10 Facts About Breed-Specific Legislation and How You Can Help Stop It By Hannah Sentenac

Hannah Sentenac 

“Breed-specific” legislation (BSL) is, essentially, canine bigotry. More specifically, the term refers to regional laws that ban or regulate certain breeds of dog in the hopes of reducing attacks on humans.

Not only is BSL unjust, it just doesn’t work. Anywhere. And the stats prove it.

Because of this, many cities (and states and countries) have repealed their antiquated BSL laws over the years, but far too many cities and municipalities (including Denver and Miami) have them intact.

Legalized discrimination, much? These laws are based on nothing more than misconceptions, misinformation and fear.

So, here are ten facts about BSL, and what you can do to take action:

1. BSL Kills.

Because of these BSL (and widespread misinformation), pit bulls have almost no chance of survival in public shelters. In many regions, they’re killed immediately upon shelter admission, with no opportunity to find a new home. Their euthanasia rate, overall, hovers around a staggering 93 percent.

2. Dog Bite Fatalities are Extremely Rare. 

Between 1999 and 2006, an average of 27 Americans died each year as a result of a dog attack, according to a Journal of the American Medical Associationreport. Meanwhile, estimates suggest an average of 40 to 50 Americans die each year from lightning strikes.

3. There’s No Evidence That Banning Breeds has Any Impact on Dog Bites.

Period.

4. Most Bans Affect Pit Bulls, but Other Breeds Can Be Included as Well.

Meanwhile, pit bulls score extremely high on temperament tests. According to the American Temperament Testing Society, Inc., the American Pit Bull Terrier achieved a passing rate of 86.8 percent (better than collies, golden retrievers, and beagles), which means they rank fourth highest of the 122 breeds tested.

Additionally, a “pit bull” isn’t even actually a breed. Instead, it’s a term used to describe a stockier type of terrier that includes the American Staffordshire Terrier, American Pit Bull Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier and mixes of the above.

Other breeds that can also be affected by BSL include American Bulldogs, Mastiffs, Dalmatians, Chow Chows, German Shepherds, Doberman Pinschers … even Chihuahuas and Shar Peis (or dogs that just look like any of the above).

5. BSL Tears Families Apart.

If  a breed ban is in effect in a community, authorities have the right to take a dog from its family. Often, these dogs end up euthanized, despite the fact that they have a loving home.

6. Researchers Have Identified the Factors That Lead to Dog Bites. Breed Isn’t One of Them.

According to stats on dog bite-related fatalities published by the National Canine Research Council, factors include:

• no able-bodied person being present to intervene (87.1 percent)
• the victim having no familiar relationship with the dog(s) (85.2 percent)
• the owner’s prior mismanagement of the dog(s) (37.5 percent)
• and the owner’s abuse or neglect of dog(s) (21.1 percent).

According to their research, these and other factors were present in “80.5 percent of cases.”

7. Identifying a “Pit Bull” is Completely Subjective.

Because the term refers to a whole host of breeds and mixes, shelter workers and city officials often wrongfully label dogs as pit bulls, which can mean a death sentence for the animal involved. According to the the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2013 paper, in cases of bite fatalities, “the breed(s) of the dog or dogs could not be reliably identified in more than 80 percent of cases.”

8. All the Legit Organizations are Against BSL.

The Humane Society of the U.S., the ASPCA, the United Kennel Club, the American Animal Hospital Association, the American Kennel Club, Best Friends Animal Society, the CDC, even the Obama administration (and so many more) is against BSL.

9. The Public is Against BSL.

According to a poll commissioned by Best Friends Animal Society, 84 percent of those surveyed said “local, state or federal governments should not infringe on a person’s right to own whatever breed of dog they choose.”

10. BSL Wastes Money. 

Enforcement costs a fortune, from staffing to litigation to the price of unnecessarily killing dogs in shelters. Best Friends Animal Society even offers acalculator that estimates fiscal impact. In Miami, a city that still enforces BSL, it rings in at $603,445 annually … with no reduction in dog bites to show for it.

The good news is, many organizations are working to strike down these antiquated laws, and you can help.

