• IcyToes@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Asks for sources. When gets source, comes up with any excuse including government figures as to why they’re wrong.

    You don’t want source, you just don’t to believe it because you always had that believe that all dogs are good, they just got bad owners. Maybe you’re partly right, owners and training plays a big part, but even with that, these dogs are overwhelming involved in incidents and fatal incidents in the UK despite there being horrible dog owners of every breed.

    The allowing these dog breeds was a compromise to try and get the legislation through, but most know these dogs are bred for fighting, and are so strong, they are lethal. Even families who cared for the dogs and loved them well, and one accident, and a child is dead. Ooops. Some dog breeds just ain’t safe.

    • gid@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      13 hours ago

      I’m curious, do you have any experience with training and handling dogs? Because breeding really doesn’t work in the way you are implying or assuming.

      Describing these dogs as bred for fighting implies that these dogs are pre-programmed to attack and fight. That’s not how dogs work. Breeding for traits is about selecting for particular behavioural and physical attributes. “Fighting” isn’t an isolated behaviour, it’s a collection of traits like defensiveness, aggression, threat identification and so on, and to “fight” dogs need training on these.

      As previous commenters have said, in the tragic cases where bully breeds have been involved in lethal attacks there are indications that the dogs were not handled/trained/socialized correctly.

      • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        13 hours ago

        As previous commenters have said, in the tragic cases where bully breeds have been involved in lethal attacks there are indications that the dogs were not handled/trained/socialized correctly.

        Nevertheless, to account for the kind of disproportionality on display, it seems to me there’s only really two ways to explain it:

        1. bullies are innately more likely to attack when poorly trained, or;
        2. people who are unable to train dogs are more likely to own bullies.
        • gid@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          12 hours ago

          bullies are innately more likely to attack when poorly trained, or;

          Unfortunately I can’t find statistics for the UK, but these statistics for the USA show that pitbulls account for 22 lethal attacks a year. That’s out of roughly 4.5 million pitbulls (source). That is an incredibly low percentage, even if it is higher than the percentage of lethal attacks by other types of dog breed, to the point where we’re comparing differences of fractions of a percent.

          To give that figure of number of fatalities some perspective, roughly the same number of people (21) are killed per year by cattle.

          But taking either of your points to be true, both these cases can be resolved without banning (and putting down or destroying) particular breeds, for example:

          • provide education on training and dog handling
          • better controls and standards for dog breeding
          • licensing/training as part of a condition of dog ownership

          There are existing organisations and dog clubs that are already offer some of these, and would be well-placed to tie in as providers if these things were legislated.

    • Bongles@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      This is basically a forum, people discuss things on forums. There are statistics that you provided and now they’re discussing them.