Chester - "the kind of dog who makes people want a dog"

branwyne comes across things that just scream for my attention sometimes, like the forward in this dog book written by JIM GORANT.

this pussy cat journalist is a pet peeve of mine. while GORANT is a hero in the eyes of the pit nutter, he is a reckless hack in mine. he doesn't perform basic fact checking and he has no qualms about repeating dangerous propaganda that encourages gullible dupes that it is safe to bring a fighting dog into their homes. GORANT'S sources: AFF and BADRAP. the result was yet another cherry picked sugar coated book about the poor misunderstood abused nanny dog that would make JANE proud.

after handing the rough draft of lost dogs over to his wife to read, doggie fever began its descent on the GORANT household and shortly after he finished polishing the pit bulldog's turd of an image, he set out to add a dog to the family.

GORANT started his search on line, inquiring about dogs that caught his fancy regardless of location until an intelligent friend pointed out the foolishness of his ways.

it was refreshing to see GORANT admit that he is not a good journalist.

given this champion of the underdog's success at bringing the ultimate gladiator into america's living rooms and nurseries, one would think that the GORANT family would naturally gravitate towards the all american nanny dog.

NOPE. instead GORANT chose "the kind of dog who makes people want a dog."

GORANT chose a "spunky snaggle toothed" SCHNAUZER MIX.

no nanny dogs for JIM GORANT'S wife and kids. pit bulldogs are a perfectly fine choice for Darla Napora, Dax Borchardt and Jordan Ryan but like President Obama, pit bulldogs are not suitable for HIS family. and like President Obama, GORANT chose a safe breed for HIS family.



not one for pussy cat journalism, Animal People editor Merritt Clifton wrote an honest review of GORANT'S disingenuous pit bull puff piece.

*pussy cat journalism The failure of journalists to ask critical questions or raise important issues in their reporting; usually of controversial subject matter. It describes the path of least resistance to get a story. As a result, the story is usually one sided or one dimensional and many important questions are not raised or dealt with in the reporting.

The phrase is borrowed from observing the behavior of domesticated cats: It is used to describe how a cat may become accustomed to food from a bag or can, and thereby, its walking circle becomes a smaller path. For example, from the place where it lounges to the place where the food is set out in a dish. This cat no longer looks under bushes and hides in a tree. It is satisfied with the little effort, and enjoys snoozing whenever it can.

When comparing a native cat, their walking-about path is much larger. They might not return home for days. They enjoy spending time outdoors and scrutinizing things longer.

Whereas a domesticated cat knows where to look for food, the native or natural cat might spend more time looking and actually forgo eating, to stay in place, waiting for the right bird to come along.

Pit bull and children photos can't prove pit bulls are safe or owners are sane

The twelve year olds over at HuffPo have decided to leave their dangerous propaganda piece up and have added more photos despite having inadvertently proven how dangerous and misleading these photos of children and pit bulls are.  The kids at HuffPo accidentally included a photo of a child hugging a pit bull that later killed that child.  They don't seem to understand or care that they're encouraging dangerous behavior or that they've proven that capturing one moment in time proves exactly nothing.

The flub also has failed to deter parents from submitting for publication absolutely horrific photos of children riding, lying on, hugging on, or being posed with pit bulls.  They don't seem to notice that most of those pit bulls are not only not engaged with the child, but they look annoyed or distressed by the positions these parents are putting their children and their pit in.

So, after the fun we had with the "One of These Things is Not Like the Others" game, I'm proposing a new guessing game called "Which Pit is a HuffPo Submission and Which Pit Killed a Human Being."

We'll start with an easy one:

This is Nephi Selu on the right, of course, and this is the photo the HuffPo kids accidently included in their slideshow.  He was killed this year by his pit bull named Kava.  This is how his family described their relationship: "All of this is definitely a shock because it's almost like two best friends that turned on... like one best friend turned on the other."