Here’s how

• Join a group that’s working for anti-BSL and pit bull advocacy. A few include Hershey Anti-BSL Group, Stop BSL, Love-A-Bull and the Miami Coalition Against Breed-Specific Legislation.
• If you live in an area with BSL, contact your elected representatives and express your opinion on the issue.
• Spay/neuter your pets, and encourage others to do the same. According to the ASPCA, more than 70 percent of dog bite cases involve unneutered male dogs.
• Educate everyone you talk to. Many animal-lovers are still unaware of the unjust nature of these laws. Spread the word and the facts.
• Adopt (or foster) a pibble! Their shelter death rates are dismal, and every home helps.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/facts-about-breed-specific-legislation-and-how-you-can-help-stop-it/

American Bar Association (ABA) urges repeal of all breed-specific laws

On Monday, August 6, 2012, the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates, meeting at the 2012 ABA convention in Chicago, approved a resolution urging “all state, territorial, and local legislative bodies and governmental agencies [. . .] to repeal breed discriminatory or breed specific provisions.”

This comprehensive recommendation is accompanied by an extensive report detailing the legion of problems associated with breed specific regulation, including significant questions of due process; waste of government resources[i]; documented failure to produce safer communities[ii]; enforcement issues connected with identifying the dogs to be regulated or seized[iii]; and infringement of property rights.

The complete resolution and accompanying report can be read by clicking here.

The American Bar Association (ABA), founded in 1878, considers itself to be the world’s largest voluntary professional organization, with some 400,000 members. In addition to being dedicated to accrediting the nation’s law schools and providing practical resources for legal professionals, the ABA prides itself in working to improve the administration of justice.

In addition to urging repeal of all breed specific regulations, Resolution 100 endorses “breed-neutral dangerous dog/reckless owner laws that ensure due process protections for owners, encourage responsible pet ownership and focus on the behavior of both individual dog owner and dogs[.]“[iv]

With the passage of Resolution 100, the ABA adds its name to the long list of national organizations opposed to breed specific regulation, including the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the National Animal Control Association (NACA), the association of animal services professionals charged with enforcing the nation’s animal ordinances.[v]

SOURCES: American Bar Association (ABA). Resolution 100. (August 2012). [Text of Adopted Resolution and Report] Accessed at: http://www.abanow.org/2012/06/2012am100/

Cassens-Weiss, Debra. Annual Meeting of the ABA House of Delegates. (August 6, 2010). Pit Bull Bias? ABA House OKs Resolution Urging Breed-Neutral Dog Laws. ABA Journal. Accessed at: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/pit_bull_bias_aba_house_oks_resolution_urging_breed-neutral_dog_laws/

NOTES

[i] See: Best Friends Animal Society’s Breed Discriminatory Law (BDL) Fiscal Impact Calculator.

[ii] See these additional NCRC Commentaries, as well: Denver: Selective Counting and the Cost to People and Pets; Maryland’s Experience: the Public Record and the Tracey v Solesky Ruling; Miami-Dade County: No Positive Results;  Dog Breed-Specific Legislation: The Cost to people, pets and veterinarians, and the damage to the human-animal bond (AVMA Convention, July 11 – 14, 2009 Seattle, Washington), and Sioux City Breed Ban Misses the Mark. Additional commentaries are accessible here.

[iii] See also: A Comparison of Visual and DNA Identification of Breeds of Dogs, by Victoria L. Voith, PhD, DVM, DACVB. Published in Proceedings of Annual American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Convention, July 11-14, 2009 Seattle, WA. (See also: Voith, V., Ingram, E., Mitsouras, K., & Irizarry, K. (July 2009). Comparison of Adoption Agency Identification and DNA Breed Identification of Dogs. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. 12(3). 253-262.) A poster illustrating the project, which was presented at  ACVB/AVSAB July 2010 can be viewed here.

Also refer to “Dog breed identification is no basis for shelter policy,” an NCRC commentary on a study report and poster authored by Kimberly R. Olson, BS and Julie K. Levy, DVM, PhD, DACVIM, of the Maddie’s®Shelter Medicine Program, University of Florida and Bo Norby, CMV, MPVM, PhD, of the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, Michigan State University. The poster can be viewed here.

[iv] See also NCRC’s ‘Responsible Pet Ownership’ information. Click here to open these webpages. 

