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| Linda Henry, severely maimed by her own pit bulls |
It's time for a mid-year update of the statistics on serious and fatal dog attack in the US, and it comes as no surprise that pit bulls have further widened their lead over all other breeds as the most dangerous type of dog, as this has been a violent year so far. In the first 141 days of 2013, 14 people were fatally mauled by dogs, and 13 of the 14 cases involved pit bulls.
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| High risk: Pit bull |
Some relevant insights can be gleaned from the report. Pit bulls (variously referred to as staffy, amstaff, apbt) now make up approximately 6% of the dog population in the US, while, over the past 5 years they have been responsible for well over 70% of the fatal attacks, a disproportionate representation.
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| Toddler Beau Rutledge mauled to death by family pit bull |
In contrast, large retrievers (labrador, golden etc) make up over 8% of the dog population, but serious attacks by large retrievers are rare in comparison.
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| Labrador retriever, the most popular dog in the USA |
A good example of a safe breed would be the Irish Setter - with no fatal or disfiguring attacks recorded in the 31 year study period. Other relatively safe breeds include the Greyhound, Standard Poodle and Dalmatian, none of which accounted for a single fatal attack, and the Weimaraner, St Bernard, Great Pyrenees and Collie, each with only a single recorded death over the same 31 year period.
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| Safe breeds: Weimaraner, Collie, St Bernard |
Interestingly, data indicates that the actual number of pit bulls in the US has not materially changed in 10 years. Nonetheless, the number of violent and fatal attacks committed by pit bulls continues to rise, most likely due to well financed PR campaigns aimed at convincing prospective dog adopters and others that pit bulls are not dangerous if treated well, that they have a good temperament, and were once known as "nanny dogs", a particularly insidious myth which sprung from the imagination of pit bull promoters in the latter part of the 20th century.
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| Human death toll, showing all breeds with over 10 fatalities |
You can download a full copy of the June 9th report here
References for further reading -
The nanny dog myth revealed
The pit bull hoax: The ATTS
Fatal pit bull attacks: the archival record
add another bullmastiff.
ReplyDeletegrippers 14
GSD 1
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ReplyDeletebullers often remark that chihuahuas and dacshunds are way more aggressive than their chosen god-dog, the shitbull.
i know that im terrified of being ripped apart by someones killer lap-dog . but shitbulls only kill when trained to do so ,..... thats ok ?
Not at all ok. However any breed can kill, depends on the victim. So if your shit chi or your hot dog attacks a baby....It can be fatal!
DeleteAmen. Pit Bulls are off the chart with serious violence requiring medical care.
DeletePit owners have no right to through other breeds under the bus.
ReplyDeleteNor do stupid people whom say that Pits are any bully breed. There is 1 Pit Bull and that is the American Pit Bull Terrier!
DeleteStupid people say a lot things - but pit bull does not mean "apbt". The "pit fighting builldog" was created in 1830s UK after bull baiting was outlawed. The animal abusers turned to dog fighting, and added terrier to the bulldog for more energy, and a more relentless, sustained attack. Thus was born the pit bull breed, dubbed the Staffordshire (bull) terrier. While it's bulldog ancestors had been bred for hundreds of years to torture bulls, the pit bulldog had a new purpose: to attack and kill dogs. Dog fighters brought their pit bulls to the new world, and named them "American Staffordshire terriers". Over the decades, pit bulls have been given a lot of names, to try and escape the bloody, violent history, among them some real doozies: "St Francis Terriers" or "New Yorkies". As a matter of fact, an AKC registered amstaff can be registered with the UKC as an apbt.
DeleteIn the final analysis, all of these different names for pit bulls don't change their nature.
I adopted an APBT as a pup from the humane society and he is not aggressive at all he is a wonderful member of the family and i trust him completely around my children to blame a dog for the faults of the owners is like people saying guns kill people when it is people who kill people with guns. get training for your dogs care for them and they will in turn be your best friend.
