Good news for dogs in China but far from a happy ending!

[Guest guest]

" Pei F. Su " <pei posted:

>There is no scientific basis for a theory on a direct connection

>between the size of a dog and the danger it poses to humans

 

 

This is somewhat of an oversimplification.

 

I began logging data about pet animals attacking humans in

1978, when in the U.S. and Canada fatal attacks by exotic pets

actually outnumbered fatal attacks by pet dogs.

 

(Trained guard dogs, however, inflicted more fatalities

than pets, at that time. Liability lawsuits subsequently caused the

guard dog industry to contract almost to the vanishing point.)

 

I began logging breed-specific data about fatal and

disfiguring dog attacks in 1982, two years before pit bull terriers

became a public issue.

 

After 24 years of logging & evaluating breed-specific dog

attack data, exclusive of attacks by trained guard dogs, fighting

dogs, and police dogs, several trends are irrefutably clear:

 

# Attacks by rabid dogs are hundreds of times more frequent,

globally, than all other types of fatal attack combined. Since

there is virtual unanimity that rabies should be eradicated, with

possible opposition only from some conservationists who believe no

species should ever be allowed to go extinct, even deadly viruses,

the remainder of my discussion will focus on dogs who are not rabid.

 

# There is no relationship whatever between breed-specific

bite frequency and breed-specific risk of a dog causing fatal or

disfiguring injuries. Many of the breeds who bite most frequently

are small enough that they would be perfectly legal in Beijing.

However, these small dogs almost never cause fatal or disfiguring

injuries to anyone.

 

# In every single year that I have logged data, pit bull

terriers have accounted for approximately half of all the pet dog

attack fatalities and disfiguring injuries in the U.S.--and this was

true even when pit bulls made up only 1% of the total dog population,

as measured by citations in classified newspaper ads. Pit bulls now

make up about 5% of the U.S. dog population. They are now involved

in more than five times as many fatal and disfiguring attacks.

 

# In every year that I have logged data, Rottweilers have

placed a distant second to pit bulls in causing fatalities and

disfiguring injuries. Over time, qualifying attacks by Rottweilers

have risen from about 17% of the total to more than 25%.

 

# No other dog breeds are even remotely close, even though

all of the other breeds most often involved in fatal and disfiguring

attacks are more popular. Below are the cumulative totals for all

breeds or combinations involved in at least 10 fatal or disfiguring

attacks, one more breed to make the list come out at exactly 20,

and the totals for all dogs.

 

The first column of numbers is dogs multiplied by number of

victims; the second is child victims; the third is adult victims;

the fourth is fatalities; the fifth is disfigurements. Often there

are either multiple dogs involved in an attack, or multiple victims,

not all of whom are killed or disfigured, so the total number of

attacks in the first column is greater than the sum of the next four

columns.

 

Akita 48 32 14 1 39

Bulldog (English) 16 8 3 1 9

Bull mastiff (Presa Canario) 30 10 13 6 16

Boxer 32 6 13 2 13

Chow 49 34 12 6 32

Doberman 11 7 4 3 7

German shepherd 63 42 17 7 38

German shepherd mix 32 22 7 7 19

Great Dane 24 5 4 2 9

Husky 39 23 4 13 8

Labrador 26 18 9 2 20

Labrador mix 10 9 1 0 9

Malamute 8 7 1 3 3

Mastiff 16 11 4 4 9

Pit bull terrier 1122 499 403 105 617

Pit bull/Lab mix 15 10 4 3 8

Pit bull/Rott. mix 39 7 3 2 8

Rottweiler 410 232 109 59 223

Rottweiler/GSD mix 13 7 5 2 10

Wolf hybrid 71 65 3 18 43

 

All dogs: 2227 1151 665 267 1329

 

 

Note that all of these are in fact large dogs. But note also

that very few kinds of large dogs are represented.

 

In addition to pit bull terriers and Rottweilers, in the

" bully breed " category, we have English bulldogs; Presa Canarios,

which are a cross between mastiffs and pit bulls; boxers; and mixes

of pit bulls and Rottweilers.

