Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts

Monday, October 26, 2015

The Truth About Bouviers Des Flandres and Pit Bull Awareness Month

We've all seen the hype and push to sell pit bulls to just anyone this month with Pit Bull Week, Pit Bull Awareness Day, and Pit Bull Awareness Month.  And we’ve all seen at least one of the hundreds of articles entitled “The Truth about Pit Bulls” or “Pit Bull Myths” telling us that pit bulls have an undeserved bad reputation and make great pets for just about anyone and please go get one today.

Other breed clubs have the equivalent of "The Truth About Pit Bulls" information pages. But, while "Truth About Pit Bulls" pages are created to encourage just anyone to impulsively buy a pit bull by distorting history, making false claims and just plain lying, Truth pages written about other breeds serve to protect the breed from being abused in the hands of those same kinds of impulsive, low-information, naive potential owners.

Bouvier des Flanders
Ronald Reagan's Bouvier, Lucky

The grandma of Truth pieces is "Don't Buy a Bouvier" by Pam Green (1992), perhaps written after the Bouvier des Flanders breed jumped slightly in popularity after people saw Ronald Reagan with his Bouvier, Lucky. As the title indicates, it was written to warn off impulsive, uncommitted potential owners from buying Bouviers thus preventing Bouviers from being abused, neglected and prematurely killed. There are 9 Bouviers listed for adoption in North America on Petfinder. Though Bouviers are a large, dominant, protective breed that have been used for police work, Clifton's "Dog Attack Deaths and Maimings" report lists zero Bouviers killing or maiming a person in North America as of 2014.

The breed is strong, can be aggressive and potentially dangerous in the wrong hands. But the breed is rare and few dogs end up in shelters, so it presents virtually zero threat to public safety and Bouviers can live long and happy lives in the hands of committed and responsible owners. That is called breed stewardship.  Stewards and protectors of a breed do not want their dogs to become popular or to pawn their dogs off on just anyone by lying about the characteristics of the breed because that gets people injured or killed and hurts the dogs, too.

The gold star of breed stewardship and advocacy goes to the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America. Their Truth page pulls absolutely no punches. They push back hard against the increased public awareness and potential impulse buyers that followed Eddy's (Frasier TV show) and Wishbone's appearances on TV. They carefully explain how a dog actor gives a very misleading impression of the real Jack Russell Terrier's temperament.  They even made a logo with the slogan:  


Contrast that with this pit bull pushing craziness:





Here’s a sample of other breed clubs that have adapted or been inspired by “Don’t Buy a Bouvier”


Contrast that with the pit bull pushers and the myths and lies they perpetuate to sell pit bulls to any and everyone with disasterous results when they should be screaming to the rafters for Mandatory Spay and Neuter and demand that pit bull ownership be regulated:

The Truth About Pit Bulls - Nat Geo Wild -  dead link
Pit Bulls are Noble, Loving, Loyal, Playful - Ed Boks - dead link
We Were Wrong About Pit Bulls. Learn the Truth - Best Friends - dead link

Update from a 2011 post



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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Dirty Liars Exposed: Bulladelphia

Pit bull advocates are known to lie through their teeth with no sense of shame or guilt. This lying contributes to the pit bull problem; unsuspecting owners get a "nice" pit bull, only to later be killed by their own dog.

I found a site that is no different - it is full of blatant lies. What I wonder is why people believe this bullshit even when faced with the facts. Here's a breakdown on a couple of the lies on bulladelphia.org.

Lie #1: "No spayed/neutered, indoor pit bull has ever killed a person."


It doesn't take much digging around to find cases of loved, spayed/neutered indoor pit bulls killing people. Like Tina Marie Canterbury.

October 2, 2007 | Middleburg, FL
Tina Marie Canterbury, 42-years old, was killed by her two red-nosed pit bulls. She had raised both dogs, Rebel and Thor, since they were pups. Both had been neutered and lived indoors. According to her cousin, Bill Canterbuy, the dogs often slept with her at night. Tina had been taking out the trash when the dogs attacked. Her son attempted to rescue her and was also bitten. Authorities eventually shot and killed both dogs. Animal Crimes Detective Annie Henderson said,"This was a responsible owner. These animals never had any history of any type of aggression."