Delete@jkk9676 -
DeleteThat is exactly the same thing so many owners have said about the very pit bulls that later committed atrocities. Well-treated, well-behaved pit bulls, with no history of aggression suddenly "turn on" and become pit bulls, with zero warning. You're playing pit bull roulette. You may be lucky, or your number may be up. Either way, you're just trusting in the lies you've been told.
Pit owners have no right to through other breeds under the bus.
ReplyDeleteWhy does that site squash Presa Canario's with Bullmastiffs?
ReplyDeleteSt.Bernards have killed 8 people over that period: http://www.dogsbite.org/pdf/1979-1998-breeds-dogs-involved-in-fatal-human-attacks-us.pdf
Dalmatians are known biters,fatal attacks are rare by them though. They are also hyperactive and have health problems I wouldn't recommend them with children.
Also just because you have a "safe" breed doesn't mean you shouldn't train or control it. I don't like the term nanny dog for any breed.
I would recommend Labradors as a family or novice dog any day over a Pit bull or Rottie.
If you get a Poodle make sure its well bred,also many seem to dislike children.
The popularity of Pits need to go down to how it was in the 60's or beyond.
How a fighting dog became so popular is beyond me.
No I'm not a Pit bull owner.
I will not say anything bad about anybody. I personally do not like pitts myself. But have trained and handled plenty of rotties and some do work for national security and protect there families and handlers. Yes you better believe you break into my home or threaten my daughter or wife my rott will protect his family to his last breath! Not saying all rotts are good and not saying they dont need training CAUSE THEY DO! all of you has made valid points. Just thought id make one. You have these gang bangers and thugs that have pitts rotties or any breed that have no control over there dog and thats the ppl that should be banned from having any dog.
ReplyDeletePersonally I like Rotties, but I know that they can be dangerous in the wrong hands. It's all relative. But pit bulls are off the scale, on a whole different level. If you look into the most horrific pit bull attacks (out of the 570 plus fatal or disfiguring pit bull attacks on Americans last year) you find that well-treated "family" pit bulls were responsible for most of them.
DeleteI would like to know why it lists "pit bull" at all, since it is a combination of breeds. They might as well list them with mixed breeds. So really pit bull would include amstaffs, staffies, american pit bull terrier, bull terrier, miniature bull terrier, american bulldog, and any other combination of "bully breed" (of which there are many). Way to sensationalize statistics, ironic they are named "animal people". They also need to list whether they got this info from the owner's themselves (not always correct), or from police/animal control, who we all know couldn't tell a lab from a frog half the time............so their opinion on breed can be very biased.
ReplyDeleteThat's rather an odd question about something so elementary. It does reveal an agenda on your part though. It's entirely appropriate to refer to pit bulls as pit bulls, and in saying that I'm not trying to be funny. The term "pit bull" refers to a specific type of dog, namely the descendants of the livestock torturer/pit fighting dogs of the old UK. But you seem somehow to be under the impression that we decided to arbitrarily lump "many" diverse breeds into some sort of made-up "pit bull" category. Nothing could be further from the truth.
DeleteOn the off chance that you actually believe what you said above, let's take a look at the pit bull lineage. From at least as far back as the 1300s, sadistic animal abusers in the UK were getting their kicks breeding a special type of dog to torture animals for their amusement. This was the origin of the "bull dog", so named for the barbaric and cruel practice of "bull baiting", in which a pack of bull dogs would happily tear apart a de-horned bull - or a chained, de-clawed bear. When bull baiting was finally outlawed in 1835, the "dog men" thought of a new game: let the bull dogs fight each other in a pit. These "pit bulldogs" were mixed with terrier to create a more compact mauler, and the result was the "pit bull terrier" aka "staffordshire terrier". When dog fighters brought their pit bulls to America, they dubbed them "american staffordshire terriers" and continued breeding them for fighting. As for the notion that the apbt is somehow a different type of dog, consider this fact: any akc registered amstaff can be registered with the ukc as an apbt.
