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"Pit bulls make up 80 percent of the homeless dogs found in Southern California shelters. They are also the breed most likely to die by euthanasia due to overpopulation and to the unfavorable stereotypes the public now seems to believe. In today’s society pit bulls face many obstacles. The following topics will detail some of what they are up against."

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Pit Bulls are discriminated against and we as owners and pet lovers need to take the steps to make sure that their image is restored.

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You're not going to read this: But you'll probably share it anyway

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You're not going to read this: But you'll probably share it anyway

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http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/14/5411934/youre-not-going-to-read-this

But the most obvious explanation, the one that has probably already occurred to you because you’re just as guilty as everyone else, is that people are tweeting stories without reading them.

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5 Data Insights into the Headlines Readers Click

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5 Data Insights into the Headlines Readers Click

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http://moz.com/blog/5-data-insights-into-the-headlines-readers-click

80% of readers never make it past the headline: According to some sources, on average, eight out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only two out of 10 will read the rest.

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You Won’t Finish This Article    Why people online don’t read to the end.

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You Won’t Finish This Article    Why people online don’t read to the end.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/how_people_read_online_why_you_won_t_finish_this_article.html

Schwartz’s data shows that readers can’t stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it’s not just me. It’s not just Slate. It’s everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don’t even make it halfway. Even more dispiriting is the relationship between scrolling and sharing. Schwartz’s data suggest that lots of people are tweeting out links to articles they haven’t fully read. If you see someone recommending a story online, you shouldn’t assume that he has read the thing he’s sharing.

OK, we’re a few hundred words into the story now. According to the data, for every 100 readers who didn’t bounce up at the top, there are about 50 who’ve stuck around. Only one-half!
They each show the same thing: There’s a very weak relationship between scroll depth and sharing. Both at Slate and across the Web, articles that get a lot of tweets don’t necessarily get read very deeply. Articles that get read deeply aren’t necessarily generating a lot of tweets.

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Pit Bull Victim of Dog Fighting Abuse Heals

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NEED TO KNOW | The dogs are alright: The Vick dogs make a comeback | PBS

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http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/video/video-the-dogs-are-alright-the-vick-dogs-make-a-comeback/6676/ After serving two years in prison for running a brutal dog fighting ring, Michael Vick got a second chance. But what happened to the dogs? Need to Know reports. Need to Know airs Fridays on PBS. Watch full-length episodes of Need to Know at http://video.pbs.org/program/1458405365/

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Pit Bull Discrimination — How Much is the Media to Blame?

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Pit Bull Discrimination — How Much is the Media to Blame?

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To explore the potential bias of his own news agency, the reporter from the Denver Post looked at article headlines over the past five years and found that the paper had covered 20 different stories involving dog attacks. Nine had the breed of dog in the headlines and eight named pit bulls. (One named a Rottweiler.) When you put this into the context that “pit bulls” make up only 8 percent of the dog bites reported in the state of Colorado – and aren’t even the top biting dog in the state (Labs were #1) – you might begin to wonder why the city of Denver went to the trouble of banning the breed in the first place.

Inspired by the Denver Post story, I did a quick search in the Chronicle’s archives for “dog attack,” which yielded 34 stories about specific dog attacks on humans written between January 1, 2005 and today. While 22 of those articles mentioned the breed in the headline (100% named pit bulls as the attackers), the other 12 articles, which involved attacks by other breeds (including shepherd mixes, boxers and a golden retriever mix), had only generic “dog attack” headlines, rather than outing the specific breed. Media bias? It certainly looks that way, but I’ll let you be the judge.

http://stubbydog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/PitBullDiscrimination.pdf

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http://stubbydog.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Pit-Bulls-by-the-Numbers.pdf

Sites like Dogsbite.org like to claim that pit bulls only make up 5 percent of the total dog population in the United States and are therefore “attacking” at a much higher rate than other dogs, but the truth is that there are no accurate statistics kept on the total number of dogs in this country, let alone dogs by type. The CDC clearly states this on its website: “There is currently no accurate way to identify the number of dogs of a particular breed, and consequently no measure to determine which breeds are more likely to bite or kill.” And while it‟s anyone‟s guess exactly how many pit bull type dogs there are in this country, it‟s clear from looking around most cities, neighborhoods and shelters that dogs labeled as pit bulls are far more common than 5 percent.

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http://stubbydog.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ChangingHeartsandMinds.pdf

be aware

acknowledge

arm yourself

arm them

accept

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http://vimeo.com/53622294

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Millions of "pit bull" dogs live with everyday families. We are valued members of our communities. We are your co-workers, neighbors, friends and family. When it comes to "pit bull" dog owners, we are the RULE, not the exception. We are the MAJORITY.