[v] See also CDC and AVMA statements on this subject by clicking here. Click here to view the NACA statement regarding breed-specific legislation (which can be read under the section heading ‘Extended Animal Control Concerns’).

Also see this NCRC report summarizing a recent AVMA Task Force Report (AVMA Animal Welfare Division. (17 April 2012) The Welfare Implications of the Role of Breed in Dog Bite Risk and Prevention.) for additional reference: ‘Pit Bull’ Regulation Not a Basis for Dog Bite Prevention.

NCRC

Expert Opinion on Breed-Specific Legislation

Because of the ubiquitous presence of dogs in society, inevitably people on some occasions well find themselves proximate to a dog, whether it be by their own choosing or not. Given the ever present 

opportunity for contact and interaction between dogs and people, and given the vast differences in behavioral reactivity between dogs, it is not surprising that on some occasions, in some situations, and for some reasons a dog will bite a person. 

In fact, recent epidemiological findings indicate that an estimated 4.5 million people in the United States are bitten annually by dogs, which represents 1.5% of the US population (Gilchrist, J. et al. Dog bites: Still a problem? Injury Prevention, 2008, 14, 296-301).

Despite what appears to be the lessening of the dog bite problem in the United States, probably through educational efforts over the last 20 years, many communities continued to favor enactment of breed specific legislation – often following the publicity of a dog bite fatality or a severe mauling of a child by pit bull or Rottweiler. 

Understandably alarm sets in and communities turn to what intuitively appears to be a logical and easily implemented solution. Breed specific legislation essentially bans, restricts or imposes conditions on the ownership of certain breeds of dogs, typically those breeds that presumably pose the greatest risk of dog bite injury

This kind of legislation has generated a great deal of controversy. Repeated legal challenges in cities as Denver and Toronto, have failed to repeal BSL. On the other hand, BSL has been repealed successfully in The Netherlands and Belgium. Proponents for breed specific legislation believe that eliminating a target breed from the population will ultimately decrease the number of dog bites and severe dog attacks and consequently, reduces the financial and emotional cost to communities associated with dog bite injury. 

In the United States, those opposed to the restrictions imposed by breed specific legislation challenge the law based on its over-inclusiveness and its failure to allow due to process for the individual dog owner. Is breed specific legislation effective in achieving its stated goals? If one reviews findings in the scientific literature addressing this question, the overwhelming conclusion is that it is not.

For example, a recent publication adds weight to the argument against the effectiveness of BSL by reporting the use of a statistic technique that has hitherto not been applied: namely, calculating the number of dogs from a target breed that would be needed to be banned or have restrictions imposed to affect a reduction in a desired outcome (for example, a desired outcome would be the reduction in the number of hospitalizations resulting from dog bite injury) (Patronek, G., M. Slater, A. Marder. J. American Veterinary Medical Association, 2010, 237, 788-792).

According to the analysis presented in this paper, the number of individuals within of any particular target breed needed to be eliminated from the population (that is, banned or restrictions imposed) to achieve a significant reduction for various outcomes would be extremely high, thus, in effect, making breed specific restrictions nonsensical and impractical.

The term “numbers needed to ban” (NNB) is coined to describe this statistical parameter. In the paper, the authors calculate several outcome scenarios based on statistics available from data published in the dog bite literature, such as emergency department visits due to dog bite injury, reconstructive surgery following a dog bite, and frequency of hospitalizations because of a dog bite injury. For all calculations result showed that the numbers needed to ban, based on a particular set of assumptions, were extremely high, therefore, indicating impracticality and implausibility of BSL.

In this writer’s opinion, the argument presented in this paper, using this kind of statistical analysis, is compelling. Nevertheless, the impact the science reported in this paper might have on an emotive real-world problem like dog bite frequency is dubious because of what the authors identify as a “perceptual gap” – that is, the gap between (a) what scientifically is correct and (b) what people believe due to their own biases and belief structures.

The authors believe this gap exists in part because of the widespread fear people have of certain types of dogs, created largely through the dissemination of misinformation about dogs and through highly publicized events in which people are severely attacked or killed by a dog. People feel the need to immediately control the problem, hence the knee-jerk reaction favoring the implementation of BSL. 