 

We also have Akitas, huskies, Malamutes, and wolf hybrids,

from the " northern breed " category. No attack by a Samoyed has ever

qualified for listing.

 

We also have German shepherds and Labradors, who happen to

have been two of the three most popular breeds in the U.S. and Canada

throughout the period of study, who with their mixes account for

more than 25% of all dogs (and were more than a third of all dogs in

the first decade of the study.)

 

Of the giant breeds, there are mastiffs and Great Danes.

 

The list could actually be telescoped down thusly, counting

all attacks by all dogs of particular breed types:

 

 

Bully breeds 1705 815 579 187 934

Northern breeds 177 136 22 32 103

German shepherds & mixes 112 74 30 19 70

 

All dogs: 2227 1151 665 267 1329

 

 

Mixes of breed types are listed with both.

 

Bully breeds and northern breeds are approximately equal in

popularity, according to classified ad counts, yet bully breeds are

almost 10 times more likely to be involved in a fatal or disfiguring

attack, six times more likely to kill someone, and nine times more

likely to maim someone.

 

There is also an indication in the numbers that bully breeds

are markedly more likely to engage in pack attacks and rampage

attacks, i.e. with multiple dogs and victims.

 

 

# In 2001, ANIMAL PEOPLE volunteer Chrissy Deliyandis

combed 1,500 accounts of cases in which a dog killed or maimed

someone, or was shot by police, and found that only 5% of the dogs

had previously either bitten a person or killed a pet.

 

What this very strongly indicates is that legislation which

attempts to predict risk based on the past behavior of the individual

dog will fail to protect 95% of the victims.

 

This is such a high failure rate that such legislation is not

even worth the bother of considering--even though it is the type of

legislation that prevails in the U.S., and is endorsed by all of the

leading humane organizations.

 

Effective anti-dog attack legislation needs to prevent

attacks by dogs who have never attacked anyone before.

 

This leaves three other possible legislative approaches:

 

 

1) To legislate confinement, and legislate against chaining.

 

There is quite strong evidence, from a variety of sources,

that keeping dogs confined by means of chaining increases

territoriality, aggression, fear-biting, and the likelihood that a

victim will trip over the chain while attempting to escape.

 

However, confinement has one major drawback, in that

confined dogs do not develop the social skills necessary to know when

not to bite.

 

Several years ago I learned that the ratios of humans to dog

attacks requiring hospital treatment were identical in the U.S. and

India, at one bite per 66 people. This was extraordinary, because

India is a rabies-endemic nation, in which any bite that draws blood

should receive hospital treatment.

 

In India, there is about 1 dog for every 10 people, and

virtually all dogs roam freely. In the U.S., there is about 1 dog

for every 4.5 people, and virtually no dogs roam freely.

 

Indian dogs obviously have the opportunity to bite far more

people than American dogs--but American dogs do far more biting

relative to their opportunities.

 

Overall, confinement does not really look like the answer,

with or without chaining, even though confinement protects dogs from

traffic and prohibiting chaining does have some positive effect.

 

 

2) To legislate based on the size of the dog. This is

unnecessarily broad, since the overwhelming majority of large breeds

are very rarely involved in fatal or disfiguring attacks.

 

 

3) To legislate based on breed.

 

Fans of bully breeds scream bloody murder about this, but

the numbers are overwhelming.

 

Of note is that of all the dogs commonly used in fighting

around the world, all but the Japanese tosa are of " bully breed "

lineage, and the tosa is also basically a cross of cart-pulling dogs

with rat-hunting dogs.

 

The argument that any other breed type might be corrupted

into pit bull-like or Rottweiler-like behavior just doesn't stand up

to the evidence that the bad guys haven't managed to do it yet.

 

Also of note is that while fans of bully breeds also scream

that the bully breeds just get bad press, I just completed compiling

and evaluating 30 years' worth of mentions of pit bull terriers in

the 1,216 newspapers archived at www.NewsLibrary.com.

 

What I found is that in only one year out of the last 30

years, 1987, was the total number of mentions of pit bull terriers

not closely proportional to the numbers of fatal and disfiguring

attacks, plus the numbers of dogfights raided by police.

