C.W. Nevius, who I told you was wrong here, has a follow up to his lame pit bull article:

Beck has dealt with the pit bull fanatics in his studies as an epidemiologist and says he’s observed that, “The arguments and the people strike me as very similar to the gun control people.” First was the question of the overall population of pit bulls. Sure, several readers complained, if the pit bull population is increasing it is obvious there are more bites.

For starters, although pit bulls are being bred (and over bred) wildly, most experts, including Beck and his former student, Randall Lockwood, of the Humane Society of the United States, estimate that pit bulls and pit mixes are no more than 6 percent of the overall dog population.

You mean anti-gun control people like me. Freudian slip? You say it like it’s a bad thing. Consistently, us pro-gun folks tend to have the facts on our side. I would like to see the basis for the 6% number. One thing you fail to account for is that pits, like Rotties, have a tendency to attract owners that shouldn’t own any dog, much less a dog with the gameness of various performance breeds.

For his study Beck used the American Kennel Club registrations by breed. Although the AKC doesn’t register or recognize pit bulls as a breed, Beck included the broad range of dogs, like Staffordshire terriers that fall within the range. Beck stresses that, if anything, his inclusion of dogs with pit bull characteristics was conservative, it was not a wide range of any dog with a square jaw, for instance. And before you fire up your flaming e-mail, Beck reminds you that this is “a representative sample,” not the total of all dogs. But it is certainly larger than the one we use to rate television programs.

So, he excluded all the bully type registries (and there are several like the NKC) which means his numbers are wrong.

Others wrote that it is all those terrible owners who are the real problem. That’s true to a point. The number of backyard breeders is appalling. The dogs are poorly cared for and often end up homeless. That is one reason the percentage of pit bulls killed in shelters, according to studies by animal expert Merritt Clifton, is 93 percent.

“However,” says Beck, “if a very small part of the dog population accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the serious and fatal attacks, ‘pit bull- ness’ is the cause.” Look, we are not surprised when a pointer starts pointing, or when my dachshund starts digging. Everyone accepts that. But if we start talking about a low tolerance for pain and a propensity to attack (with pit bulls) it is wrong.

It gets back to the point of pit bulls attracting the wrong kind of owners. So, he almost gets it. It is the fault of the owners. And your Dachshund has the worst temperament of any dog but you’re a responsible owner, I assume.

We wouldn’t allow this in any other case. If this animal was carrying a disease we’d just say, “You can’t have it.” That’s why you can’t have monkeys. They are too prone to disease. The pit bull has a disease. Now maybe it was us who caused it (over years of breeding), but at this point he does not fit in well in an urban environment.”

It’s a disease now? That may be the dumbest thing I have ever heard said about dogs.

Update: XRLQ (which you should be careful not to misspell) states in comments:

1. Note how comparing anyone to gun advocates is supposed to automatically make them wrong. Frisco’s bad in that way, and the media is worse, so I guess it figures that the Frisco media is as bad as it gets.

2. Last week, pit bulls accounted for “every other” dog in the East Bay shelter. Now they’re down to 6% of the canine population. And we’re supposed to respect that figure because it’s a “conservative” (i.e., probably too low) estimate. Huh?

3. My favorite part was this idiot’s claim that pit bulls have a “low tolerance for pain.” Pits are known, of course, for their high tolerance of pain, which is why two of them go on fighting in the pit long after one of them should have conceded the fight.

The last two I should have gotten around to but the baby started fussing.

Posted in uncategorized on July 16th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |