Thursday, November 12, 2009

Confusing breeds, stafishing, therapy dog with cancer, altruistic plants

I'll preface this by saying it is unfair of me to expect a 9-yr-old boy to be all that accurate after being allegedly attacked by five adult men in the middle of the night.

That said: "one of the men had a dog, which may have been a pitbull or German shepherd." There isn't any reason to link to the article, because it's a paragraph long and is pretty boring.


Now, it is true that Celeste is not actually a German Shepherd (she's 45 lbs, has blue eyes, and I'm sure GSD enthusiasts could point out other differences) but people confuse her for a GSD enough that this picture is appropriate. Mina is, of coure, an American Pit Bull Terrier. I cannot see the physical similarities between the two.

In other news, News8 has decided to take on pit bulls.

"A pit bull can be a combination of the American bull terrier, a stafishord terrier, a bull terrier or even a bulldog."

Um. Not really. A pit bull is an American Pit Bull Terrier or an American Staffordshire Terrier. I do not subscribe to the notion that because anti-dog zealots like to clump five different breeds under an arbitrary label that therefore I must do the same. (Of course I asked myself what an American bull terrier or stafishord terrier is).

"An obedient, well trained, well socialized dog is less likely to bite or be injured in an accident."

I can agree on that. It's a bit like saying deploying your parachute reduces your risk of smashing into the ground dead. Sort of a no-duh statement but as evidenced by the ineptitude many dog guardians/owners exhibit, I suppose it can't be said enough.

Six-year-old Ruby, a rescued therapy dog, is struggling with the aftermath of bone cancer. An anonymous donor paid for the treatment and post-operative care. Ruby won second place in the milk-bone biscuit contest and will appear on the biscuit maker's boxes nationwide.


Plants recognize kin and may exhibit altruistic behavior. I'm going to see if the daughter spider plant I got from my mom recognizes her mother. Road trip!

7 comments:

Kari in Alaska said...

obviously your dogs have the same parents... ugh breed mis-identification is scary business

pibble said...

Now hold on! A stafishord us actually a very rare breed. Instead of front legs, it's got, well, fins. And instead of a tail... You guess it. A fin. Or am I describing a platypus? A beaver?

How do these people get (and keep) their jobs? Isn't research part of a journalist's responsibility? Okay, maybe I'm pushing it by using the term "journalist."

Pibble -http://rescuek9.blogspot.com/

Ashley The CRPS Girl said...

Do stafishord terrier resemble those 5 appendaged things in the ocean?

Laura said...

interesting that plants can recognize strangers vs kin, who knew they were competitive.

it makes me sad that such a wonderful dog (must be wonderful to be both a service and therapy dog!) has to battle cancer.

Retrieverman said...

A bull terrier is the upper and upper middle class Victorian version of this dog. It's not only not a pit bull, they look nothing like them. I've never seen a pit bull with triangular eyes and a head shape quite like it.

A bulldog is descended from the same ancestors of that bull and terrier type, but this one has been bred with pugs to make them have very short muzzles.

The other one they like to lump together is the Staffordshire bull terrier. It is usually quite a bit smaller than the AmStaff/Pit Bull and never has cropped ears. I don't know what an American bull terrier is, but I think that was a proposed name for the Boston terrier.

BTW, Celeste doesn't have a sloped back and an ataxic gait. So she's not a GSD, at least of the show version.

Anonymous said...

There actually was an "American bull terrier", sort of. At one time the distinction between the bt and the APBT as not always clearcut (and APBTs were shown as BTs before AKC recognition)

You can see the name applied to the white dog that Wallace Robinson used to represent the USA in his well known WW1 propaganda poster showing the dogs of different nations. http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s252/pitbullEmily/neutralbutnotafraid.jpg

That particular animal could either have been a skinny snouted American pit bull terrier or a "Hinks type" of bull terrier (which at the time did not have such an exaggerated down-face). "Neutral but not afraid of any of them" has a pretty clear meaning and it doesn't refer to a dog that walked by his Victorian gentleman's side.

But this of course has NOTHING to do with the stafishing morons in this story...

EmilyS

PoochesForPeace said...

Definately post an update on the whole plant thing if you try it out!