The authors conclude that BSL is based largely on fear, and that animal care professionals need to enlighten the public and policy makers about the widespread faulty beliefs that exist concerning the behavioral nature of certain breeds, and about the lack of effectiveness of breed-specific legislation in curtailing the dog bite problem.

Call Dr. Polsky Today

800-605-2227

https://dogexpert.com/statistical-analysis-of-effectiveness-of-breed-specific-legislation/

This City’s Pit Bull Ban Has Failed Miserably To Prevent Dog Bites

• Advocates have said for years that breed-specific legislation just doesn’t work.

• 
  
• Hilary HansonViral News Editor, The Huffington Post

PHOTO BY TARA DENNY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Ontario’s ban on pit bulls has decreased the number of pit bulls in Toronto, but not overall dog bites, new data suggests.

The Canadian province of Ontario passed a law in 2005intended to slowly eradicate pit bulls from the region and thus cut down on dog bites and attacks.

But since then, the overall number of dog bites in Ontario’s capital Toronto have gone up, according to a new report in the Canadian publication Global News.

The legislation defined “pit bulls” as pit bull terriers,American Staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers, American pit bull terriers, or any dog that has an appearance “substantially similar” to those breeds. It allowed those who already owned pit bulls to keep them, but outlawed breeding and bringing them into the province. Owning any pit bull born after the law took place was prohibited and illegal dogs could be sent out of the province or euthanized.

DANITA DELIMONT VIA GETTY IMAGES

Pit bulls born after the ban were prohibited.

In 2004, 567 dog bites were recorded in the city, based on reports that doctors who treat them are legally mandated to file. Eighty-six of these bites came from dogs designated as “pit bulls,” giving them second place on a list of the “top 10 breeds” for dog bites. (German Shepherds came in first, with 112 reported bites.)

See more in-depth data at the Global News.

Clearly, some people continue to breed and obtain pit bulls under the law’s radar. But Mary Lou Leiher of Toronto Animal Services told Torontoist in September she believes that ban has reduced the overall number of pit bulls in the city. Though it’s tough to count how many illegal, unregistered dogs are in the city, Leiher said that “anecdotally, we’re seeing less.”

Ten years later, with fewer pit bulls, it’s unsurprising that there are fewer pit bull bites. In 2014, pit bulls didn’t even make the top 10 breeds responsible for bites in Toronto. German shepherds again had the highest number of bites. The breed in second place? Labrador retrievers.

But what the law hasn’t done is decrease total dog bites. There were 767 dog bites in 2014 — 200 more than the year before the ban went through.

And this isn’t a bizarre outlier. Though total bites initially dropped after 2004, the number has fluctuated since then, spiking in 2011, dropping again in 2012 and then steadily climbing for the next two years. Leiher told the Global News that there haven’t been any procedural changes that would increase the proportion of dog bites that got reported to the city.

Significantly, these are only raw numbers — they do not account for the number of dog bites as proportionate to the canine population of Toronto. But speaking with Torontoist, Leiher indicated the prevalence of dog bites has remained constant.

PHOTO BY LAURA KALCHEFF VIA GETTY IMAGES

And countless dog advocates, as well as the American Veterinary Medical Association, have been saying for years that breed-specific legislation, known as BSL — a practice that is widespread in the United States — is ineffective. From the AVMA website:

Any dog can bite, regardless of its breed, and more often people are bitten by dogs they know. It’s not the dog’s breed that determines risk — it’s the dog’s behavior, general size, number of dogs involved and the vulnerability of the person bitten that determines whether or not a dog or dogs will cause a serious bite injury. Dogs can be aggressive for all sorts of reasons. A dog that has bitten once can bite again, and a dog that has never bitten could still bite.

What breed-specific legislation — in Ontario and elsewhere — does do is lead to tragic consequences for dogs and their owners. Take Precious, a pit bull who achieved online fame after being photographed loyally standing over her injured owner during a house fire. She was forced to leave her human family shortly thereafter, since pit bulls are banned in the Maryland county where she lived. And Precious is one of the lucky ones — she went to a loving foster home, rather than becoming one of the thousands of pit bulls euthanized in shelters each year, largely because of public perception of pit bulls and restrictions on where the dogs can live.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/pit-bull-ban-toronto-dog-bites_us_56c8cd2ce4b0928f5a6c218e?section=australia

Shelter Workers and Veterinarians Not Reliable at Identifying ‘Pit Bulls’

University of Florida study also finds visual breed ID flunks the DNA test.