Dirty lie exposed.

Lie #2:
"According to studies by the CDC, a person is more likely to be killed…
- by a family member
- by a falling coconut
- in a bedroom slipper-related accident
- choking on a marble
- drowning in a 5-gallon bucket
- getting struck by lightning
…than by a pit bull."

These "studies" were never performed. I emailed the website and asked them politely if they could send me a direct link to the source of the material, but all they could provide was the front page. How do I know these studies weren't performed? Besides n extensive search of the CDC's website, I took the liberty to ask the CDC whether or not the studies were conducted. Their response when asked if the scenarios listed by bulladelphia.org really are more likely to kill a person than a pit bull:

"NCHS [CDC's National Center for Health Statistics] does not collect data to confirm the statistical claim you are referring to."

Translation: They doesn't perform that kind of study. If they don't perform those studies, there is no way that bulladelphia.org could have acquired that information from the CDC. However, in the same email response was this, that contradicts bulladelphia.org's claims:

"A CDC study on fatal dog bites found that at least 25 breeds of dogs were involved in 238 human deaths over 20 years. Rottweiler and pit bull-type dogs were involved in more than half of the deaths."

I also found a report conducted by the CDC on breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998, which also contradicts bulladelphia.org's claims:

"...the data indicate that Rottweilers and pit bull-type dogs accounted for 67% of human DBRF [dog bite related fatalities] in the United States between 1997 and 1998. It is extremely unlikely that they accounted for anywhere near 60% of dogs in the United States during that same period and, thus, there appears to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities."

That's right. Breed-specific problem.

It's worth noting that for falling coconuts to be more likely to kill somebody than a pit bull, a falling coconut would have to kill a U.S. citizen every 21 days. I don't know about you, but where I live in the Midwestern U.S., there are more pit bulls than palm trees.

Case closed. Again, pit bull advocates are quite often liars, because to justify keeping a pit bull, one must tell blatant, dirty lies. Pit bull advocates also choose to ignore the facts because it will go against their twisted worldviews. Why do they not feel guilty?

Oh, I almost forgot. Here's the story behind the "coconuts kill more people than X" myth. It started with sharks, and it was recycled for pit bulls. Whatever you plug the myth into, it's false.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012

The Animal Farm Foundation Propaganda Machine in Action: There's no such thing as bait dogs!




The Animal Farm Foundation has now decreed that no longer shall minions speak of "bait dogs."

Once upon a time before pit bull rescues got $18,000 for each Vick pit bull they rehabilitated, it was considered unethical to speculate that a pit bull rescue might have been a bait dog when the rescuer really had no such knowledge, because that would by lying. That ethical reason has been abandoned long ago.

And though I don't believe AFF has participated directly in promoting scarred pit bulls as bait dogs, they have been silent on the subject since it became all the rage to adopt fight bust dogs into people's homes. In the world of pit bull rescue, there were only fighting dogs and bait dogs - all pit bulls. No losers and no bait dogs of other breeds or cats either. Ergo, Any pit bull that had scars, worn teeth, no ears, and cowered when taken away from the chain set in grew up on must be the victim bait dog.

And the reason to stop calling pit bulls bait dogs is not to get back to ethics - ie not lying. No, the reasons to stop are:
1. '"bait dogs" are mostly an urban legend.'
2. "you demonize" the fighting dogs that merely have the love deep down inside to rip other dogs to shreds. (paraphrasing)

The responses start out with the propaganda gulpers saying "you've changed me through education." (seriously) One supports the claim by asserting that the HSUS created the bait dog myth in its dogfighting campaign which is what caused rampant dogfighting in the first place.


But soon people arrived who lost their shit over the fact that AFF called bait dogs an urban legend. When challenged, AFF said, read carefully, we only said only "MOSTLY an urban legend."

Have no doubt, though, the minions will fall in line and pretty soon we'll be reading all over the internet how bait dogs are an urban legend.

This is the first step in quashing the whole subject of dogfighiting so the AFF and BFAS can go on squeezing money out of fight bust dogs and adopting them out to our neighbors. Pretty soon, they will all just be victims of abuse and no one should speak the DF word which is an urban legend anyway.

Here's some good comments:


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