Here is another pair of photos - which is a HuffPo photo submission and which is a  pit bull that killed the crawler pictured with it?

The boy on the left is Tyzhel McWilliams.  He was killed by the dog pictured with him, Zulu.  His mother judged Zulu as an individual and found him to be a nurturer and she "expressed disbelief that the pit bull that seemed to watch over the infant like a protective parent would ultimately end the baby’s life."

In this pair of photos, which is a HuffPo submission and which of these tolerant, smiling white pit bulls later killed a human being?

The pit bull in the photo on the right jumped its fence to kill an elderly neighbor  in his own yard.

Which is a HuffPo submission and which is a pit bull that killed a human being?

The pit bulls on the right killed a 10 year old boy after this photo was taken.  The boy, Justin Clinton, had known and played with the pit bulls since they were tiny puppies.

Which is a HuffPo submission and which pit bull later killed the child leading it on a loose leash?

The boy on the right is Nicholas Faibish who was killed by, Rex,  the pit bull on the right.

How about this pair?  Which is a HuffPo fur mommy submission and which child was killed by the pit bull snuggling with the child on the couch?

This one is a bit of a trick because the boy on the right is also Nicholas Faibish.  These photos of Nick look just like the HuffPo fur mommies' photos.  What the fur mommies are trying to show is that these photos prove that pit bulls can be part of normal families.  And it is haunting to know just how dangerously insane Maureen Faibish, Nick's mom, is and look at these photos of what looks like a normal kid with his not-aggressive-at-the-moment pit bull.  If you have the time, you can read her side of the story of Nick's death HERE.  In her side of the story, she wants us to know that mostly, this was a "freak accident," that was certainly not her fault and no one should conclude from this that pit bulls are unsafe and no one should get rid of their pit bull just because her son was brutally killed by hers.

But, a freak accident does not exclude laying blame on her own dead son for escaping the basement she'd locked him in with a shovel wedged against the door.  And if there's any more blame to go around, it should rest on her female pit bull in heat who was not allowing her male pit bull to mate which made Max, the intact male, aggressive.  These photographs don't suggest any of the dangerous insanity this boy lived with until he was killed by it.

As commenters on the first HuffPo story noticed, some of these HuffPo fur mommies could not hide their crazy either. "Our neighbor's new pit meeting our new baby."

Irnwlsn takes the cake, though:
"When we adopted Bowser in 2010, the shelter classified him as "Not adoptable to families with children."  We called BS and took a chance, and a year later when Bowser became a big brother, we proved them wrong."

Just so we're clear: the chance they took was with their child's well being and life and the reason they took chances with their child's life was to prove a point about a pit bull.  Fucking turds.

Helpful Advice:
Dogs don't like hugs

Children need to know that getting face-to-face with any dog can be extremely dangerous. In the dog’s world this can be considered confrontational. A child might do this many times to the family dog with no consequence; however, this is not a 100% predictor of future behavior. It concerns me that I frequently see pet industry advertising showing children face-to-face with dogs.

Dogs don't like hugs and kisses

The Not-So-Hidden dangers of Taking Photos of Pets and Kids  "And stop encouraging dangerous behavior by recording it and sharing it on Facebook just because you think it’s cute."

Why Supervising Dogs and Kids Doesn't Work (answer: because people are too insensitive to their dogs and too stupid to read up on dog behavior)

Why the Huffington Post is Shit!

Huffington Post Wins the Egregious Bonehead Irresponsible Pit Bull Pandering Award

HuffPo is notorious for unabashed pit bull pandering, but now they've gone too far and have proven that twelve year old nitwits are running the show.

In a predictable Pit Bull Awareness Day fluff piece called "Your Kids And Pit Bulls Love Each Other," they throw up a couple paragraphs that regurgitate Donna Reynold's admission that the whole Nanny Dog thing is a lie.  And then, like Donna in her original admission, the twelve year olds at HuffPo minimize the significance of the lie by saying that there are just tons of photos that "prove" pit bulls are great with kids.