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Towards the end of the 1970s, two incredible transformations in human and canine behavior occurred in perfect unison: • Children suddenly stopped teasing dogs. • Dogs suddenly started attacking without provocation. In less than a decade, human children thoroughly evolved into empathetic little beings, thoughtful of the feelings and mindful of the needs of other forms of life. Adults also became paragons of morality and empathy, ceasing all forms of provocation and abuse towards animals. Just as quickly as children and adults evolved en mass into considerate beings, dogs reverted to their ancestral roots, discarding their long held attachments to mankind and attacking humans in wild abandon. Dogs seemed no longer affected by heat, pain, or frustration, and began attacking only from a natural viciousness. Or so the media would now have us believe.

page 141

From the early 20th century until the late 1970s, hundreds of dog bite stories describe events which contributed to dog attacks/bites. Children are found throwing blankets over dogs’ heads, pelting them with snowballs or rocks, shoving dogs, running in fear from dogs, poking dogs with sticks, yanking bones out of their mouths, inciting dogs to attack other animals, and generally trying the patience of even the most tolerant of dogs. Dogs are found biting in reaction to being scalded by burst radiator pipes or after being tripped over. We find a case of a chained dog watching children in the yard chase a rabbit, and the frustrated dog biting a child running past him. There are scores of cases of children trying to hug, pet, kiss or “caress” chained dogs and being severely bitten in the process

142

The newspapers, always on the alert for a Pit bull attack, ran the following headlines and stories: The Pit Bull Placebo 141“Killer Pit bulls Rip Granny to Shreds” (New York Post, December 11, 2002) “Grandmother mauled to death by family’s Pit bulls” (Newsday, December 10, 2002) One article claimed that one Pit bull was “covered in blood.” This same Pit bull in another article “appeared to have blood” on him (the him was actually a female dog). One neighbor claimed, “the dogs were vicious, they barked a lot and looked vicious.” Another neighbor claimed they were nice dogs. One newspaper printed a photograph of one of the dogs clearly agitated (teeth bared) in the new and stressful surroundings at the animal shelter. The dogs would be impounded for the next eight months. The daughter, the owner of the dogs, could not believe they would have killed her elderly mother. She hired an independent forensic pathologist from the renowned Henry Lee Forensic Institute to review and re-evaluate the findings of the initial autopsy report. Only then was it discovered that the woman had died from a cardiac arrhythmia, and the few bite wounds on her body were non-lethal and post mortem.* Her death was attributed to natural causes and it was determined the dogs did not participate or contribute to her death. There was a dangerous dog hearing which resulted in both dogs being released back to the daughter. No retraction or correction was ever printed about this “Pit bull attack.” This incident remains permanently archived in the newspapers and on the Internet as a “Pit bull-related fatality.”

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The media barrage of all-things-Pit-bull has defiled the image of the Pit bull so profoundly that it has resulted in a public perception that only certain breeds of dogs can be aggressive towards humans (and other animals). Time and again other breed attacks are reported only if the attack was so extreme it could not be ignored. The overwhelming majority of serious and even severe attacks by other breeds are either unreported or underreported as compared to Pit bull attacks. Proof of this is found in human interest stories in which attacks by non-Pit bull dogs played a role. Often, non-Pit bull or non-Rottweiler dog attacks are not reported on their own merit, but only as they relate to how the attack impacts another part of a person’s life.

A highly publicized case of the first face transplant was reported in November of 2005. This was a significant medical and media event. How the woman came to need this operation was revealed to be the result of a severe mauling by her Labrador Retriever. The woman, while unconscious, had her nose, lips and chin torn off by the dog. The attack occurred months prior to the operation and was apparently of no interest to the media at that time.

....

