This is a short story about how a pitbull died.  It belonged to someone I know very well.  I knew the dog too, and how they took care of it.  This is an anecdote about the dangers of some dog breeds.  In most cases, anecdotes aren’t very strong evidence.  But as an illustration of an idea, they can be useful:

A doorway too narrow

My friend, “Aaron” and his family owned two pitbulls, Jack and Jill, a brother and sister from the same litter.  He’d had them since they were puppies.  They were indoor dogs, living in a beautiful house and yard with plenty of toys, food, and love.  Jack and Jill were best friends: family, in the truest sense.  Jack, being a male, was a little bigger, but it was obvious that the two were on equal footing with each other.

Year after year, the dogs and their human family got along perfectly; until one day, both dogs tried to come in from the yard at the same time.  This is something that they’d done thousands of times before: Jack and Jill were out in yard, and Aaron called them into the house.  And like dogs will do, they scrambled playfully to the door to come inside.

But this time wasn’t like the thousands of times before.  Maybe they were a little too crowded in the doorway.  Maybe Jack’s arthritis had been acting up.  In honesty, we don’t know why this time was different.  This time, as they squeezed through the doorway, Jack turned and with a snap, tore Jill’s throat out.

Aftermath

This was devastating to Aaron’s family emotionally and financially.  They tried everything they could to save Jill; she had operations, and tubes implanted in her throat, but she eventually died from her injuries.

And for me personally, I’m left with a powerful anecdote about the kind of damage that pitbulls are capable of—even in the best of conditions.

Finally, I think it’s important to realize that what Jack did is typical dog behavior; you’ll see this kind of thing go on between dogs all the time if you spend enough time with them.  This outcome, though, wouldn’t have been possible with most other dog types.

Laws that restrict dog breeds which are thought to be dangerous are called Breed Specific Legislation, or “BSL”.  I haven’t made up my mind about them, but I lean in favor of thinking they’re a good thing: after all, (1) we already ban the ownership of many kinds of dangerous animals.   And (2) the cost to society and individual freedom isn’t great, e.g.:

“No, you can’t keep that coyote you saw in Powell Butte.  And if you want a pet, there are plenty of Labs waiting to be adopted at the Humane Society.”

So I conclude that if there are overly dangerous dog breeds, then it’s reasonable to restrict them in the same way.

A cute but questionable “IQ Test”

But there are many people and groups who advocate against BSL — and in favor of their being able to keep and sell these breeds.  Ok, fair enough.  And one of them, “Paul Glassner SF/SPCA”, has written a breed ban IQ test that begins,

1. If you were the sheriff in your town and you learned that Toyotas were disproportionally involved in more auto accidents than any other model, would you:
(a) ban Toyotas and confiscate the Toyota of anyone caught driving one
(b) arrest the drivers responsible for those accidents?

And that’s it — those are the only choices.  The rest of the test builds on this question and makes the points one might guess it would.  And so I found the “test” pretty shoddy—essentially propaganda.  Because what about,

(c) look at car ownership to see if a disproportionate number of people own Toyotas as well.  If not, investigate the Toyotas to see if they’re flawed by design.

…which then leads to,

(d) potentially all of the above.

Because that’s what we do in the real world:  If a car type is too dangerous by design, then we ban it.  If a model’s occupants would die from a single low-speed collision, we ban it.  Ditto if a model’s brakes are fundamentally flawed.

The car metaphor works in favor of BSL

Now that I think about it, this does apply to dangerous dogs:  The overly dangerous dog is one who’s likely to bite more often (a car that causes more accidents), and when it does bite, more often maims or kills its victim (a car that does the same to its occupants).  In other words, the “overly dangerous dog” is one that’d be responsible for higher incidence and mortality rates. If there were a car like this — and there have been — you can bet we’d take action against them.