980-85, 86-90, etc.
i'm guessing the number would take a huge jump up somewhere in there. now there's no way i'm going to believe that the breed of dog suddenly turned psychotic in a ten year span. even the most aggressive breeding program imaginable wouldn't be able to do that.
rather, it's the people who buy them who have changed, and there's the problem. lock them up and throw away the key. i wouldn't have any problem with that.
as for pits being the "breed" who bites the most, that's scewed all over the place. unkown breeds are often listed as a "pit mix" if they bite someone. a lot of people who don't know a thing about dogs will say the dog that bit them was a pit. you also have the issue of percentage of population. if the number of pit bulls in the population went up 1000% whereas bite incidents went up 100%, that doesn't mean the dogs are worse now than they were before.
i looked into this subject extensively before we adopted a pit mix. she's one of the sweetest dogs i've ever owned. if you do a little reading, it's easy to see where the misconceptions come from.
there's is a real problem of people breeding the dogs for dog fighting who have no idea what they're doing. they think aggressive is the trait to go for, and end up breeding the worst of the worst animals together, in hopes of getting a better fighting dog. but again, it comes back to the people being the problem.
someone was just arrested up here a week ago in the suburbs for owning 10 pit bulls, treadmills, special feed etc. the dogs were intended for fighting, and no one in the neighborhood had a clue. IIRC she's going to end up serving real jail time though, so perhaps people are making progress.
Originally posted by alcimedes
and this would be based on what facts?
do you have either personal or professional experience with pit bulls?
We've gone over this before.
The shape of a Pit Bull's jaw allows it much stronger bite force than many other dogs.
Pit Bulls are an aggressive breed. They were bred as fighting dogs from the get-go.
Doesn't mean they should all be destroyed, but you need to stop being a rah-rah cheerleader for Pit Bulls. People might get the wrong idea and think Pit Bulls are just as safe as Goldens.
if you have actual science or studies to back up what you're saying, i'd love to read them. i looked into this a lot, and it's just not there.
One thing you have to consider about pit bulls since they are aggressive by nature to begin with: There's too many stupid ****s out there who are breeding even more aggressive and stronger dogs every year. Those dogs are a ticking time bomb and have to be dealt with by SEVERELY punishing a careless owner and by destroying a dog who attacks a human or is overly aggressive towards other animals.
Measurement of Bite Force in Dogs: A Pilot Study
Mechanical Advantage in the Pit Bull Jaw
Originally posted by alcimedes
as for pits being the "breed" who bites the most, that's scewed all over the place. unkown breeds are often listed as a "pit mix" if they bite someone. a lot of people who don't know a thing about dogs will say the dog that bit them was a pit. you also have the issue of percentage of population. if the number of pit bulls in the population went up 1000% whereas bite incidents went up 100%, that doesn't mean the dogs are worse now than they were before.
It's not even the people who get bitten. I was walking a dog at a rest stop during a road trip when this woman noticed it, turned white, gathered her brood close around her, and hissed, "That's a pit bull."
It was a Pug. Maybe it was the huge size, or the powerful jaws, or the small, deep-set eyes that misled her?
Maybe if it had been a fawn instead of a black Pug she wouldn't have reacted that way? Who knows?
Originally posted by Gilsch
One thing you have to consider about pit bulls since they are aggressive by nature to begin with
Nope, no! See, alcimedes will now claim this is bunk. Any study you refer to will be unscientific and invalid. Pit Bull Terriers are obviously no more aggressive than Golden Retrievers.
Originally posted by alcimedes
sorry. i don't consider it cheerleading to correct someone who's beliefs on a matter are based on "facts" which aren't true.
if you have actual science or studies to back up what you're saying, i'd love to read them. i looked into this a lot, and it's just not there.
Are you saying that, according to your research, pit bulls are no more aggressive than other breeds of dogs? Do all dog breeds have exactly the same natural predisposition to aggressive behavior? It's 100% nurture and 0% nature? You know a lot more about these dogs than me, but something just doesn't feel right to me about that. Weren't pit bulls bred for aggressiveness?
Originally posted by Eugene
Please, alcimedes, we all know your tactics. No matter what links I post, you'll dismiss them, but you'll come around and post 4 random links and try to shove them down everyone's throat as if they are an 'absolute truth.' You did it with this very subject a couple of months ago. You do it in every contentious debate you get into.
Funny, this sounds more like what you do every time you get into a contentious debate.
Originally posted by murbot
Funny, this sounds more like what you do every time you get into a contentious debate.
No, I just flame people.
I almost never post links to 'studies' because people always call them out all the freakin' time...like the last one in the "Animal Cruelty" thread where the health study was conducted on a total of three people...the researchers themselves. And even then I don't just dismiss them as "'facts' that aren't true."
Most of my arguments are opinion (RotK<TTT<FotR) or technical (Megapixel Myth), not based on third party studies that say Pit Bulls are cuddly.
IIRC, pit bulls passed just fine.
if you're some wanna be thug you don't get a golden retreiver and train it to attack people because it doesn't look as cool. you get a big, scary looking dog and go from there. that doesn't mean the big scary dog is more likely to attack people (all other factors being equal) than your typical cuddly dog.
i'll find the study.
i'll find the study.
Right on cue, baby.
I'll save you the trouble. It's the ATTS.
The question is...do you believe it? Can something like temperament be quantified as a percentage point?
i say we eradicate the parasites who use tragic incidents (like dog attacks) to line their pockets with revenues earned from the hysteria they create. then we can eradicate the losers who want to make everyone elses lives as lame and deprived as theirs.