In December 2005, a brief article was published in reference to the recovery and solicitation of funds to help a small girl who was the victim of a severe dog attack. The article is about the family’s gratitude to all the kindness people had shown them and their injured daughter. At the time of the article the child had been released from the hospital and was facing “several more surgeries, including major reconstructive surgery to her face.” One sentence describes how her injuries came to be: “The fourth-grader was injured last Tuesday by the family’s Labrador Retriever, who has been with the family for 3-1/2 years. Details regarding the incident were unavailable.”14 The attack itself was not reported in the media when it occurred and is only mentioned in this article about the family’s appreciation of people’s support. The obvious harm of such unbalanced reporting of different breed attacks is illustrated in a comment made by Chicago Alderman Ginger (Virginia) Rugai. In attempting to pass Pit bull breed-specific legislation in 2004, the Alderman was quoted in the Chicago SunTimes as saying, “Have you heard of any other particular breed that has, in fact, killed or maimed someone?”15

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The solution or cure now touted for ridding communities of dangerous dogs is found in the guise of the Pit Bull Placebo. Like the pharmacologically inactive sugar pill dispensed to placate a patient who supposes it to be medicine, eradication of the Pit bull is heralded as the cure for severe dog attacks. However, a placebo is administered solely to appease a person’s mental duress. In the present day climate of fear and misinformation about Pit bulls and dog attacks, eradication of the Pit bull is the placebo administered to ease the public’s mental anxiety. This, of course, does not address the underlying cause of why dogs attack and how they have been allowed access to their victims. Nor does this address why humans feel the need to have dogs that will intimidate, attack, or fight other beings. These factors, recognized for centuries as contributing to canine aggression, are dangerously ignored when a dog attack is deemed to be a product of breed. The distraction of blaming the breed of dog involved in attacks, while ignoring dangerous human behaviors, has created a climate of fear towards certain breeds. Paradoxically, this fear of Pit bulls allows us to maintain our sense of well-being because it permits us to believe that canine aggression can be solved without introspection.

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Consider how information about dog attacks has been disseminated over the last century:

One hundred years ago—Newspapers provided vivid and often detailed accounts of dog attacks. Emotional and often anthropomorphic terms were used in an attempt to understand the factors that caused the dog to attack. Dogs were described as either “vicious by nature” or “caused to be vicious.” People were identified at times to be “innocent” victims, or “tormentors” who invited an attack. Dogs were understood to be complex beings reacting to human behavior. The function and condition of dogs were often included in reports, as they were understood to influence canine behavior.

Fifty years ago—Newspapers continued to report dog attacks to be a result of “cause and effect.” Although dogs were no longer described in emotional terms, they were still portrayed as sentient beings that reacted to pain, discomfort, or fear. Additionally, many reports of dog attacks conveyed the understanding that aggression was a natural and expected behavior of dogs in certain circumstances. Owners and/or victims were often identified in news reports as exhibiting behaviors (intentionally or unintentionally) that caused the dog to attack.

Today—The Pit Bull Paparazzi are our source of information on dog attacks. Like their tabloid celebrity counterparts, The Pit Bull Paparazzi are ever on the alert for any incident involving their high-profile subject, pushing past or ignoring all “low entertainment” attacks, while zooming in on and hyping any incident involving the “high entertainment” Pit bull. Theories about the breed, its history and temperament, are discussed, while details concerning the circumstances of the individual dog involved are not reported. Cause and effect, or reasons for the attack, are no longer found in reports, since breed is now recognized as sufficient information to explain aggression.

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A generation later, with images of Dobermans and Nazi Germany still fresh in the minds of the public, anyone taking even a cursory look at a Doberman’s rather narrow skull could easily buy into the “skull too small-dog goes mad” theory. The media showing any attack or guard dog as a snarling Doberman helped fix this image of viciousness. In the 1980s, the broad head and square jaw of the Pit bull easily sold a whole new generation of people into the “locking jaw” theory. All these theories sound like they have a scientific basis, and that there must be evidence on which these beliefs are based. The truth is, there isn’t. There are no scientific studies or evidence which validates any of these widely held beliefs. On the contrary, there are several written statements by experts definitively refuting the locking jaw theory.

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Recently, a newspaper article stated that “some experts even believe that the presence of hormones in children of puberty age can set off Pit bulls.”7 As with most of these outrageous claims, the source (“some experts”) is not cited. The questions which could be put to these “experts” are: How has it happened that Pit bulls, exclusively, have come to acquire this ability to detect and react to pubescent hormones? And the even more compelling question: Since pre-teens and teenagers (male and female) are vastly underrepresented in fatal dog attacks, what evidence supports such a theory? (Preteens and teenagers are in one of the age groups least likely to be attacked and killed by any dog. Children under the age of six and the elderly are overwhelmingly the most frequent victims of severe/fatal dog attacks by any breed.) Nonetheless, newspapers and editorials print this baseless nonsense. Suffice it to say, these are all untrue and there is no evidence whatsoever to support any claims of a chemical, neurological or puberty-based aggression exclusive to Pit bulls.

