How pit bulls got a bad reputation

being attacked by dogs a pitbull breeder is savagely mauled to death killed by his 13 pitbulls you've probably seen a lot of stories about pitbull attacks and anecdotes about how dangerous they are and when movies need to show a vicious dog it's often a pitbull why is that is there something about these dogs that makes them inherently more demonizing certain dogs the first dog that caused a public outcry was this The Spits a type of dog we'd most likely Now call a Pomeranian they got the reputation as women's dogs with one doctor essentially saying that women deserve whatever consequences come from having dogs instead of babies articles said that these dogs were aggressive and deadly and called them treacherous beasts meanwhile pit bulls were once thought of as a great family dog they really were just seen as the Honda Civic of dogs this this is bronwin dicki she spent over 7 years researching and writing a book about pit bulls the kind of Horatio aler Plucky Everyman dog a pitbull was The Lovable sidekick of The Little Rascals and they were even used in military posters to advertise patriotism so what changed in the 1960s and '70s the cultural landscape started to shift dramatically crime rates Rose across the country especially in America's largest cities it made people believe that they were in danger all the time and what you see is a lot of people getting those dogs to acquire like a small medium smooth coated dog with a big head whatever you want to call it it's always been easier to acquire that type of dog than again your $3 to $5,000 Champion Labrador one New York Times article from 1971 said that residents of the Bronx got guard dogs to take care of themselves since the city wasn't doing it for them the 1980s also Usher in a new era of rap music which directly confronted the deterioration of inner cities and featured many references to pit bulls once these dogs became associated with Urban poverty and the plight of black youth they became proxies for human Prejudice and racism new stories Associated these dogs with drug dealers and criminals you would see comments like we have enough of those people here they don't need to bring their dogs here a stereotype of pit bulls had emerged in the media they had gone from familyfriendly to National foe but let's back up for a second what even is a pitbull the term Pitbull is a lot like the term Hound it's a breed group it's a generalized shape it's not a specific breed within that category there are four pure breeds the American Pitbull Terrier the American Staffordshire Terrier the American Bully and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier they were bred down from the British Bull and Terrier dogs which were in turn descendants of English Bulldogs because of this a lot of people use the term pit bull-shaped dog but for the sake of Simplicity I'll be saying pitbull in this video Pitbull's reputation has led them to being included in the more than 700 US cities breed specific legislation also known as BSL breed specific leg legislation is an attempt to restrict or ban ownership of a dog based purely on essentially their breed right what they look like you have this unfortunate um perception that they're aggressive dogs who are born to fight and dangerous to justify BSL Pitbull opponents often cite legal rulings such as the 2012 court of appeals ruling from Maryland which says that pit bulls are inherently dangerous the way that we as a society um sometimes treat dogs as what makes them dangerous I don't think there's a breed that's inherently dangerous the dissenting judge from the 2012 case pointed out a lack of proof to support the inherently dangerous designation and highlighted that dog bite statistics are unreliable we don't have good numbers on dog like which dogs bite the most in general because of reporting biases smaller dogs or other dogs bite and it just doesn't get reported the same way it does if it were a pull I think pit attacks make for good news just like shark attacks do we know that not a lot of people die from shark attacks every year but when one does it's on the news even just determining a dog's breed is incredibly difficult people see a large dog in think Pitbull automatically unless it's a breed that they can readily identify but it's almost impossible to judge what breed a dog is by sight most dogs are mixed breed with some being a mixture of several different kinds a study found that nearly 90% of dogs and shelters that were labeled as a particular breed were misidentified and dogs were labeled as Pitbull type dogs almost half the time even without DNA evidence which means that a lot of dogs that may look like pitbull mixes don't actually have any pitbull in them and then there's just their sheer population they're they're one of our most popular dogs so if you're looking at just straight numbers there are always going to be more bites reported from popular breeds than there are from dogs who are not as popular for this reason and more the American Veterinary Medical Association cautioned in 2001 that dog bite statistics are not really statistics and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite we know that uh BSL doesn't work that and that's sort of the bottom line as even in places where these laws exist they haven't prevented bites and attacks Denver spent $5.8 million over 30 years enforcing their Pitbull ban with little measurable impact on Public Safety similarly in Denmark pit bulls were banned in 2010 and the country didn't see any significant changes in dog bite hospitalizations so what does this mean for these dogs and their owners there are many many many rental properties where you cannot live if you have a dog that is considered a pit bull it was either a size thing like no dogs over 30 30 lb or um if they did accept large dogs they said that caveat no pitbulls this is Lauren a friend at Vox who has a pitbull named Dilly she said many landlords simply don't allow pitbulls it's very difficult I think a lot of people agree that they're misunderstood when we first got him I was afraid he was going to like shred our apartment and the worst he did was like nibbled on like the side of my hat once anytime I have to fill out any paperwork for I say mixed breed just to be safe I see so many people come through and they'll AB absolutely fall in love with a dog and then they'll say is it a pit bull and I'll say well we don't really know and then they move on to another dog it's a really sad moment for me when that dog who is awesome and those people who are really interested in taking him home and they can't because of restrictions I think people want an easy answer to preventing dog bites and they think that that easy answer is you know if we can focus on this one breed the is known for fighting but the answer is that we need to really look at the way that we treat dogs and are we meeting the needs of these dogs and the answer is we're not always dogs left alone for large periods of time in a backyard with no socialization and no training those dogs aren't getting their needs met and they're not having a good life and if we can Empower people to help those dogs then we can prevent bites and attacks from happening.