Saturday, March 10, 2012

Why Not Label Pit Bulls Dangerous? When the media gets it right

"It's not the dog's fault. "

 "My response to that is, "Who cares?"

"Chris Davis, who literally wrote the book on dog bites says this: There's a human being that's been significantly harmed. To debate, ok, was it the dog that did it or was it the owner. My response is who cares? Let's not put the rights of dogs over human beings." Chris Davis, Author of  When the Dog Bites"

 


thanks to:
KOMO 4 NEWS TV
KOMO 4 TV newscaster Eric Johnson
Miss WooHoo11
DubV

30 comments:

april 29 said...

Wow... It takes my breath away to see victims supported in this manner. Thank you KOMO!

cinnamon2005 said...

Nice! BTW-Serveral Crufts BOB including Bulldog fails vet check..here comes the whine!
https://www.facebook.com/teamjennyforever

scurrilous amateur blogger said...

fabb's knickers must be in a twist over this piece. i love it.

i was especially interested in "doctor" jim ha's comment about what percentage of genetics determines behavior.

"very roughly, based on the research that's been done, the weight that I put on that information i would probably say is 20-30%, something like that."

watch this part again. listen carefully at all of his qualifiers, the vagueness of his words (probably, roughly, something like) listen to his emphasis on HIS OPINION that is based on research, his overemphasis on the word "I", watch him squint his eyes tight, look up at the ceiling and shake his head in the negative. he is lying. even he doesn't believe what he is saying. he is another science whore. i love watching people lie.

so sad when even 8th grade hillbillies have a better grasp of dog behavior and genetics than a "doctor" at a prestigious university. even diane jessup states that behavior is 90% genetics.

thanks dubv and snack for bringing this to my attention. big thanks to miss woohoo, i'm a fan.

cinnamon2005 said...

dog behavior and genetics seems to be so twisted depending on the dog. So if a person said their lab pup was displaying hunting traits people would say of course..it's a lab..genetic. But a pitbull acting aggressive..genetically bred for aggression...no it's not genetics..it's the owners. It gets so tiring. You wouldn't get a Great Pyreenes if you want a hunting dog because no matter how much training..they weren't bred to hunt! Heck, let it off lead you will probably never see it again.

Anonymous said...

love all the fake attack videos flooding the internet. "pitbull attacks baby"- then you get to see a shitbull licking a babys face. these people probably think they are being original and yet there are a thousand other morons having the same brainwave at any one time.

DubV said...

"love all the fake attack videos flooding the internet. "pitbull attacks baby"- then you get to see a shitbull licking a babys face. these people probably think they are being original and yet there are a thousand other morons having the same brainwave at any one time."

The nutters don't realize how insensitive they are being to actual attack victims. It's like having a video saying "Hung man found on tree" and having a pantless man sitting in a tree house waving hi. And then doing that 10,000 times.

Part of their strategy is to make it harder to find real dog attack vids on youtube. And what do they do to the people who actually find them and put them in one spot? Flag their vids and try to get the channel taken down. Youtube often falls for it because they don't want to take the time to research the situation.

cinnamon2005 said...

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2012/03/saginaw_county_animal_control_5.html

scurrilous amateur blogger said...

"Part of their strategy is to make it harder to find real dog attack vids on youtube."

EXACTLY! that is why it is so critical that you down vote those videos when you see them and don't finish watching them.

DubV said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DubV said...

Regarding, Jim Ha...it is a definite pattern that behaviorists (and not those that study the evolution of behavior) usually overestimate the effects of nurture. It makes total sense since that is how they make their money. The more behavior is out of their control, the less they are needed. In a toy example, if genetics determines behavior 100%, then there would be no need for the Jim Has and Milans of the world. So they are always going to downplay it.

I would be interested in how this nature/nurture split could be quantified in something like a dog. Maybe they do have some clever ways to tease this apart by placing dogs of known relatedness (perhaps 100% in clones/identical twins) and then subject them to different training regimes.

Still, I'd have to think there are built in conceptual difficulties here. First, compare a feral dog versus the most highly trained dog on the planet. How can you say that the feral dog's behavior is mostly due to nurture? Of course, any number for it will likely be lower than for the highly trained dog. Is Jim Ha speaking for the average dog? How could the average dog be ascertain clinically? Again, just points to the extreme imprecision in what he said.

Further, everything a dog is exposed to is a form of conditioning. You are training your dog even when you don't think you are training your dog. So, how can Ha ever account for this? Would he take a group of dogs, determine how related they are genetically, and then determine how much everything about them has differed. This would include things as mundane as how many times each have ridden in a car.

Further, what behaviors would you look at to determine relatedness in behavior? Let's say we look just at the ability to stay away from food on the ground vs. not. If we looked at this only, then two dogs could have a 0% overlap in behavior simply because one was trained to stay in that circumstance and one was not.

On genetic relatedness, very small genetic differences can have profound effects. Unless they are using twins/clones, I don't see how genetic relatedness and behavior can be quantified. As some major changes will have small effects and vice versa.

DubV said...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253978/

Interesting study. It mentions the fox farm experiment, which tends to cast doubt on Ha's assertion.

scurrilous amateur blogger said...

belyaev's fox farm experiment doesn't just cast doubt on james ha and his crooked ilk's assertion, it annihilates it.

DubV said...