 

Finally of note is that 20 years ago, when U.S. pounds and

shelters killed approximately nine million dogs, about 675,000 of

those dogs were pit bull terriers and their close mixes.

 

Over the past 10 years, U.S. pounds and shelters have killed

an average of about two million dogs per year. During each of the

past five years, about half of them were pit bull terriers: about 1

million dogs per year.

 

Defenders of bully breeds, and especially of the " right " to

breed them, are among the worst enemies these dogs ever had--maybe

not worse than dogfighters, but they are the enablers of

dogfighters, whose activity thrives on the ready availability of

inexpensive pit bulls.

 

This is all trouble that China (and most of Asia) has an

excellent opportunity to avoid.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

for free sample, send address.]

 

 

[Guest guest]

Dear Merritt

 

Thank you for sending through your comments. I would like to take

this opportunity to clarify our point about the size of a dog and the

danger it poses to humans.

 

First of all, the sentence in our statement is in response to the

current Beijing Dog Keeping Regulation (BDKR). Currently all the dogs

mentioned on the list in your email are already classified in the

BDKR as 'Dangerous Dog Breeds' and they are banned in Beijing. There

are 41 breeds listed in the BDKR as dangerous dogs, including breeds

such as: Akitas, Boxer, Bull Dog, Borzoi, Bull Terrier, German

Shepherds, , Great Danes, Rottweilers, Tibetan Mastiffs, Tosa Inu,

Old English Sheepdog, Newfoundland, Chow Chow, Dobermans, bearded

Collies, Scottish Collies, Dalmatian, St Bernards, Greyhound,

Dalmatians and St. Bernards etc.

 

In addition to these particular breeds, the Regulation also targets

ANY dogs over 35cm – these can be legally confiscated from their

owners, and most of them then end up dying in shelters. This is what

happened in December in the Beijing dog crackdown.

 

We are all aware that dogs may bite, and are capable of biting,

whether they are over 35cm or not. Dangerous dogs result from human

activities, including breeding, and perhaps some breeds are more

dangerous than others, but to use 'SIZE' as the sole or main factor

to determine whether a dog is dangerous or not, and whether a dog can

live or die, is not rational and scientific.

 

From your email, you appear to have arrived at a similar conclusion

– ‘To legislate based on the size of the dogs. This unnecessarily

broad since the overwhelming majority of large breeds are very rarely

involved in fatal or disfiguring attacks’.

 

The companion animal issues we are facing in Asia will not be

resolved based on drawing arbitrary lines based on the height of a

dog. Many groups like ours have given comprehensive suggestions on

tackling the problems currently faced in China, and, of course, we

all hope to benefit from the experience of other countries.

 

Thank you for your time and attention.

 

Best regards

Pei

 

Pei F. Su

ACTAsia For Animals

www.actasia.org

 

 

 

On 31 Dec 2006, at 8:01, Merritt Clifton wrote:

 

> " Pei F. Su " <pei posted:

> >There is no scientific basis for a theory on a direct connection

> >between the size of a dog and the danger it poses to humans

>

> This is somewhat of an oversimplification.

>

> I began logging data about pet animals attacking humans in

> 1978, when in the U.S. and Canada fatal attacks by exotic pets

> actually outnumbered fatal attacks by pet dogs.

>

> (Trained guard dogs, however, inflicted more fatalities

> than pets, at that time. Liability lawsuits subsequently caused the

> guard dog industry to contract almost to the vanishing point.)

>

> I began logging breed-specific data about fatal and

> disfiguring dog attacks in 1982, two years before pit bull terriers

> became a public issue.

>

> After 24 years of logging & evaluating breed-specific dog

> attack data, exclusive of attacks by trained guard dogs, fighting

> dogs, and police dogs, several trends are irrefutably clear:

>

> # Attacks by rabid dogs are hundreds of times more frequent,

> globally, than all other types of fatal attack combined. Since

> there is virtual unanimity that rabies should be eradicated, with

> possible opposition only from some conservationists who believe no

> species should ever be allowed to go extinct, even deadly viruses,

> the remainder of my discussion will focus on dogs who are not rabid.