Pit bulls: Laws are passed banning them. Landlords and HOAs frequently prohibit them. Many shelters refuse to adopt them out. Individuals often fear them. But can anyone accurately identify them?

In a University of Florida study conducted at four different animal shelters and published in the November 2015 issue of The Veterinary Journal, researchers looked at visual identification of dogs as being of the “pit bull” type by shelter veterinarians and staff members.

Agreement on breed among different assessors was only moderate, while accuracy compared with DNA profiles ranged from moderate to poor.

These results raise difficult questions, because shelter workers and veterinarians are expected to determine the breed(s) of dogs in their facilities on a daily basis. Additionally, they are often called on as experts as to whether a dog’s breed will trigger seizure or regulatory action. The stakes for these dogs and their owners are in many cases very high.

Study Details

The study was conducted at four different Florida animal shelters with dog intake ranging from 2,520 to 10,154.

Managers at each shelter assigned one veterinarian and three other staff members who regularly decided what breed(s) to use in describing dogs in the facility to serve as assessors for the study.

In a protocol approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of Florida, 30 unrelated dogs, all healthy and at least two months old, were chosen for assessment. The dogs represented a wide range of body type, size, coat length, and color.

The assessors were allowed to designate the dogs as being of any breed or mix of breeds they wished, and weren’t given a list of breeds from which to select. They weren’t able to consult records, discuss the ID with each other, or view references, cage cards, intake forms, etc. until the assessment was complete.

Because “pit bull” is not a breed of dog but a type of dog, a number of breed terms and their mixes were included as “pit bull types” for purposes of the study. These included American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier, pit bull, and mixes containing at least one of those. If none of those terms was used by the assessors, that dog was coded as not being of the “pit bull type.”

Outcome

Different shelter staffers who evaluated the same dogs at the same time had only a moderate level of agreement. This lack of consistency renders their visual identification of a dog’s breed inherently unreliable.

Limitations in available DNA profiles make absolute breed identification problematic. However, when visual ID was compared with DNA test results, the assessors fared even worse. Dogs with pit bull heritage breed DNA were identified only 33 to 75 percent of the time, depending on which of the staff members was judging them. Conversely, dogs lacking any genetic evidence of relevant breeds were labelled as pit bull type dogs from 0 to 48 percent of the time, the researchers reported.

One in five dogs genetically identified with pit bull breeds were missed, and one in three dogs lacking DNA for pit bull breeds were labeled pit bulls by at least one staff member.

Veterinarians didn’t perform any better than other assessors when comparing DNA profiles to their visual identification of the dogs’ breeds.

Background

Previous studies have also found multiple observers who consider themselves “experts” or who are dog professionals have low rates of agreement in their visual assessment of dog breed. The same has held true in other studies of DNA breed profiles; one such study found visual breed ID matched DNA results less than half the time.

Part of the problem with visual breed identification is, as the study authors commented, “Mixing breeds is not like mixing paint.” Dog breeds contain many genetic traits and variants, and individual dogs don’t contain some idealized one-to-one matching of them.

This holds true for behavior as well as appearance. A dog’s appearance cannot tell observers anything about their behavior; even dogs of identical appearance and the same breed often have very different behavioral traits. Most importantly when examining the type of public policy most often based on purported dog breed, two very large studies found no relationship between dog breed and aggressive behavior.

In these studies, behavior, including aggression, tended to be associated with a single context, such as a stranger entering the dog’s territory. They also found very little correlation between a dog being aggressive with other dogs and with humans. All this combines to suggest that using breed as a surrogate for determining whether a dog is safe or dangerous will fail at both.

Conclusion

Unlike many other things people can’t quite define but “know when they see it,” identification of dogs as pit bulls can trigger an array of negative consequences, from the loss of housing, to being seized by animal control, to the taking of the dog’s life.

If the very people most frequently called on to identify breed are unable to do so consistently or accurately, then IDs by newspaper reporters, HOA board members, or members of the public should be considered even less reliable. Despite the frequency with which such identifications are made, this study suggests visual breed ID, even by presumed experts, should never be relied on as the basis of public policy.