How nutters influence science....

from

http://www.k9behavioralgenetics.com/pdf/Literature%20PDF/AggressionStudy_CoverLetter.pdf

"We realize that this is a very controversial trait to research and want to assure you that our entire group has publicly criticized breed-specific legislation. It is clear that this type of inappropriate aggression is seen throughout all breeds of dogs. It is our hope that by identifying genetic markers for predisposition to this type of aggression, we might better address the need for modified training practices at a young age and improved breeding and puppy-raising practices, which we hope will remove the negative stigma associated with particular breeds."

I thought you weren't supposed to start with your conclusion?

scurrilous amateur blogger said...

"I thought you weren't supposed to start with your conclusion? "

only we are held to a higher unrealistic pie in the sky standard.



how nutters influence U.S. law with their propaganda.

scurrilous amateur blogger said...

great find dubv, i have added it to my collection.

Garnet said...

How did Jim Ha end up with a doctorate?

Let's think critically for a moment about the assertion that pit bulls kill and maul more people than any other breed because thugs choose them and not because they've been selected for aggression.

Well, why would thugs choose pit bulls, over standard poodles or Irish setters? It's not a random dog breed choice there. Poodles or setters have not been selected for sadistic and violent 'sports' (bull/bear baiting and then dog fighting). It's the genetic heritage of the dog that leads criminals to choose it over other breeds.

What a lot of people do not know about the fox experiment is that there also was a strain of fox bred for aggression. That selection experiment did produce very aggressive animals. Aggressive behaviour has a large heritable component.

The socialization arguement is baloney as well. Racing greyhounds are not terribly well socialized as puppies. Many people, however, do adopt them into homes, and the dogs are often quite nervous in new homes at first. However, they eventually habituate to their new environments and it's really, really rare for an ex-racing greyhound to maul or kill. It's because greyhounds were not bred specifically to maul and kill animals they should view as being members of their social group.

Then there's the arguement that pit bulls were bred to fight other dogs, not people. So? Dog aggression is still aggression.

cinnamon2005 said...

http://www.kgun9.com/news/local/138511629.html

Small Survivors said...

Other behavioral geneticists have mentioned the nutters

Canine Behavioral Genetics: Pointing Out the Phenotypes and Herding up the Genes

Certainly aggression has been considered at length.62 However, the social and political ramifications of identifying genes that control this complex behavior are not lost on either the companion animal or human-genetics communities. Dog fanciers argue that there are “no bad dogs, only bad dog owners” and that laws that would outlaw so-called “aggressive” dog breeds within city limits are discriminatory to owners of those breeds.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253978/

But I like Eric Johnson and Chris Davis' responses: "who cares" and "so what" when it comes to human safety.

DubV said...

From Cinnamon's link...

"That prompted this response from Lynne Senyk Tafaro, who attempted to remind the posters that they're going batty over a story they haven't even seen yet: "When you attack a story that has not even aired, you lose credibility accusing past stories of being 'fear based and completely one sided.' What comes across, loud and clear, is a bias so deep that rational analysis and debate just isn't possible on this topic, with many of you. And that's a problem. Because if you can't discuss the issue rationally, how can you properly own the dog?""

Animal Uncontrol said...

More than one thing can be true at a time, and while any dog attack is the owner's *responsibility*, it is also true that the animal involved willfully uses violence against humans to get what it wants. In my opinion, any dog that attacks a person and causes serious injury or death should be summarily put down and the owner jailed.

DubV said...

Good post Animal Uncontrol. Nutters would have us believe that it is normal behavior of most dog breeds to want to kill humans, even their owners. They want to convince us of this so that what their breed does won't seem to fall outside the mainstream of canine behavior.

cinnamon2005 said...

The BBC has a docum on pitbulls but so far can't find it airing here in the states:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bbvfk

Jim Reeve said...

I agree totally. Who cares about the dogs. I've read that approx 50% of all attacks on humans are from pit bulls. The prosecutor in our case said that 90% of all attacks, he'd seen were from pit bulls, mastiffs and rottweilers. So the numbers fit.

cinnamon2005 said...

http://coldwetnose.blogspot.com/2012/01/wheres-my-muzzle.html

Small Survivors said...

The numbers fit from so many sources, Jim.

The pit bull lobby is taking a page from the tobacco lobby.

The first research to make a statistical correlation between cancer and smoking was published in 1930 in Cologne, Germany. In 1938, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University reported that smokers do not live as long as non-smokers.

The overarching theme of big tobacco's efforts was to keep alive the appearance of a "debate" or "controversy" of the health effects of cigarette smoking long after credible studies had ended the debate.

Anonymous said...

i like how pitters and dingbats, who usually are borderline illiterate ,going by their comments, aways claim we are speaking from ignorance instead of a judicious weighing up of both sides of the argument. we dont agree with the pitter point of view re shit-bulls so this really means we arent even aware of all the so-called facts spewed out by the pro-pit propagandists/ apologists? of course we are but perhaps the educated/ informed pro-pitters are too stupid to realize this .

DubV said...

"perhaps the educated/ informed pro-pitters are too stupid to realize this"

Too dumb or just can't get around their attachment to a pit bull.

Pitters have made me hate the words ignorant and uneducated due to their chronic overuse of these usually in caps and near the begin of long blocks of text.

cinnamon2005 said...

Dubv.
I totally agree with you. The pit people seem to cut and paste the same tired comments.

Anonymous said...

its amazing to me that theres apparently more variation in the pitbull breed than there is in the pitter creed. they really are like a weird breed of mutant humans that look alike , sound alike and somehow always come up with the same transparent falsehoods and idiotic catch phrases.

scurrilous amateur blogger said...

"weird breed of mutant humans" go snarky.