>

> # There is no relationship whatever between breed-specific

> bite frequency and breed-specific risk of a dog causing fatal or

> disfiguring injuries. Many of the breeds who bite most frequently

> are small enough that they would be perfectly legal in Beijing.

> However, these small dogs almost never cause fatal or disfiguring

> injuries to anyone.

>

> # In every single year that I have logged data, pit bull

> terriers have accounted for approximately half of all the pet dog

> attack fatalities and disfiguring injuries in the U.S.--and this was

> true even when pit bulls made up only 1% of the total dog population,

> as measured by citations in classified newspaper ads. Pit bulls now

> make up about 5% of the U.S. dog population. They are now involved

> in more than five times as many fatal and disfiguring attacks.

>

> # In every year that I have logged data, Rottweilers have

> placed a distant second to pit bulls in causing fatalities and

> disfiguring injuries. Over time, qualifying attacks by Rottweilers

> have risen from about 17% of the total to more than 25%.

>

> # No other dog breeds are even remotely close, even though

> all of the other breeds most often involved in fatal and disfiguring

> attacks are more popular. Below are the cumulative totals for all

> breeds or combinations involved in at least 10 fatal or disfiguring

> attacks, one more breed to make the list come out at exactly 20,

> and the totals for all dogs.

>

> The first column of numbers is dogs multiplied by number of

> victims; the second is child victims; the third is adult victims;

> the fourth is fatalities; the fifth is disfigurements. Often there

> are either multiple dogs involved in an attack, or multiple victims,

> not all of whom are killed or disfigured, so the total number of

> attacks in the first column is greater than the sum of the next four

> columns.

>

> Akita 48 32 14 1 39

> Bulldog (English) 16 8 3 1 9

> Bull mastiff (Presa Canario) 30 10 13 6 16

> Boxer 32 6 13 2 13

> Chow 49 34 12 6 32

> Doberman 11 7 4 3 7

> German shepherd 63 42 17 7 38

> German shepherd mix 32 22 7 7 19

> Great Dane 24 5 4 2 9

> Husky 39 23 4 13 8

> Labrador 26 18 9 2 20

> Labrador mix 10 9 1 0 9

> Malamute 8 7 1 3 3

> Mastiff 16 11 4 4 9

> Pit bull terrier 1122 499 403 105 617

> Pit bull/Lab mix 15 10 4 3 8

> Pit bull/Rott. mix 39 7 3 2 8

> Rottweiler 410 232 109 59 223

> Rottweiler/GSD mix 13 7 5 2 10

> Wolf hybrid 71 65 3 18 43

>

> All dogs: 2227 1151 665 267 1329

>

> Note that all of these are in fact large dogs. But note also

> that very few kinds of large dogs are represented.

>

> In addition to pit bull terriers and Rottweilers, in the

> " bully breed " category, we have English bulldogs; Presa Canarios,

> which are a cross between mastiffs and pit bulls; boxers; and mixes

> of pit bulls and Rottweilers.

>

> We also have Akitas, huskies, Malamutes, and wolf hybrids,

> from the " northern breed " category. No attack by a Samoyed has ever

> qualified for listing.

>

> We also have German shepherds and Labradors, who happen to

> have been two of the three most popular breeds in the U.S. and Canada

> throughout the period of study, who with their mixes account for

> more than 25% of all dogs (and were more than a third of all dogs in

> the first decade of the study.)

>

> Of the giant breeds, there are mastiffs and Great Danes.

>

> The list could actually be telescoped down thusly, counting

> all attacks by all dogs of particular breed types:

>

> Bully breeds 1705 815 579 187 934

> Northern breeds 177 136 22 32 103

> German shepherds & mixes 112 74 30 19 70

>

> All dogs: 2227 1151 665 267 1329

>

> Mixes of breed types are listed with both.

>

> Bully breeds and northern breeds are approximately equal in

> popularity, according to classified ad counts, yet bully breeds are

> almost 10 times more likely to be involved in a fatal or disfiguring

> attack, six times more likely to kill someone, and nine times more

> likely to maim someone.

>

> There is also an indication in the numbers that bully breeds

> are markedly more likely to engage in pack attacks and rampage

> attacks, i.e. with multiple dogs and victims.