The HuffPo morons went the extra mile and created a slideshow of 73 photos sent in by loyal pit lovin' HuffPo readers of their children irresponsibly being allowed to hug, lie on, sit on, and ride pit bulls that, at that moment, weren't attacking the kids.

Normally I would not encourage you to scroll through this obnoxious display of flagrant disregard for a child's safety in the pursuit of pit bull propagandizing, but this time I really insist you must.  You must get to photo 61.  You will all recognize that photo of a child draped over and hugging on a pit bull because you all know that child was killed by that pit bull this year.

UPDATE: As predicted.  The tweens in charge at HuffPo have taken down the offending photo but left up the piece proving they are too stupid or too callous to care that the photos are dangerous and misleading lies.

Photo 61 shows 6 year old Nephi Selu hugging on a 2 year old pit bull named Kave whom the family described as Nephi's best friend.  You may recall that reports suggested that the reason the pit bull killed Nephi because Nephi was "riding the dog like a horse."  And you may recall that nutters from every corner of nutterland commented that obviously these parents were irresponsible because you should never let your child ride any dog.  I was staggered by the inclusion of this photo among dozens of equally offensive photos of children riding pit bulls shared with the explicit message, "pit bulls are safe."

Obviously, even though we all recognize, remember, and mourn Nephi's death, the twelve year olds at HuffPo didn't recognize the photo because they refused to look at or quickly forgot accounts of this child's death when they included him in their "pictures prove pit bulls are safe" bullshit.  They don't.  The submitter of this photo knew, though.  R C Palyo included this comment with his photo submission: "pit bull loved this boy to death!"  Even with that, the 12 year olds at HuffPo didn't get it.  And they have proven without a doubt that they seriously do not care about the victims of pit bulls.

Donna Reynolds is the literal architect of the "Nanny dogs may be a lie, but photos prove the same thing anyway so we're still good" line of propaganda.  Huge backfire, Donna.  Maybe you should pay attention to the victims and instruct your millions of mindless minions to do the same.

It is up to us to remember the victims and spread the word about the dangerousness of pit bulls because pit loving sociopaths all too easily can disregard the victims of their propaganda.  For pit bull awareness day, please spread this far and wide - this ugly, ironic oversight that was possible only because these assholes refuse to pay attention to the people killed by pit bulls.

By the way, I haven't left a comment on HuffPo because comments are moderated and my comment will never see the light of day and they will simply remove the single photograph.  They won't remove the propaganda.

the battle over statsitics

in case you haven't been following the messy bidness of dog bite statistics, some pussy cat journalist*, B12 starved animal activist and fact cooker in reno, neveda has been attacking the dog attack data collected over the last ~30 years by Animal People. it sparked a response from blogger SRUV, then dogsbite.org and finally Merritt Clifton himself. it's a good read. click HERE.

*warning this is not for intellectual featherweights, ie pit nutters


*pussy cat journalism The failure of journalists to ask critical questions or raise important issues in their reporting; usually of controversial subject matter. It describes the path of least resistance to get a story. As a result, the story is usually one sided or one dimensional and many important questions are not raised or dealt with in the reporting.

The phrase is borrowed from observing the behavior of domesticated cats: It is used to describe how a cat may become accustomed to food from a bag or can, and thereby, its walking circle becomes a smaller path. For example, from the place where it lounges to the place where the food is set out in a dish. This cat no longer looks under bushes and hides in a tree. It is satisfied with the little effort, and enjoys snoozing whenever it can.

When comparing a native cat, their walking-about path is much larger. They might not return home for days. They enjoy spending time outdoors and scrutinizing things longer.

Whereas a domesticated cat knows where to look for food, the native or natural cat might spend more time looking and actually forgo eating, to stay in place, waiting for the right bird to come along.