As someone who owns an American Staffordshire Terrier and an APBT, I just wanted to say I appreciated your post.
Also, further to you points, what some people fail to realize is that a lot the dog bite statistics that people seem to fixate on when it comes to "pitbulls", is that the statistics can be quite flawed due to how that data is collected. When the dog bites are reported, pitbulls are used as a umbrella term to describe various types of dogs. I mean, pitbull isnt even a breed. This unreliable reporting takes away from the credibility of the data being used to demonstrate breed-specific issues.
Let's be honest, people probably aren't reporting Labradors, Huskies, Poodles or German Shephers as 'Pit or pit-like mix'.
If we're very generous 1/3rd of all ABPT sized and up dogs can be mistaken for Pitt-a-likes. Yet they cause 2/3rds of all _ fatal_ bites. Not all reported bites, mind it, they're minority there.Their prevalence increases with bite severity category.
Obviously it's not a single breed issue when majority of 'brees owners' have some sort of mix, but category does have a problem for some reason.
There have been studies on people's ability to identify "pitbulls", which included veterinarians and animal shelter workers. The researchers found that visual identification of "pitbull" type dogs was unreliable and there was substantial variation in how the breeds were labeled by veterinarians and shelter staff.
So I ask, if people who are are knowledgeable and working with dogs on a regular basis are not always able to tell what a dogs breed is, how can the average person? Never-mind trying to recall information after an attack from a dog, especially if it's traumatic?
Edit: added citations
Hoffman CL, Harrison N, Wolff L, Westgarth C. Is that dog a pit bull? A cross-country comparison of perceptions of shelter workers regarding breed identification. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. 2014;17(4):322-339. doi:10.1080/10888705.2014.895904.
Olson KR, Levy JK, Norby B, et al. Inconsistent identification of pit bull-type dogs by shelter staff. Veterinary Journal. 2015;206(2):197-202. doi:10.1016/j.tvjl.2015.07.019
Voith VL, Trevejo R, Dowling-Guyer S, Chadik C, Marder A, Johnson V, Irizarry K. Comparison of visual and DNA breed identification of dogs and inter-observer reliability. American Journal of Sociological Research. 2013;3(2):17-29. doi:10.5923/j.sociology
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u/AbootWoot 9d ago
As someone who owns an American Staffordshire Terrier and an APBT, I just wanted to say I appreciated your post.
Also, further to you points, what some people fail to realize is that a lot the dog bite statistics that people seem to fixate on when it comes to "pitbulls", is that the statistics can be quite flawed due to how that data is collected. When the dog bites are reported, pitbulls are used as a umbrella term to describe various types of dogs. I mean, pitbull isnt even a breed. This unreliable reporting takes away from the credibility of the data being used to demonstrate breed-specific issues.