>

> # In 2001, ANIMAL PEOPLE volunteer Chrissy Deliyandis

> combed 1,500 accounts of cases in which a dog killed or maimed

> someone, or was shot by police, and found that only 5% of the dogs

> had previously either bitten a person or killed a pet.

>

> What this very strongly indicates is that legislation which

> attempts to predict risk based on the past behavior of the individual

> dog will fail to protect 95% of the victims.

>

> This is such a high failure rate that such legislation is not

> even worth the bother of considering--even though it is the type of

> legislation that prevails in the U.S., and is endorsed by all of the

> leading humane organizations.

>

> Effective anti-dog attack legislation needs to prevent

> attacks by dogs who have never attacked anyone before.

>

> This leaves three other possible legislative approaches:

>

> 1) To legislate confinement, and legislate against chaining.

>

> There is quite strong evidence, from a variety of sources,

> that keeping dogs confined by means of chaining increases

> territoriality, aggression, fear-biting, and the likelihood that a

> victim will trip over the chain while attempting to escape.

>

> However, confinement has one major drawback, in that

> confined dogs do not develop the social skills necessary to know when

> not to bite.

>

> Several years ago I learned that the ratios of humans to dog

> attacks requiring hospital treatment were identical in the U.S. and

> India, at one bite per 66 people. This was extraordinary, because

> India is a rabies-endemic nation, in which any bite that draws blood

> should receive hospital treatment.

>

> In India, there is about 1 dog for every 10 people, and

> virtually all dogs roam freely. In the U.S., there is about 1 dog

> for every 4.5 people, and virtually no dogs roam freely.

>

> Indian dogs obviously have the opportunity to bite far more

> people than American dogs--but American dogs do far more biting

> relative to their opportunities.

>

> Overall, confinement does not really look like the answer,

> with or without chaining, even though confinement protects dogs from

> traffic and prohibiting chaining does have some positive effect.

>

> 2) To legislate based on the size of the dog. This is

> unnecessarily broad, since the overwhelming majority of large breeds

> are very rarely involved in fatal or disfiguring attacks.

>

> 3) To legislate based on breed.

>

> Fans of bully breeds scream bloody murder about this, but

> the numbers are overwhelming.

>

> Of note is that of all the dogs commonly used in fighting

> around the world, all but the Japanese tosa are of " bully breed "

> lineage, and the tosa is also basically a cross of cart-pulling dogs

> with rat-hunting dogs.

>

> The argument that any other breed type might be corrupted

> into pit bull-like or Rottweiler-like behavior just doesn't stand up

> to the evidence that the bad guys haven't managed to do it yet.

>

> Also of note is that while fans of bully breeds also scream

> that the bully breeds just get bad press, I just completed compiling

> and evaluating 30 years' worth of mentions of pit bull terriers in

> the 1,216 newspapers archived at www.NewsLibrary.com.

>

> What I found is that in only one year out of the last 30

> years, 1987, was the total number of mentions of pit bull terriers

> not closely proportional to the numbers of fatal and disfiguring

> attacks, plus the numbers of dogfights raided by police.

>

> Finally of note is that 20 years ago, when U.S. pounds and

> shelters killed approximately nine million dogs, about 675,000 of

> those dogs were pit bull terriers and their close mixes.

>

> Over the past 10 years, U.S. pounds and shelters have killed

> an average of about two million dogs per year. During each of the

> past five years, about half of them were pit bull terriers: about 1

> million dogs per year.

>

> Defenders of bully breeds, and especially of the " right " to

> breed them, are among the worst enemies these dogs ever had--maybe

> not worse than dogfighters, but they are the enablers of

> dogfighters, whose activity thrives on the ready availability of

> inexpensive pit bulls.

>

> This is all trouble that China (and most of Asia) has an

> excellent opportunity to avoid.

>

> --

> Merritt Clifton

> Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

> P.O. Box 960

> Clinton, WA 98236

>

> Telephone: 360-579-2505

> Fax: 360-579-2575

> E-mail: anmlpepl

> Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

>

> [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

> original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

> founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

> decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

> We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

> for free sample, send address.]

>

>