Learn More

• Read the full paper
• Meet the study dogs
• UF Health News, 2/17/2016: “DNA studies reveal that shelter workers often mislabel dogs as ‘pit bulls’”

http://sheltermedicine.vetmed.ufl.edu/2016/02/16/shelters-and-veterinarians-not-reliable-at-identifying-pit-bulls/

Debunking Dogsbite.org

Folks who read this blog may be wondering why we have seldom mentioned dogsbite.org, a blog dedicated to fostering hysteria about “pit bulls.”  We have little mentioned the now infamous dogsbite.org because we didn’t think we had to.  Honestly, we couldn’t conceive of anyone taking them or their witch hunt seriously.  Their website is so poorly written and their “evidence” so spotty, we honestly didn’t think any elected official would actually stoop to cite their laughable “evidence” as reason to pass breed-specific legislation (BSL).  Well, we were wrong, but luckily not terribly wrong since many politicos and the mainstream media appear to have wisely steered clear of dogsbite.org.  Still, the fact that any municipal government — and there have been a few — or the media would cite dogsbite.org with a straight face is a little alarming.  So, let’s endeavor to do what has long been overdue: debunkdogsbite.org.

Forget for a moment that many court venues have ruled breed-specific legislation (BSL) unconstitutional or otherwise unlawful.  What about all the worldwide evidence that BSL doesn’t work?  For instance, Italy (article 1 and article 2) and theNetherlands both repealed their BSL within the last couple of years citing its ineffectiveness.  It has also been widely reported in the BBC that the UK’s 1991 Dangerous Dog Act has been a phenomenal failure since there has been a huge rise in banned breeds in the UK.  And in 2010, the Toronto Humane Society, in a survey of cities, released statistics revealing that “Ontario’s 2005 ban on “pit bull” breeds or dogs that resemble pit bulls has not made any difference in the number of dog bites.”

Now I would call the Toronto Humane Society’s findings a pretty good indicator that Toronto’s “pit bull” ban is ineffective since the ban didn’t accomplish what it set out to do: reduce dog bites.  Yet dogsbite.org appears to see it differently based on their inclusion of Toronto in a list of supposedly successful BSL cities (this from their rather vague June 21 “press release“):

On June 18, DogsBite.org, a national dog bite victims’ group dedicated to reducing serious dog attacks, released data of municipalities across the country, and one instance in Canada [meaning Toronto], that showed the successful results a municipality experiences after adopting a breed-specific pit bull law. The data was gathered over a two-year period when instances appeared in news alerts designed to capture U.S. media reported pit bull attacks.

Just to follow through with the Toronto findings, does dogsbite.org mean to say that Toronto’s breed ban has been successful even though the Toronto Humane Society has shown that there are no fewer dog bites???

Dogsbite.org does not explain the discrepancy between their “data” and the Toronto Humane Society’s survey, at least, not in their June 21, 2010 “press release.”  Still, we can completely debunk their “data” right out of the gate simply by noting that their “data” got its source from “news alerts” of “pit bull” attacks.  Google Alerts can be a nifty tool, but it’s not prudent to base life-altering legislation on it.  Indeed, as the widely debunked report Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998 based on CDC bite data revealed,

…to the extent that attacks by 1 breed are more newsworthy than those by other breeds, our methods may have resulted in differential ascertainment of fatalities by breed. (JAVMA, Vol 217, No. 6, September 15, 2000, p. 838).

In other words, and as the CDC itself acknowledges, media reports are skewed and therefore meaningless because “pit bull” attacks are more “newsworthy.”

Additionally, it has always seemingly escaped dogsbite.org‘s attention that “pit bull” is not a breed but a slang term describing countless breeds, their mixes, and those dogs resembling those breeds and their mixes; dogs that are merely “guilty” of fitting a type. (Even dogsbite.org refers to them as “pit bull type dogs” meaning the term “pit bull” does not comprise one breed even by their own assessment!) I say countless breeds have been fingered as “pit bulls” because to some even Chihuahuas look like “pit bulls,” so who knows how many breeds, their mixes, and those dogs sharing an unfortunate resemblance to those breeds and mixes, fall under the category “pit bull”?

