Pit Bull owners who don't believe that Pit Bulls are more aggressive than most dogs, offend me. There's no way to verify this, but I suspect some GIGANTIC percentage of the Pit Bulls who attack people belong to these owners. There's nothing inherently BAD about the breed, they are simply more aggressive than most dogs. If you are unable to reconcile this fact with the image of your precious pet, I suggest a nice toy poodle.
This is for the edification of you non-believers.
These statistics are derived from the Merritt Clifton report on dog attacks. While he has his critics--and I do think you can effectively argue that he has at least some level of bias against Pit Bulls--his raw data is just fact. The data is drawn from media reports and only includes instances where the breed was definitely identified. Thus eliminating the proposed "media bias." The data also excludes cases where the dogs were trained specifically to fight. "Attacks" refers only to humans, and includes all fatalities, maimings, and other injuries requiring hospitalization.
Of the 2,209 attacks recorded 1,110 were committed by purebred Pit Bull terriers. There were 90 other species and mixes in the data. Just over 50% were committed by ONE BREED. Even if you allowed for a 10% margin of error in favor of Pit Bulls (an extremely generous margin), the data is still definitively in support of the "Pit Bulls are aggressive" theory. In fact, you'd have to argue at least a 30% margin of error to disprove it.
Those of you who love to argue will point out that Pit Bulls are large and extremely popular. Therefore, such data is skewed against them. "They attack more because there are more of them. They hurt more because they're strong." However, Pit Bulls are no larger or more popular than Retrievers (Golden and
Let's try to arrange the data in the Pits' favor. We include only the popular breeds on the list: Retrievers, German Shepherds, Beagles, Dachshunds, Boxers, Poodles, and Rottweilers. In which case, Pits were involved in 67.2% of the attacks, Retrievers 1.9%, German Shepherds 3.8%, Beagles 0.1%, Dachshunds 0.2%, Boxers 1.9%, Poodles, 0.1%, and Rottweilers 24.8%.
Well this data is very telling. Compared to other popular breeds, Pits are way, waaaaaayyyyyy more likely to attack a person. In fact, the data could suggest that Pit Bulls are popular BECAUSE of this. Hmmmm, maybe this all relates to how Pit Bulls are valued as effective guard dogs.
So we have a strong counter-argument to the inevitable claim that "statistics don't tell us anything" about dog attacks. Yes, they do. They tell us that otherwise comparable breeds are not involved in anything even remotely close to the number of attacks that Pit Bulls are. This is the kind of definitive empirical data that scientific theories are based on. In fact, the data is soooo conclusive that a theory shouldn't have even been required. Common sense should have sufficed.
So let's conclude. Love your Pit Bull, cherish her, hug her, and snap adorable pictures of her taking a nap with a kitten. But for fuck's sake be honest about what you've got. You've chosen to love a high-maintenance dog. That's fine with me as long as YOU take responsibility for her. She requires more supervision, work, and money than your average dog. If every Pit owner would just ADMIT that, there wouldn't be so many goddammed news articles about Pit Bull attacks, and no one would be pushing for BSL.
PS:
YES small dogs probably bite people three times more often than Pit Bulls. However, they don't make the news because no one gets seriously injured when their miniature dachshund snaps at them. Therefore, small dog aggression is a non-issue, and no one cares. And, Yes, there are many aggressive breeds that I have not mentioned: Chows, Sharpeis, Akitas, etc. Again, their behavior is not relevant to the argument that Pit Bulls are aggressive.
PPS:
My mutt is a Pit Bull mix, and he's a wonderful pet.
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