Tammy Devoll: Is Ownership of Pit Bulls Worth the Risk?

Didn't I just write about this? And didn't a commenter say that no one makes these kinds of arguments? Apparently people do.

Tammy Devoll has an opinion. Here's part of her opinion. If you are so inclined, you can read the rest of opinion here. You don't need to be inclined. In summation: Devoll doesn't like Pit Bulls, she doesn't like their owners, and you are practically a sex offender if you have a Pit Bull.

Any breed of dog will bite if provoked, however, the difference between a more docile breed is it will more than likely bite once and usually the bitten area will be a leg or a hand, not intentionally the neck as the pit bull targets.

 Ah, the magical "only Pit Bulls attack the neck/face and only Pit Bulls bite multiple times" argument.

• English mastiff bites child in neck/face, bites multiple times.
• Boxer Mix rips open a child's throat, bites multiple times.
• Cattle dog inflicts 900 stitches worth of damage on child, mainly on the neck and face, biting multiple times.
• Lab/Shepherd mix attacks a child's face, not clear if child was bitten multiple times to fit Devoll's standard of dangerousness.
• A Labrador Retriever bites a girl multiple times. On the face. 100 stitches worth of bite.
• Shepherd Husky Mix bites 2-yr-old on the face. Multiple times.
• A Great Dane bit a child in the face multiple times, requiring 100 stitches to close.
• A Labrador Retriever Mix bit a child in the face, neck and arms multiple times.
• A Husky bit a child in the face, thrashing the child around.
• Two Labrador Retrievers and a Cattle dog maul a child, biting her multiple times, dragging her from her home.

On the other end are the Pit Bulls who aren't living up to Devoll's standards:

• Loose Pit Bull bites child once, causing minor injuries.
• This Pit Bull did aim for the face, biting a child once, right above her eye. The injury was minor.
• A Pit Bull bites a woman once. In the leg. After the woman started to physically fight with the dog's owner.
• These two Pit Bulls scratched a man on the back and one of them bit a man once on the back.

We have multiple exceptions on both ends of the spectrum- more docile breeds engaging in prolonged attacks on people's faces and less docile Pit Bulls not biting necks.

For Devoll to be right, she must reclassify breeds with individuals biting the neck of humans or biting more than once as less docile. She must then re-classify individual Pit Bulls who don't bite necks or only bite once as something else. More docile individual Pit Bulls? I'm not sure how the argument would flow.

Go pet your dogs. Try not to get bit in the neck. I mean, if I read this blog entry and thought it represented all dogs, I'd consider them pretty darn dangerous. I don't, of course. You probably don't either. But therein lies the problem with the microscope and slant of media bias. A picture is painted that is more impressionist than realist. This would be fine if we were talking about cotton balls. Not so fine when the painting results in the death of dogs, a reduction in public safety and discrimination.