Thoughts on Pitbulls?

[tompaynter]

I understand your confusion if, as it sounds, you've never had experience with a shelter or a foster group. Or, it seems, with a lot of dogs. Abused dogs generally have a lot of signs they exhibit. Poorly socialized dogs, both with respect to humans and other animals, can be spotted pretty well, too, especially in an environment like a shelter that provides controlled interactions of both kinds. Abused and neglected dogs often come into such environments by way of police/animal control, as well, which provides further background. Animal fosterers in particular tend to have experience and knowledge on these matters, as well as focused attention on the animals.

Before you said that a wise and caring owner could rehabilitate an abused dog. Now you seem to be saying that most abused dogs are...filtered out by the system and put down? I'm not sure, because you aren't specific.

I'm seeing a tendency for an all-or-nothing pattern in your reasoning. Is any background on a dog exhaustive? Of course not. Then again, neither are FBI background checks... Like most things in life, it's a matter of risk analysis and mitigation, not certainty.



A house with children is a different environment than one without. I already mentioned something of how I managed that risk with children of my own, earlier. In our case, we didn't have dogs with the size or temperament to cause dire harm, and once one of them bit one child (because the child leapt on a dog he didn't see, startling the animal), we changed things to prevent that from recurring. This was because of our risk and benefit analyses, because we're grown folks, and we take responsibility for our duties.


If you are saying that people with children should not own pitbulls, I certainly agree.


As to the matter of neighbors, there are reasons we teach our children how to behave around animals, including not petting strange dogs. Why we have a fenced backyard. Why we've called the authorities, coordinated with neighbors, and even physically intervened when a pack of escaped neighbors' dogs were running the neighborhood. Why I carry a continuum of force tools for defending against threats. Why we pay attention to when they're outside. And so on - because that's our responsibility. We cannot control other people, nor should we want to. We must adapt to unknowns and things outside our control, and thereby not only care for our children, but teach them how to do the same in the process.

I interpret this as, "In order to preserve the right of people to own pitbulls, I am willing to 1) put a tall and sturdy fence around my backyard, 2) coordinate with my neighbors, 3) carry weapons at most or all times." Some of your other measures--teaching your children how to behave around dogs, intervening when you know there is a pack of dogs about, and paying attention "to when your children are outside", don't seem like effective measures to deal with the berserk pitbull from down the street that suddenly appears while your child is in the front yard. Which is definitely a scenario that happens. When seconds count, you and your EDC weapon are in the kitchen making lunch. Unless you meant "watch our children every second they are outside of the house or fenced backyard."

See, the thing is, your neighbor owning a "rescued" pitbull forces you to take all these precautions. And were you to "rescue" a pitbull, then your neighbor has to take all these precautions. Maybe your neighbor doesn't want a tall sturdy fence around his backyard, or to carry various weapons at all times. Because, although you may be the wisest and most caring dog owner in the world, and your rescue pitbull the most carefully vetted, your neighbor doesn't know that. Not for sure, not unless you give up an awful lot of privacy.

(And for what it's worth, in that neighbor's dogs scenario, the black lab mix dogs were the ones who charged at an elderly woman in a pack, and the pit bull in the group was the friendly, non-aggressive one that was happy to be led back to its house.)

I never once argued for unfettered large dog access to toddlers for any reason, nor did anyone else here. Again, you seem to be reducing these things to all-or-nothing scenarios.



Again, sir - all-or-nothing. Children and grandmothers have been killed by dogs of multiple breeds. Some people are better able to deal with more aggressive animals than others. Not all fatal or grievous maulings happen in the nightmare scenario of a berserk dog that just won't stop, either - some less intense situations cause such harm. Everyone makes judgement calls and everyone makes risk analysis. By the same token, as some have said here, there are people with experience with pit bulls that have never gone into blind killer rages. There have also been non-pits who have gone into such states.

