So what's the BIG deal with BIG dogs?

Warning: Graphic images contained in this article.  Not for the easily deterred or the young.

So What's The BIG Deal with BIG dogs?

Aww look! They are checking the flavor!

The arguments abound but it seems each side has issues when it comes to dogs, especially big dogs, but more specifically Pit Bull Terriers and Rottweiler Breeds.  Why are these canines getting so much bad press?  I'll look at this from a logical stand point and then showcase it from the "How obvious does it have to be?" stand point. What it all boils down to is that dogs bite.  They bite just about anything they can.  They do it all of the time and we think it's 'cute' until the fateful day it happens to us, or worse our children.

The worst arguments can be found when it comes to pit bull owners claiming the innocence of their beloved breed.  The dark truth comes from the fact that many reports on the brutality of the pit bull come from FORMER pit bull owners after an attack.  Let's take a moment to look at the relative data and skip over the anecdotal evidence. 

The Merritt Clifton study of attacks from 1982 through 2006 tracks the occurrence of dog attacks and maimings. According to Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes were responsible for 65% of deaths and 68% of maimings that occurred during a period of 24 years in the USA. (Clifton, Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, September 1982 to November 13, 2006)

Attacked by Pit Bull while on his bike.

Another good study is the "Breeds of dogs involved infatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998" released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2008.  This study has come under attack for not representing a wide enough range of cases via their collection methodology, I think what few people understand is that MORE reports of cases aren't going to make this number go down, the best it could do is sprinkle the statistics better over the full course of dog breeds, making the numbers even more staggering. Dog Bite Related Fatalities (DBRF) only account for 0.0002 percent of all incidents where people are bitten by a dog!

Attacked by a pit bull after hearing a yelp from a pup.  This lady was nowhere near the pups in question.

The facts remain, a dog is not and CANNOT rationalize like a human, and yet we try to place our own idea of what a dog is "thinking" into our schema of how they should react. Dogs are animals.  Dogs are animals that have not evolved higher levels of reasoning.  If you doubt this please feel free to have your dog go to the store purchase a can of dog food, open it, and feed themselves.  We push our emotions onto our perceptions of our animals.  And why wouldn't we?  We've been doing it since the beginning of domestication, when we first reached out our hands and enlisted the help of the wolf for domestic energy needs.  But did domestication work?  Not really, what we call a domestic animal still relies heavily on their animal instincts and impulses.  A truly domesticated animal wouldn't bite, fight, or claw at an owner unless provoked by a similar action.  These dogs, however, are not biting, clawing, and rending flesh over a survival instinct but rather a territorial one.  The first and most important thing to remember about 'domesticated' animals is that they live extremely egocentric lives. 

Erin Dickenson after being mauled by two pit bulls on the way home from school.

Lets get back to debunking the popular arguments in favor of keeping dogs under loose regulation:

• About 40 children per year die from drowning in water filled pails.  A person in their lifetime is 16 times more likely to die in a water pail then be killed by a pit bull. - what this doesn't account for is that if pit bulls were as prolific as water pails you would be MORE likely to be killed by a pit bull.

• Approximately 50 children are killed every year in their cribs.  That's 25 times the number of children killed by pit bulls. - (a.k.a. 2 kids) Again if pit bulls were 25 times more present in homes with children you would find that number to be at odds with your beliefs.

• A child is 800 times more likely to be killed by a caretaker than a pit bull.  - I just can't say this enough, if pit bulls were everywhere a child's care taker is then there wouldn't be a population issue.

The issue isn't getting better either.  Political stymie and emotional endeavors hold dog regulations in check and this is the REAL issue.  Our population is expanding quicker then ever before.  Our predominantly rural society has changed into an urban upswing and it doesn't look like it is going to change any time soon.  If you can pull anything away from this please pay attention here.  Our population is expanding but we are not as exclusive as we were many years ago.  Dog attacks are going up each and every year because we are packing ourselves and our dogs into ever tighter spaces.  For us this is just something we process into our lives but for dogs this is not in their make-up.  They are able to encounter more people and in less space day-to-day now than they ever would have 100 years ago.  They are also more likely to be dissatisfied with less room to move.  We are advancing beyond what we can reasonably expect evolution to account for in dogs.

Exactly what triggers an attack is still unclear.  In this case it was handing out peaches.

As you've read this far you've likely noticed that I've left out dog owners in this article.  I'll address that now.  It is hard to hold only the dog owner responsible for a dog when the wide majority of dog owners have very little idea of how a dog actually thinks or to hold them responsible for a reaction that can happen within a millisecond.  It is easy for us to hold owners responsible because to us it makes sense.  We hold a driver responsible for the accident they cause, we hold a gun wielder responsible for the damage their bullets make, but we neglect to see that a dog, unlike a gun or automobile react and move under their own authority.  Hell we even spend hundreds of dollars taking our dogs to schools to hope that they can learn to not react they way their genes tell them to.

Any dog trained to attack or otherwise, if under the perception that it is being treated harshly (especially by a child) may bite a person.  Any dog can be turned into a dangerous dog, be it by the owner, the environment, or a misperception of actual events. All dogs have the potentiality to attack, we even encourage this behavior in our cuddly pups, playing tug-o-war with a rope is drawing on their natural reaction of rending and tearing flesh from a carcass... but damn it is cute!

So, what triggers dogs to attack?  Simple answer we don't really know.  Obvious aggression or threatening behavior can be a trigger but so can selling peaches from a stand, slipping on ice while walking your dog, and even sneezing. It all lies within the perception of the dog, so as people cohabiting with dogs we are asked to monitor the possible perception of any dog we come in contact with to ensure it doesn't attack us... and then it still may attack depending on the unforeseen. A biased but clear case for pit bull triggers can be found at DogsBite.org - Triggers: What Prompts a Pit Bull to Attack?

One cannot look at an individual dog, state its breed, and then state whether or not it is liable to attack.  So why all of the pit bull hate?  Simple, pit bulls are the most likely dog to attack anyone.  Normally, dogs tend to stick with the hierarchical and  admittedly smart process of not messing with other animals bigger than themselves, this is actually why more attacks on children are reported.  However, the pit bull does not have this limiting factor in it's personality.  Pit bulls are just as likely to maul an adult as they are anyone else, they spread the love evenly and at a greater rate than most dogs attack just children.

The conclusion is somewhat obvious, dogs are animals.  All dogs have been shown to kill, maim, claw, rend, and hurt us.  The truth then is that big dogs hurt more effectively than smaller breeds, and the more we grow the more this will happen.  So this isn't so much a case of "Why is everyone picking on my <enter name of big dog breed here>?" , but rather a case of "Why aren't we making uniform policy against all dogs?"