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http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/uploaded_files/publications/230603563_Pit%20Bull%20Placebo.pdf

page: 107

Separating fact from fiction is time consuming and tedious work. It is much easier for most people to embrace information which supports their pre-existing belief. For example, if your neighbor has a gentle and friendly Pit bull, you may be more inclined from personal experience to believe information presented which supports this view of the breed. If your neighbor is a drug dealer and has three Pit bulls lunging from chains or barking madly behind a fence, you may be more inclined to believe information supporting the vicious nature of Pit bulls. Professionals, too, can have diametrically opposed viewpoints and opinions about Pit bulls. Police officers are more inclined toward encountering bad owners (criminals and their aggressively encouraged dogs) and often see only the “bad” Pit bulls. Veterinarians often have a positive image of Pit bulls since in their profession they more frequently encounter these dogs in stressful situations (pain, fear, with strangers) and recognize the extreme tolerance found in Pit bulls. If you have no personal experience with Pit bulls, then your only information is acquired from newspapers headlines, and it is not difficult to understand how people have formeda very negative opinion of Pit bulls with the media as their only source of knowledge about the breed.

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Who do we fear more – the dogs or their owners?

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Who do we fear more – the dogs or their owners?

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/25/dangerous-dogs-prejudice-against-owners

It has always been the work of politics to beef up some risks and minimise others – so, for instance, John Mueller's book, Overblown, has a graph that shows the number of US deaths caused by lightning strike has always been higher than that caused by terrorism, except in 2001. Road traffic is so much greater a threat to children than anything apart from sudden infant death syndrome, that it's hackneyed to point it out. But flying up the mortality charts is the "accident while texting" (there were some good statistics, albeit from America, on BBC Radio 4's Inside Health this week). Generally speaking, risks that proceed from decisions made by individuals are played down, while risks that emanate from groups of people are overstated.

Despite the rhetorical mileage in it everybody knows this is hysterical, and that it is relatively rare for this irrationality to get its own legislation. Indeed, the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is held up as an example of how not to make laws. It was hurried through in response to tabloid pressure, and the results are frankly tragic. "Really sociable, healthy dogs do get caught up in it, and there's nothing you can do," said an officer from the West Midlands police dangerous dogs unit, about to kill a beautiful tan pitbull that any dog lover would have rehomed in a heartbeat.

The law serves no purpose in public protection, has not reduced the number of dog bites, and hasn't even reduced the number of pit bull-type dogs on the streets. But this doesn't mean it hasn't had an impact: it has given a legislative framework to neighbours prosecuting grudges against one another. The dogs investigated on Death Row Dogs were local tip-offs, and all the dogs, on examination, were being mistreated by their owners.

***But a neighbour worried about animal cruelty would have called the RSPCA; the choice of the police as their authority of first resort suggests malice. None of the dogs was dangerous.

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Breeds and Behavior: they're not like other dogs- or are they?

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Breeds and Behavior: they're not like other dogs- or are they?

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http://www.nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/uploaded_files/tinymce/Breeds_and_Behavior_-_Bradley_reprint_from_Bark_NEW%5B1%5D.pdf

It’s common practice among people working in rescues and shelters to identify the dogs in their care as “predominantly breed X” or as an “X/Y” mix. Recently, when scientists used DNA analysis to test the accuracy of such labeling, they found that among dogs labeled by adoption workers, only one dog in four actually had the named breed confirmed as significantly – much less, predominantly – represented.

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Troublemakers: what pit bulls can teach us about profiling

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Troublemakers: what pit bulls can teach us about profiling

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http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/06/060206fa_fact

Kelly was pointing out what might be called profiling’s “category problem.” Generalizations involve matching a category of people to a behavior or trait—overweight middle-aged men to heart-attack risk, young men to bad driving. But, for that process to work, you have to be able both to define and to identify the category you are generalizing about. “You think that terrorists aren’t aware of how easy it is to be characterized by ethnicity?” Kelly went on. “Look at the 9/11 hijackers. They came here. They shaved. They went to topless bars. They wanted to blend in. They wanted to look like they were part of the American dream. These are not dumb people. Could a terrorist dress up as a Hasidic Jew and walk into the subway, and not be profiled? Yes. I think profiling is just nuts.”

