The home secretary is seeking "urgent advice" about banning American XL Bully dogs as footage shows one of the animals attacking an 11-year-old girl and a man in Birmingham. Suella Braverman has said the animals are a "clear and lethal" danger after the video of the attack in Bordesley Green emerged on the social media platform TikTok. West Midlands Police are investigating after two men, who were bitten and left with injuries to their shoulders and arms, were taken to hospital to be treated for their injuries after the incident on Saturday.
About 15 years ago I volunteered with a pitbull rescue, then did a bunch of research on pitbull attacks in grad school. The problem then was that most statistics like this were unreliable once you saw what they labeled a pitbull. In most cases it was just any “mutt” was considered a pitbull. I don’t know if things have changed, never really looked into it since then, but I’m still a bit wary of stats like this without knowing their data is accurate.
My little dog doesn’t have an ounce of pitbull in her. Her mom was a border collie/lab mix, and the Father was the Neighbor’s boston terrier/english pointer mix. The only thing remotely pitbull like about her is her underbite. That said, I’ve lost count of the times somebody at the dog park, usually someone with a little ankle biter dog of the teacup persuasion, has gotten uppity about me having a “pitbull” off leash. People are dumb.
That about sums it up
Every breed you listed besides lab are nippers but are not notorious maulers. Sorry your little nipper is getting lumped in with the murder muffins.
It doesn’t help that a lot of strays/rescues have a good chunk of pit bull blood in them.
Both of my dogs are rescues from programs in the southern US. One of them certainly seems to have some pit in him…beautiful brindle coat, block head, incredibly strong jaw, stocky-muscular build. He’s dumb as a bag of rocks but incredibly loyal and affectionate. Because of the stigma around pits, though, I’m afraid to get him DNA tested.
Actually it’s more likely a pitt is labeled incorrectly like a lab etc to get them adopted to people too ignorant to know better. So that’s gonna invalidate that statement.
Seems like an issue specific to wherever you went to school.
Most rational people would immediately draw clear separations between mutts and pitbulls or pitbull mixes.
I don’t think this comment is indicative of the problem at all.
Curious where you went to school though, lol. Might want to get a refund for that degree.
Most rational people would, but it was an indicator that people who report dog bites did not know the difference.
And I’m not sure what my school had to do with it. At that time I was sourcing data from external sources, using data reported on police reports or by other organizations. Someone else commenting referenced the breed specific legislation advocacy group that was a source for some of that data.
My comment might not have been clear, I was criticising the data I was finding.
The studies I’ve seen that people cite to say “you can’t identify a breed by looking at it” usually are playing a semantic game - and what often is not emphasized is that the same research shows that when people identify a dog as a “pit bull,” that those people are quite accurate in identifying–by morphology alone–the presence of genetics from one of the several aggressive breeds people call “pit bulls.” And that the morphology is positively correlated with higher aggression.
I remember when climate change deniers were not sure about the science either…
Being skeptical of data and their sources is a fundamental part of science.
were?