10/13/11Canine Aggression Issues with Jim Crosby: Response to injury study1/8canineaggression.blogspot.com/2011/05/response-to-injury-study.html
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011
Response to injury study
As most of my readers are aware, I track-and when I can personallyinvestigate-fatal dog attacks on humans. So when the article“Mortality, Mauling, and Maiming by Vicious Dogs” was published byThe Annals of Surgery
[1]
I had to buy a copy and read through.Drs. Bini, Cohn and others present the case that Pit Bull attacks aremore serious and cause greater injury that other dog bites, and thatPit Bulls should be “…regulated in the same way in which otherdangerous species, such as leopards, are regulated.”Now that caught my eye. So I dug through the article and found someserious discrepancies within the research and conclusions.First, a couple of notes where credit is due; The researchers, citingsolid sources, put to bed the myths of a locking jaw and the allegedlyterrible force of the Pit Bull bite. They say clearly in the paper “…there is no such thing as a locking jaw mechanism in pit bulls or inany other canine”. Their comment on the supposedly terrible biteforce is “…there is no evidence for the extreme bite force oftenreported in the applicable literature.” The cited data shows that PitBulls can exert about 235 psi pressure with their jaws, as compared toa German Shepherd at 238 psi and a Rottweiler at 328 psi. Incomparison, a grey wolf tests out at about 400 psi, and a lion at 600psi (p. 793)
[2]
.Yet this good information is diluted by other references, andconclusions based on these references. Table 3, titled“Characteristics of Pit Bulls” (p 793), contains statements that aresimply incorrect.First, I am going to use a very generous definition of “Pit Bull” here,one that uses what I call the “reasonable person” idea; what would areasonable, logical person, basically familiar with dogs, not overlyfond of or afraid of Pitt Bulls, assume to be a Pit Bull? This definitionis, I admit, very loose, much looser than the definition cited by thepaper’s authors. Their more restrictive definition reads “The term pitbull refers to dogs from the following breeds: American Pit BullTerrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, and Staffordshire BullTerrier.”(p. 791 and Table 3, p.793) This would eliminate a numberof the dogs identified in the documented attacks (such as the DogoArgentino that killed a man in Indiana)
[3]
. But we will use the looserdefinition to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
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Jim CrosbyRetired Police Lieutenant
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Canine Aggression Issues with Jim Crosby
This blog looks at the facts behind canine aggression and fatal dog attacks. The data used here largely comesdirectly from Jim's on-scene and personal investigations into these cases.
10/13/11Canine Aggression Issues with Jim Crosby: Response to injury study2/8canineaggression.blogspot.com/2011/05/response-to-injury-study.html
So let’s look at these “facts” one by one and dissect the issues.Pit Bulls, according to the paper, are:1)
“Responsible for 65% of all fatal attacks in 2008”. In 2008there were 23 total human fatalities from dog attack. 13of those were identified as Pit Bulls
[4]
. That is 56.5%, not65%, a significant difference, and a factual error.2)
“94% of (Pit Bull) attacks on children were unprovoked”.This statement is pretty accurate regarding all breeds of dogs. Small children do not have the capacity toknowingly provoke a dog. Older kids should be given thebenefit of the doubt unless observed tormenting a dog.This statistic is flashy, but irrelevant.3)
“81% of attacks that occurred off the owners’ propertyinvolved Pit Bulls”. Factually incorrect. In 2008, the worstyear, three of the four fatal attacks that happened off the owners’ property were Pit Bulls, which is 75%. In 2009that number was five out of twelve, making 41.6%. In2010 two of nine off property fatalities involved Pit Bulls,which is 22%.
