Yeah, for real. Pitbulls are the common target because they’re the “vicious dog”. It’s a self-fullfilling prophecy. Talk about how pitbulls are vicious man-killers, people who want vicious man-killers buy them and train them to be vicious man-killers, pitbulls become vicious man-killers. Meanwhile, the people who want a family dog don’t get pitbulls because, well, they’re “vicious man-killers”. The result is that statistics get skewed in favor of the “vicious man-killer” status, leading to people seeing the breed as nothing more than vicious man-killers.
That combined with the pseudoscience that was spewed by Merritt Clifton, that everyone still quotes today, and you’ve got yourself some statistical issues.
Yeah, for real. Pitbulls are the common target because they’re the “vicious dog”. It’s a self-fullfilling prophecy. Talk about how pitbulls are vicious man-killers, people who want vicious man-killers buy them and train them to be vicious man-killers, pitbulls become vicious man-killers. Meanwhile, the people who want a family dog don’t get pitbulls because, well, they’re “vicious man-killers”. The result is that statistics get skewed in favor of the “vicious man-killer” status, leading to people seeing the breed as nothing more than vicious man-killers.
That combined with the pseudoscience that was spewed by Merritt Clifton, that everyone still quotes today, and you’ve got yourself some statistical issues.
In case people don’t know who Merritt is
People who get pit bulls as “family dogs” have the same issue.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/08/2-children-killed-mother-hospitalized-after-tennessee-dog-mauling/8219201001/
https://winknews.com/2023/07/06/north-port-6-year-old-dies-dog-bite/
I never thought about that