transient

Let me make sure I have this straight, just in case... if I meet your wife I’m not supposed to tell her that you think she’s a loser?

20 years old... DAMN! Talk about an old soul. Thanks for sharing. I'll have to look out for him when he inevitably finds his way to NOLA.

Again, the problem with sites like this, as well as sites that have a clear agenda to defend pit bulls, is in addition to not being objective, they're completely inconsistent. Which data set do you believe above, the one that reports 284 fatalities over 12 years or the one that reports 295 over 32 years? The top site is clearly anti-pit bull by the graphic, and that becomes more clear when you look at the site content. The bottom link is the equivalent of MSN's popsugar spam, and if you go to the study that it references the author starts off by defending his approach against pit bull apologists, which to me is already a red flag about his bias. He tailors the data analysis specifically to how dangerous pit bulls are, and he lists in the notes on the pit bull fatalities such things as people who were hit by cars, people who were hit by trains, people who died of heart attacks, people who died of infections, a dog in Tijuana despite the fact that this is a study in US and Canada, 2 dead men that were determined by forensics to be dead then subsequently eaten by dogs, a child that was strangled by a leash, several instances of homicide where the dogs were either blamed by the person convicted without any evidence to confirm it or thought to play a role somehow (including being fed the body), two cocaine overdoses that were subsequently eaten by dogs, instances where it was clear they weren't sure what the dog was but it was assume to be a pit bull anyway, and one person who was hit in the head by a pan thrown by his brother to break up a dog fight. In fairness, 3 or 4 of these "cases" were not used in final tally of the numbers presented, which raises the question of "why put them in the paper?" If you're inclined to think "it doesn't matter which data set you look at, either one is still too much" consider the previous paragraph and ask yourself how quickly you could inflate those numbers if you take that sort of approach. Also, any breed that the author apparently doesn't think would behave this way on it's own and was part of a multi-dog attack has language that makes it seem like it was coerced by the pit bull(s)... unless it was a Rottweiler, then the language makes it clear that they're both equally at fault. The author then goes on to take an almost apologetic discussion of the numbers associated with German Shepards. In addition, his manner of looking through classified ads to see what dogs are available in order to determine percentage of the total dog population that a breed makes up seems very likely to significantly under represent certain breeds and over represent others. I'm not disputing many of the points that were made intelligently and thoughtfully by posters representing the full spectrum of opinions on this topic in this thread. I just have a hard time accepting it when pseudo-statistics are passed off as objective analysis.

Look for the catch...

My apologies. I interpreted your analogy as a justification to "recall" the breed for an outcome that was statistically more probable than a faulty airbag killing the driver of a car.

Of course I do. I'm not arguing that. In fact, I have no problem with Fergy's idea of background checks and licensing, as it would probably cut down on mistreatment of animals significantly in addition to limiting these incidents. I just wonder why he only sees fit to offer pit bulls that courtesy and not all breeds. It was kinda tongue in cheek since you had said it was unlikely that someone could be disfigured by a Chihuahua and I remembered seeing that very thing on Botched, but it was also to make the point that a dog, no matter how small, is an animal that is unpredictable and capable of causing significant injury.

To your first point, mechanical failure can cause car crashes, so no, 100% of what happens is not due to humans. As for the human aspect of animal behavior, I would argue that counts for more than breed in most instances, either through inhumane treatment and/or training intent or through negligence. Unfortunately, negligence can occur with well meaning dog owners who should never own certain types of dogs no matter how much they love them.

I've got a different analogy. There are 5 million Hondas on the road. 250 people were killed by people driving Hondas, or a car that may have had an OEM Honda part on it ; even if it was a Ford Pinto with a Honda windshield wiper it was classified as a Honda at the time of the accident. Of those 250 people, the drivers of the car were unlicensed or drunk for 240 of those accidents. Of the other 10, there was a problem with the car, which, while horrific and unfortunate, when you look at other car manufacturers is similar percentage wise with cars on the road. Why do you think loyal, licensed Honda owners with clean driving records think I'm crazy when I say it's about time we shut down Honda? Also, when you break from your analogy, your "recall" is a euphemism for killing 5 million dogs.

Just sayin'...

To answer this question accurately I think we need to see which breeds can successfully jump over Anthony Barr...

Are you describing a situation in which your dog was socializing with an unfamiliar dog in the presence of your 5 year old daughter without you in the immediate vicinity?

It's not even just "alpha" owners. I can't tell you how many times I've been at a dog park and seen someone sitting on a bench looking at their phone without any idea where their dog is or what it's doing? There's more of that than aggressive owners with aggressive dogs.