[5]
None of this adds up to 81%.4)
“One person is killed by a Pit Bull every 14 days”. Thisline is repeated in the text of the paper. For this to betrue, it would require 26 people every year to be killed byPit Bulls. In 2007, in 18 of 33 attacks the dogs wereidentified as Pit Bulls, not 26. In 2008 there were 13 totalfatal attacks by Pit Bulls, half the required number. In2009 there were 15, still short of the needed number. In2010, 18 of 34 fatal attacks were attributed to Pit Bulls.This blanket “statistic” is flashy and grabs headlines, butis incorrect. The paper, in the narrative, does mentionthat this is based on a limited time period, but a cannyresearcher can choose a time period during which dogattack human fatalities were caused by Dachshunds; infact, during 24 days in 2010, 100% of all human fatalattacks by dogs in the US were due to Weimaraner attack.Sweeping statements cannot be accurately based on smallslices of reality. The figures on file don’t support thisoutrageous claim.5)
“1.5 Pit Bulls are shot to death every day”. To addressthis I examined the media reports of dogs shot by policefrom 1/1/2011 to 5/9/2011. There have been 22 dogsreported shot by police during that time period. Only nineof those 22 were Pit Bulls, although a vicious (inherentlydangerous?) Lhasa Apso was shot by police in Cape Coral,Florida on February 6
th
. To meet the standard of killing1.5 Pit Bulls every day would require, for this period (129days) that 193.5 Pitt Bulls be shot and killed, or a total of 547.5 per year-every year. The documented total is a fewshort. Of course, this is just police shootings, but crueltycases are a different story and one can’t conclude thatanimals are vicious just because vicious humans break thelaw.
(Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office,Jacksonville, FL) former AnimalControl Division Manager andprofessional dog trainer James W.Crosby has invaluable experienceand extensive insight to bring tothe problem of dog attacks anddangerous dog issues. Jimconsults with Animal Control andLaw Enforcement Authorities onserious and fatal dog attacks,combining crime sceneinvestigation, detailed interviewsand dog evaluation to give adetailed behavioral analysis of the incidents. Jim is the author of the upcoming Guide toInvestigating Fatal Dog Attacks,to be released mid-2011. Contactby email atcanineaggression@gmail.com orby phone-now bicoastally! 904-290-1328 East Coast or 818-724-4055 Pacific.
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10/13/11Canine Aggression Issues with Jim Crosby: Response to injury study3/8canineaggression.blogspot.com/2011/05/response-to-injury-study.html
6)
“Pit Bulls attack indiscriminately”. All dogs attackindiscriminately-the only dogs that target particularindividuals are Police K9s deployed on criminals. Asweeping statement that is as true for Pit Bulls as forPomeranians, and again a flashy statement that isirrelevant.This study is also marred by selective presentation of anecdotal“evidence”. The paper begins with the dramatic recitation of a dogattack where the victim was admitted to the authors’ hospital withultimately fatal wounds. This account details the efforts to save an 11month old male victim. Sadly, the attack was well covered in themedia, with specifics that mirror the account-to a degree. It occurredin March of 2009, and it seems the baby was only seven months old,not eleven as the paper describes. A small error-but a factual errorthat knocks one more pebble from a crumbling edifice. You wouldthink that an attending physician might just know how old his patientwas.This case is somehow supposed to illustrate the ‘dangers’ of Pit Bulls,yet there is a more extensive background, one that makes the truenature of this attack clear. At least one of these dogs had a previousbite, to a child, and neighbors reported numerous occasions where thedogs had threatened others. This was a case of a child not properlysupervised in the presence of dogs that had exhibited human focusedaggression before on multiple occasions and humans that recklesslytolerated that behavior. Breed seems to have been irrelevant; any dogwith a history of human focused aggressive display should have beenexcluded from being unsupervised with an infant. The child’sgrandmother was indicted in his death, but she died of natural causesbefore the case came to trial.
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Another attack described as a typical Pit Bull attack is the attack to aten year old female that happened in January, 2007. The paperrelates that the girl was attacked by a neighbor’s Pit Bull that wasusually chained in the neighbor’s back yard. What the account fails toreport is that the child was going to rescue the dog that had becometangled in the fence by his collar and was choking. The child saw thedog caught in the fence and, since she had played with the dog, askedher mother if she could go help the dog. Her mother agreed, and thechild, who wanted to be a Veterinarian when she grew up, went tohelp.
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The dog, predictably, was under severe stress; any organismfighting for breath is likely to fight and attack any close object orperson to try and survive. That is why owners are taught that, if theirdog is in extreme pain or in a fight to cover them with a blanket or, if injured, try to muzzle them before they try and save them in order toreduce the likelihood of human injury. The poor child rushed in tohelp and the dog thrashing around bit her in the stomach and neck.Truly a tragic end, but not exactly a Pit Bull crime, eh? This was acase of a Good Samaritan that died due to the panic of a dyinganimal.Further issues? In the paper the authors claim “These fighting dogswere bred and trained
not (sic)
to display behavioral signals of theirintentions so that they would have an advantage in the ring. For thisreason, pit bulls are frequently known to attack “without warning”.”.
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