What this means is that we're not talking about 3 separate types of dog. They are at most minor variations of the same basic dog, and they are collectively know as "pit bulls" since that was their purpose. Close mixes such as the ampubull have been shown to carry the same type of risks.
It's no accident that the type of dog which was created precisely so as to happily torture and kill animals for no particular reason is the very same type of dog that is guilty of the largest part, by far, of the fatal and disfiguring attacks on humans today.
And the violence by pit bulls against animals is truly horrific. If you had the least bit of compassion for the animals, you would be more concerned with stopping their torture and murder than with trying to promote and defend their torturers.
You speak of sensationalizing statistics, which is a talking point straight from the pit freaks. But let's get real here: someone is seriously injured by a pit bull every few hours - on what planet do you suppose that somehow makes a pit bull attack newsworthy?
You people seem hung up on this idea of a conspiracy theory, and claim that nobody can identify a pit bull. But hey, we're talking about a pit bull here, not a unicorn! If you'd read the dog attack report, you'd know that they have only reported the breed in those cases where it could be positively identified.
You may or may not know that in a recent test, it was shown that shelter workers were able to identify a pit bull 96% of the time.
The facts are the facts. The main difference between the animal people and you is this: The animal people want to help end the suffering, and to that end they publish the facts and let the chips fall where they may. People like you are merely angry that the truth is being told, because you are somehow invested in this myth that pit bulls are not the dangerous, unpredictable torturers that they are.
We want the attacks to stop. You couldn't care less about the victims, and merely want the reports suppressed.
But breed misidentification occurs in all breeds. Border collies are often lumped in with collies (totally different breed), Australian shepherds are often indistinguishable from border collies, anything with a curly coat is called a poodle or poodle mix, even if there's no poodle at all in there (e.g. Spanish water dog, Portuguese water dog and many Spanish herding breeds can have poodle like coats). It's not just pit bulls that this happens to, however even with all the breed misidentification, the other breeds don't have the number of attacks against their name. The reason? Because pretty much all of the breeds included in the "pit bull" group are aggressive and violent. It doesn't matter if you confuse an APBT with an English bull terrier or a Staffordshire Bull terrier - they all have similar levels of aggression and ability to cause harm.
DeleteNo one confuses a chihuahua with a pit bull so all those hundreds of "fatal" chihuahua attacks aren't going against pit bulls don't worry ;)
My niece has 2 pit bulls that she has had for several years and she has 2 small children in the home. Both dogs are well trained and have never shown any aggression. Until yesterday morning when those 2 pit bulls killed her 6 year old nephew.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah?
DeleteGreat article. Thank you. There are so many lies on the web about Pit Bull type dogs being safe and they are not at all. We need to find ways to fix this horrible problem. Excerpt: the boy sustained broken ribs, a gash over his eye, a facial bite that nearly removed an ear, and multiple slashing wounds on his stomach so severe that paramedics found him with his intestines on the point of spilling out, Thacker said.
ReplyDelete"I heard that there were some intestines that came out," he said. "It was a through-bite that tore into the inner part of the child — the actual cavity. It didn't just break the skin; it punctured into the bowels." http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/animal-rights/pit-bull-rescued-animal-shelter-attacks-5-year-old-boy-2-weeks-after-adoptio
Is it me, or do pit freaks say the same stupid crap all the time? They all sound like broken records. They compare pit o death tolls to gun death tolls and compare the aggressiveness of a very much smaller breed to their larger killer. Then they point the finger on the victims and sympathize for the monster that victimized. Very upside down state of mind. These beasts keep wandering into private property and terrorizing. I support I total ban on this vreef, and you better bet that if one ever crossed my fence, he ain't coming home fir supper. I'll be damned if i let one wander into my propert and try to kill of my pets or children. That's my right, keep your ugly pits locked up. No one wants to clean up your mess!
ReplyDelete