Oblivious owners of all breeds are the reason I no longer take mine. Most parks are a setup for an uncontrolled free for all.

Serious question, did the RBs they drafted suck or did they just not effectively work them into the game plan? I’m working from memory here, but they always struck me as being willing to live and die by Marino’s arm. I don’t really remember them as a team that ever had a game plan that tried to establish the run. Contrast that with the balance the Bills had with Kelly under center (granted, with Thomas in the backfield). To further that point, I just looked on the Pro Football Reference site. Marino is 14th all time in average pass attempts per game, but he’s the only one of his era in the top 20 (unless you count Favre at 17 and/or Bledsoe at 12, since they overlapped the latter part of Marino’s career). The next from that era is Warren Moon at 24. Jim Kelly is all the way down at 45.

And unlike the Broncos at the end of Elway's career, the Dolphins with Marino never accepted that they needed a running game.

So you're suggesting that NE*** will split with the Jets and sweep the Dolphins?

While I was familiar with gestalt of the term, I was never aware of the exact meaning, so I looked it up. Apparently it’s a little more specific than that. If you look it up on Urban dictionary it’s either a penis that is wider than it is long, or it’s another word for taint. It’s also used as an insult to insinuate someone is akin to a short, fat penis or a taint. [moderator sez: That's Enough of That Now!]

Dear Ask Yolo, Can double-sided PB keep other things from oozing, too? Asking for a friend... Signed, Shudda Baggeditup

Cat people who let their cats run loose suck. I let my dogs out in my fenced in courtyard a few months back only to discover my neighbor’s cat hanging out there. Instead of jumping through the wrought iron fence and getting out of my yard it bolted along the side of my house with my dogs in tow into my fenced in back yard. If I didn’t snag my greyhound’s collar I have no doubt he would have caught that cat and probably killed it. As soon as it bolted it was like a flashback to the electronic rabbit. Instead my pit mix, who thinks cat chasing is a sport, chased it around until it finally got out of the yard, destroying plants and anything else in their wake in the process.

Cats are the spawn of hell.

C’mon, Fergy. Be fair. The response did kinda look like the poster gets tips from www.howtomakeanassofyourselfonamessageboard.org sent to his inbox.

You don't have to say that, the rest of your post makes that abundantly clear. What do you envision that letting a dog breed consisting of 4-5 million dogs "dying out naturally" would look like? Do you think that if you ignored them they would do you the kindness of just going extinct? Are you suggesting by letting them free to do as they please they would find the world inhospitable and just die out as opposed to forming more packs of stray dogs that hunt for food, thereby making the problem worse? There is no eliminating a breed that large without euthanasia... so maybe you're suggesting "naturally" euthanizing 4-5 million dogs? As for the "cool, tough" argument, I rescued my dog from a shelter when she was less than a year old and was told she was a mix of different breeds but not a pit, which I was suspicious of/doubtful of at the time (and which also is part of the problem for unsuspecting dog owners). I was also told by the shelter that she was a year and a half old and that she was done growing. When I took her to the vet he said she's definitely a pit mix and that she's definitely going to gain another ~20ish pounds by the time she's done growing, and he was right. Regardless, I adopted her because she's the smartest, sweetest, friendliest, most personality filled dog that I've ever owned, and that was on display from the moment I met her. I wasn't going expressly to adopt a pit, she was just the dog I connected with when I went to the shelter.

The problem with both this site (which tries to give the appearance of being objective until you look a little more closely under the hood) and the pro-pit bull sites is they’re pushing statistics in a way to tell their story. If you go to the bottom of that site it’s clearly pushing an anti-pit bull agenda, and it has a picture of a pit bull with an exclamation point over the US). To put those statistics in context you need to know not only how many pit bulls are there in the US (apparently between 4-5 million, with over half the population of dogs in shelters being pit-type dogs), but what are they referring to as pit (mixed breeds make up over 50% of household pets, how many of those go from mixed breed to pit once they become a statistic?), and what percentage of the dog population do the other breeds make up? Saying Rottweilers are responsible for 17% of fatal dog attacks (or whatever the number was) is a very different thing if they make up 10% of the dog population vs 0.1% of the population, and despite trying I can’t find numbers like that to make sense of these statistics. Its clear certain breeds like labs are less likely to cause severe or fatal dog bite injuries, but which breed do you think the statistics are attributed to when a lab/pit mix bites someone or mauls someone? It’s all in the reporting, and with what’s being posted the data presented in this thread from either viewpoint are clearly biased, as are most things nowadays.