Is This Dog A Pit Bull Mix?

On March 31st, the dog pictured bit the face of a 2-yr-old child. This was a hard, dedicated bite that involved tearing and thrashing. The dog needed to be beaten off of the child. The toddler spent four days in ICU. The dog, a six-year-old, was killed.

The Jackson Clarion Ledger reports that this dog is a Pit Bull mix. There are only 7 comments but they all refer to Pit Bulls as evil, awful, dangerous dogs.

The article from which I screen-capped the picture is here. They identify the dog as a black-mouth cur. There are only three comments in this article- one suggests there might be a medical problem, the other two suggest they would have killed the dog themselves. None seem put-off by the type of dog, which is also called a mixed breed cur dog.

Of course the dog pictured is not visually a Pit Bull or a mixed breed Pit Bull.

But isn't it interesting that when you insert "pit bull mix" into an article, people can't help but comment about how awful the breed is, but when you call the exact same dog, committing the exact same bite, a "mixed breed cur", then everyone sings a different tune. Nothing has changed. A two-year-old has still been physically scarred, perhaps for life and perhaps emotionally as well. A dog is dead. And yet how the dog is framed, how he is visually identified, shifts the conversation from "how did this happen?" to "another Pit Bull attack, god they are so awful, see, see here is my evidence!"

I wish the child a speedy recovery.