You cannot eliminate all risk, and all the more so with children around. No one lives like a Pierson's Puppeteer, with no hard edges in the house, everything padded, nothing sharp or hard or dangerous at all. It's just not feasible. Otherwise, houses with children would have no electricity, no running water, hardly any furniture, etc. And even then, eliminating those risks would introduce others...

You don't want a pit bull? Fine. I fully respect and support your decision, and think no less of you for it. But to depict the decisions of others as deficient by filtering them through your personal calculus and not theirs is not right, either. Perhaps I'm misreading your argument there - if so, I will respectfully apologize in all good will.

Deep pull on the Pierson's Puppeteer. Props.

I guess my point is that the decisions of others to own pitbulls, particularly "rescued" pitbulls, imposes costs on me, not just on them. And I do not see the upside, other than some combination of 1) it's fun for some people to own an intimidating dog, 2) owning a pitbull allows people to feel smug and in the know, smarter than all of those folks who stereotype pitbulls as dangerous, 3) a feeling of moral righteousness about rescuing a dog from a supposedly misunderstood breed. I understand that they are sweet dogs most of the time, but I do not count that as an upside, because lots of other types of dogs are sweet too.

We have empirical disagreements about things like 1) how likely pitbulls are to go into killing frenzies compared to other dogs, 2) how dangerous they are in such a state compared to other dogs, 3) whether a dog that has been raised in a bad environment can ever be rehabilitated with sufficient reliability. I don't have statistics. I just have an impression, garnered from media reports over the years, that the sweet family dog that suddenly goes berserk and terribly mauls multiple people despite efforts to stop it is almost always a pitbull.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I just have an impression, garnered from media reports over the years, that the sweet family dog that suddenly goes berserk and terribly mauls multiple people despite efforts to stop it is almost always a pitbull.

Media reports? Are you serious, Tom?

[Jason Donaldson]

Before you said that a wise and caring owner could rehabilitate an abused dog. Now you seem to be saying that most abused dogs are...filtered out by the system and put down? I'm not sure, because you aren't specific.

In many cases, such an owner can rehab an abused dog. Not all abused dogs are the same in their behavioral pathologies. What I was getting at about shelters and foster groups is that they are generally in a position to make evaluations on those pathologies, and act/inform accordingly. Hence the caveats many of them give like "this dog should not go to a house with children", "this dog needs a quiet house", etc. , in some cases even ending in putting the dog down humanely.

If you are saying that people with children should not own pitbulls, I certainly agree.

Not as a blanket statement - it depends on the origin of the dog, the size, maturity, and temperament of the children, the physical particulars of the home, whether the dog will be inside or outside, whether the dog has free run of the house, and many such factors. We disagree on this, I understand. I'm not trying to persuade you right now, just making my stand clear.

I interpret this as, "In order to preserve the right of people to own pitbulls, I am willing to 1) put a tall and sturdy fence around my backyard, 2) coordinate with my neighbors, 3) carry weapons at most or all times."

I would definitely frame this distinctly differently. In order to honor the liberty of those around me, the fact that I cannot control my neighbors, and the fact that it's a broken world where bad things can happen no matter what, I am willing to do those things that are within my power to realistically satisfy my duties to those close to and around me. Even without the possibility of uncontrolled dogs, there are still other predators and hazards against which those same mitigations are effective (coyotes can and do run in city environments, there are vicious two-legged predators, etc.)

Some of your other measures--teaching your children how to behave around dogs, intervening when you know there is a pack of dogs about, and paying attention "to when your children are outside", don't seem like effective measures to deal with the berserk pitbull from down the street that suddenly appears while your child is in the front yard. Which is definitely a scenario that happens. When seconds count, you and your EDC weapon are in the kitchen making lunch. Unless you meant "watch our children every second they are outside of the house or fenced backyard."