And does it not follow that if you have a conglomeration of breeds and mixes that you erroneously designate as one breed — the “pit bull” — that it would appear, though falsely, that this “breed” “pit bull” were more inclined to attack?  However, parse out actual breeds from those bite statistics and based on population size, what you would find is that no one breed is more inclined to bite or kill than another.  This is why we say there is no such thing as an inherently vicious or dangerous breed of dog.  Yet still, these unfortunate, innocent dogs are marked for death when “pit bull” grim reapers like dogsbite.org crusade for their slaughter using incredibly flawed data-gathering methods.

As the CDC itself noted of its own statistics, 1) the media is notorious for reporting almost exclusively on so-called “pit bull” attacks, 2) the media is notorious for getting the breed wrong, which they always will if they refer to the dog in question as a “pit bull,” 3) the statistics do not take into consideration mitigating factors like owner irresponsibility, abuse or neglect, lack of socialization, etc. and 4) CDC statistics are inconclusive because they are not based on what the CDC calls “reliable breed-specific population data.”  Breed-specific population data is just that: accurate numbers of the population of dogs by breed.  Therefore, if “pit bull” is not a breed but a type, which the CDC itself acknowledges, then accurate population data for “pit bulls” would be impossible to determine, which is why the CDC’s own findings were rendered meaningless, again as the CDC itself acknowledged.

One must conclude from the CDC study that in order to take dog-bite data seriously, one must be able to discern the proper breed based on more than mere media reports, one must factor in mitigating circumstances like owner abuse and neglect, one must know at least an approximate population size of specific, actual breeds, and one must be objective. (Objectivity as pertains to statistics would mean not setting out to acquire only data that on the surface appears to fulfill one’s agenda.)  These are the elements necessary for properly-gleaned scientific data as concerns dog bites.  The CDC itself could not even fulfill these requirements which may be why they stopped tracking dog-bite/fatality statistics.

Yes, and what was the CDC’s conclusion based on their own faulty statistics?:

Breed-specific legislation does not address the fact that a dog of any breed can become dangerous when bred or trained to be aggressive. From a scientific point of view, we are unaware of any formal evaluation of the effectiveness of breed-specific legislation in preventing fatal or nonfatal dog bites. An alternative to breed-specific legislation is to regulate individual dogs and owners on the basis of their behavior (JAVMA, Vol 217, No. 6, September 15, 2000 Vet Med Today: Special Report 839-840).

That bears repeating.  The CDC is “unaware of any formal evaluation of theeffectiveness of breed-specific legislation in preventing fatal or nonfatal dog bites,” at least not from a “scientific point of view,” and dogsbite.org‘s data gathering isanything but scientific or a use of proper scientific methodology.

We now know what proper data gathering and evaluation of dog-bite statistics would, at the very least, include: proper breed determinations, only citations of incidents involving dog bites or fatalities investigated by impartial experts (of which Animal Control, elected officials, the media, animal rights groups, and Certainly dogsbite.org are not), the factoring in of mitigating circumstances, and reliable dog breed population data.  

As such, the CDC was correct to conclude that breed-specific legislation should not be passed based on dog-bite statistics because proper data gathering and an attending formal scientific evaluation would be almost impossible to accomplish.  And, for all these reasons, nobody should give dogsbite.org or their “data” any credence since in no way is their “data” accurate, scientific, or even defensible.

So, by “dedicated to reducing serious dog attacks” does dogsbite.org mean that killing a myriad of dogs erroneously fingered as “pit bulls” will reduce dog bites simply because the dog population has been reduced en masse?  That seems to be their objective since a lot of dead dogs is certainly the result of breed-specific legislation.  And yet, as the Toronto Humane Society’s survey shows, dog biteshaven’t been reduced in the five years since Toronto’s breed ban was passed, so it looks like BSL just ends up killing a lot of innocent dogs for no reason. Indeed, the question remains: Will any dog survive this doggy death crusade?

Read more about it:

KC Dog Blog’s Truth, deceit, & why Breed Specific Legislation fails regardless of what some might say is an excellent evaluation of dogsbite.org‘s “data” as well.

No Pit Bull Bans