Pit-bull bans involve a category problem, too, because pit bulls, as it happens, aren’t a single breed. The name refers to dogs belonging to a number of related breeds, such as the American Staffordshire terrier, the Staffordshire bull terrier, and the American pit bull terrier—all of which share a square and muscular body, a short snout, and a sleek, short-haired coat. Thus the Ontario ban prohibits not only these three breeds but any “dog that has an appearance and physical characteristics that are substantially similar” to theirs; the term of art is “pit bull-type” dogs. But what does that mean? Is a cross between an American pit bull terrier and a golden retriever a pit bull-type dog or a golden retriever-type dog? If thinking about muscular terriers as pit bulls is a generalization, then thinking about dangerous dogs as anything substantially similar to a pit bull is a generalization about a generalization. “The way a lot of these laws are written, pit bulls are whatever they say they are,” Lora Brashears, a kennel manager in Pennsylvania, says. “And for most people it just means big, nasty, scary dog that bites.”
A Georgia-based group called the American Temperament Test Society has put twenty-five thousand dogs through a ten-part standardized drill designed to assess a dog’s stability, shyness, aggressiveness, and friendliness in the company of people. A handler takes a dog on a six-foot lead and judges its reaction to stimuli such as gunshots, an umbrella opening, and a weirdly dressed stranger approaching in a threatening way. Eighty-four per cent of the pit bulls that have been given the test have passed, which ranks pit bulls ahead of beagles, Airedales, bearded collies, and all but one variety of dachshund. “We have tested somewhere around a thousand pit-bull-type dogs,” Carl Herkstroeter, the president of the A.T.T.S., says. “I’ve tested half of them. And of the number I’ve tested I have disqualified one pit bull because of aggressive tendencies. They have done extremely well. They have a good temperament. They are very good with children.” It can even be argued that the same traits that make the pit bull so aggressive toward other dogs are what make it so nice to humans. “There are a lot of pit bulls these days who are licensed therapy dogs,” the writer Vicki Hearne points out. “Their stability and resoluteness make them excellent for work with people who might not like a more bouncy, flibbertigibbet sort of dog. When pit bulls set out to provide comfort, they are as resolute as they are when they fight, but what they are resolute about is being gentle. And, because they are fearless, they can be gentle with anybody.”

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"American Staffordshire Terrier" is not a polite new name for pit bull, although it's often misapplied by people who dislike the term 'pit bull.' Understanding the jumbled history of the breed names helps to clear up some of this confusion and mislabeling. Before the end of the 1800's, the dogs we think of as 'Pit Bulls' were typically called bulldogs - a name that's still used by many breed enthusiasts. In 1898, Chauncy Z. Bennet founded the United Kennel Club (UKC) and re-named the bulldogs 'American Pit Bull Terriers'. This move gave legitimacy to the breed and provided a framework for breed standardization. Then, in the 1930's a group petitioned the Amercian Kennel Club (AKC) to allow pit bulls to be shown in the conformation ring. To separate the dog from its reputation as a pit fighter, they were given the new title 'Staffordshire Terrier' which was later changed to 'Amercian Staffordshire Terrier' to avoid confusion with the English Staffordshire Terrier. Right: The original 'Pete the Pup' from Our Gang fame was one of the first to be duo-registerd as a UKC American Pit Bull Terrier and an AKC American Stafforshire Terrier. The American Staffordshire Terriers have been developed since that time for conformation, while the APBTs have been developed for working drive, in addition to conformation. The two styles are basically mirror images of each other, with slight differences in build and character that have started to show over the past 65 years. To make matters even more confusing, some AmStaffs are dual registered as both UKC APBTs and AKC AmStaffs, while APBTs cannot be registered with both organizations. Depending on who you talk to, AmStaffs and APBTs can be the exact same breed, or completely separate breeds. In 1909, Guy McCord founded an organization titled ADBA (American Dog Breeders Association). This was created exclusively for APBTs and continues to be the lead registry for this breed. In 1976, the ADBA outlined its own breed standard, or, Basis of Conformation. In 1990, a new registry called ABKC was formed to promote 'American Bully' dogs - a new breeding style of thick, bulldoggy looking dogs that are said to have English Bulldog in their background as well as other breeds. - See more at: http://www.badrap.org/breed-history#sthash.ZE3zq9uc.dpuf

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Inaccuracy of Breed Labels Assigned to Dogs of Unknown Origin 

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Inaccuracy of Breed Labels Assigned to Dogs of Unknown Origin 

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http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/breed-identification-1/

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National Canine Research Council Interview with Dr. Victoria Voith on the Inaccuracy of Visual Dog Breed Identification

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Dr. Voith describes her research concluding that there is little correlation between dog adoption agencies' identification of probable breed composition with the identification of breeds by DNA analysis. Featuring: Victoria Lea Voith, Ph.D., DVM, DACVB, charter diplomate in the American College of Veterinary Behavior, & advisor to National Canine Research Council.

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document flyer from badrap.org