ALL risk management is a matter of heuristics. Take for analogy that we keep smoke and CO detectors working in the house, as well as a gas alarm in the utility room with the furnace and water heater. We make sure our kids know how to evacuate the house in case of fire. We maintain fire suppression tools. It could still happen that the house catches fire in a way we cannot escape. The thought of my kids dying in a fire is as horrifying as that of them being mauled by a rampaging dog. It's about mitigation, because elimination is ultimately impossible. As Thomas Sowell has said in another context, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

See, the thing is, your neighbor owning a "rescued" pitbull forces you to take all these precautions. And were you to "rescue" a pitbull, then your neighbor has to take all these precautions. Maybe your neighbor doesn't want a tall sturdy fence around his backyard, or to carry various weapons at all times. Because, although you may be the wisest and most caring dog owner in the world, and your rescue pitbull the most carefully vetted, your neighbor doesn't know that. Not for sure, not unless you give up an awful lot of privacy.

You are correct. In my estimation, it would behoove all my neighbors to have good fences and to go about competently armed, and to maintain cordial, or at least functioning relationships among the neighborhood. I support these ideals to the extent of being willing to help realize them. I also realize that not everyone agrees, and I would not presume to force any of these on them, because I honor and respect their liberty to make their own decisions, whether I agree with them or not.

Deep pull on the Pierson's Puppeteer. Props.

Glad you caught that - it's always good to run across a kindred spirit on Niven's work. As different as they were, I'm thankful to have grown up reading both him and Heinlein.

I guess my point is that the decisions of others to own pitbulls, particularly "rescued" pitbulls, imposes costs on me, not just on them. And I do not see the upside, other than some combination of 1) it's fun for some people to own an intimidating dog, 2) owning a pitbull allows people to feel smug and in the know, smarter than all of those folks who stereotype pitbulls as dangerous, 3) a feeling of moral righteousness about rescuing a dog from a supposedly misunderstood breed. I understand that they are sweet dogs most of the time, but I do not count that as an upside, because lots of other types of dogs are sweet too.

We have empirical disagreements about things like 1) how likely pitbulls are to go into killing frenzies compared to other dogs, 2) how dangerous they are in such a state compared to other dogs, 3) whether a dog that has been raised in a bad environment can ever be rehabilitated with sufficient reliability. I don't have statistics. I just have an impression, garnered from media reports over the years, that the sweet family dog that suddenly goes berserk and terribly mauls multiple people despite efforts to stop it is almost always a pitbull.

I think practically speaking the approach is more like, 1) outlaw pits in a certain area, e.g., within city limits. 2) give people who own pits tickets, imposing fines on them. 3) If they don't give up the dogs, they suffer whatever consequences come with not paying municipal fines. Shootouts are pretty far down the list of outcomes, would happen when a poorly-socialized owner pulls a gun on a municipal worker, and would end with the owner dead, because any municipality has more force available than any individual dog owner.

I am enjoying this discussion, Tom, and I appreciate the cordial disagreements. In that spirit, I do need to call this last bit out. Do you realize that your argument here becomes that you disagree with the risk analysis for city-dwellers to choose a particular breed (breed category, really), to the extent that you want the government to bring to bear force to impose your will on them about it? This is beyond the baseline legal and social principle of people being responsible for their choices and their consequences - you're eliminating whatever value individuals want because of the fact that sometimes it goes badly, and you disagree with that value proposition.

I understand your concern, but do you understand mine? By this same approach, people (city dwellers in particular, let's say) do not "need" motor vehicles because innocent people die by them - at a greater rate than by dogs, by the way; they do not "need" food that contains allergens, because sometimes the violently allergic get exposed to them; they don't "need" to consume alcohol, because sometimes drunk people commit horrific crimes, both intentionally and by accident; they don't "need" to make expression of certain ideas (but not others), because those expressions cause serious anxiety in some.

Government prohibition is fraught with peril - government is fundamentally unable to calculate the value to the individual of that individual's choices, and fundamentally prone to run headlong into abuse with the power to restrict them.