#like almost any other documentary on pit bulls

[rainbowloliofjustice]

What do you think of the fifth estate’s documentary on pit bulls?

I haven’t seen it fully, but honestly it comes off as fear-mongering. 

Yes, pit bulls can do serious damage with their bite... any large dog can. 

Yet the bans are only focused on pit bulls. What about german shepherds? or rottweilers? Chows?

It doesn’t help that the media and documentaries often use “pit bull” as an umbrella term to cover around 5 different breeds of dogs and upwards of 50% of dogs in shelters that get labeled as pit bulls are just lookalikes. Given that pit bull can refer to the American pit bull terrier, Staffordshire pit bull terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier, and American Bully. 

Are we going to end up banning any dog that can fall underneath what just gets labeled as a pit bull? When they’re banned, what are we going to do next? Start banning the next highest breed of dogs that cause bites?

Not to mention, pit bulls, like any dog, need to be trained to not be aggressive, need to be properly socialized, etc. just like any other dog. Of course, it isn’t helped by the fact that the media (and documentaries like this) only care about when it is a pit bull. 

Labs made up 13% of bites according to a 2008 study. pit bulls came in second at 8%. Yet people want to ban pit bulls but not labradors?

When it comes to personal injury claims of delivery workers, german shepherds, bull terriers, labs and border collies were among the most common to bite. Yet pit bulls are the only dangerous ones on the list?

And the documentary uses one man whose child was killed due to the babysitter leaving the child unattended with the dogs and that’s just like ??? that’s why you never leave children unattended with any dog that the dog is not familiar with. 

Not to mention, BSL only focuses on pit bull and pit bull-type dogs, but what about german shepherds and labs who make up a significant portion of bite statistics? Small dogs like chihuahuas that can exhibit high amounts of aggression if not properly socialized?

ya know how many times I’ve had someone’s lab growl at me and snarled despite the owners saying they were friendly? A lot

The documentary even shows dogs that are chained up and acknowledges that one person sees many pit bulls living in puppy mills and backyard breeders who sell them as status, guard, or fighting dogs... And mind you, dogfighting is illegal because it is animal abuse but then contrasts that with a woman who worked in/with a shelter that basically tried to sell dogs that they knew may not be good fits for certain homes or families. So when you have ill-bred and ill-trained dogs by people somehow the solution is to ban the breed rather than coming down hard on irresponsible owners?

And yet it’s the breed's fault and the breed should be banned for shelters deciding to lie and be deceptive about how well a dog may fit within another family? So because a shelter, run by a group of people, decided to lie about a dog’s history or past... that means it is the dog's fault and they should be banned? What logic does it make to ban a dog or dog breed when shelters and people decide to intentionally be deceptive about it in order to just rehome them? You basically have someone in the documentary who admits to being irresponsible and negligent yet... ????

Like, this lady admitted to working in a shelter that would be deceptive about a dog’s temperament, but then went on to blame the breed. 

It is only after someone dies or is bitten by a pit bull that people want to try to discuss BSL or banning them... but there was a woman, about 2 years ago, who got mauled by a pack of dachshunds yet there only concerns with pit bulls? people say one attack against people is too many yet... almost every dog breed in existence has attacked at least one person or animal. If you are banning breeds because they attack people, you’re going to be banning a lot more than pit bulls. If it is based on whether or not they are capable of killing someone, you’re going to be banning almost any medium to large size dog. 

It’s almost no secret that toy breeds are known to be very aggressive due to the way they’re often treated and pampered... Chihuahuas rank fourth in breeds that have bitten children and even though their bites aren’t comparable to pit bulls or larger breeds, if the issue is the severity of the bite then... any large breed dog should be banned because any large dog can produce a severe or fatal bite. 

Dogs are bred by people... if aggression is an issue, you can selectively breed that out the same way that certain dogs were selectively bred to be able to run or be as small as possible. If pit bulls get banned, what is going to be the next breed on the list? German Shepards? Dobermans? Chows?

Why are we coming down on breeds rather than irresponsible shelters that are deceptive about a dog’s temperament and backyard breeders that abuse and neglect dogs? Ofc when a dog comes from an abusive or neglectful situation, they’re going to have behavioral and temper issues... so that is somehow the fault of the breed itself?

The documentary ends by basically saying pit bulls are dangerous and it is a matter of public safety...By a surgeon that basically says no one will miss them after a while because there will be fewer fatalities even though other large dog breeds can cause fatalities, a woman who admitted to working for a shelter that would lie and intentionally be deceptive about a dog’s temperament in order to get them out the shelter, a father who lost his child and a baby sitter that was too irresponsible and let the child unattended with two large dogs who basically say “tell me which one is and isn’t going to attack” which can apply to literally any dog and then one pit bull lobbyist that they just portray as selfish and crazy.

Like if you show me two pictures of a chihuahua... I’m not going to know which is going to try to maul my hand. If you are banning pits, why not extend it to german shepherds, mastiffs, chows, etc.? They’re also large dogs that can cause fatal/severe bites. Why not ban chihuahuas, they’re the ones most likely to bite? is it only based on severity/fatality? If so then bye-bye to most large dog breeds. 

Yeah totally not a biased documentary at all. 

[dustinjohnson1981]

my first post

This is my first and maybe only post. I don’t know what to do anymore, I’ve been homeless for 3 months and it doesn’t seem like anyone cares. I’ve tried reaching out for help with shelters, churches, and even government programs and haven’t been able to get any assistance. Shelters won’t help cause I have an 11 year old pit bull dog that I’ve had since she was a few months old. She’s the sweetest dog you will ever meet, but because she’s a pit bull, there’s that stigma that she’s aggressive, which she isn’t. I’m no saint, and I’m not here to try and lead anyone on to thinking that I am, but I am a good person. I’m just an ordinary person, trying to get through this hell we call life. I have a couple people I call friends, but in reality, we’re more acquaintances that have just known each other for like the past 16 years. Maybe I’m just too different from the rest of humanity, but I would do just about anything to help a friend out if they were in my position, but my “friends” don’t want anything to do with me. I feel like I’m a burden and think I would be better off dead. I definitely don’t have any reason, any purpose for living, I’m just a waste of human existence. I’m not really into religion, at least definitely not the go to church every week type, and lately, about all my faith in God is me cursing at him for making me homeless, if God is even real. So of course religious people jump at me for those comments saying it’s the Devil, not God. I’m like, ok, if it’s the Devil, and he was one of God’s angels, why does he allow the Devil to exist still? God is suppose to be all powerful, all knowing, all loving, but he lets humanity suffer here on Earth. Religion will say I was created in the image of God, and that he already knows everything that is going to happen before it happens, so first, it’s like what in the hell was God smoking when he created me the way I am and then knew I was going to end up homeless and contemplating suicide. I never asked to be born, to be raised in an abusive family. I am thankful that at 39 now, I had the common sense to tell myself when I was 8 years old I will never have a wife of children of my own, so that way I won’t risk repeating the cycle of abuse. I feel like whether it is God, or just bad genes in science talk, I definitely got the short end of the straw. Being 5′5 sucks for height when women seem to want tall guys. And I definitely don’t have the skills for social interactions, probably why I’ve never had a girlfriend. I always end up in the friend zone. I compare my attributes to that of Danny DeVito in the movie, Twins, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you haven’t seen that movie, I recommend watching it, it’s a good movie. I wonder where I went wrong in life to end up homeless. I grew up being good with numbers, so always thought I was going to be an accountant, but was never good at anything else in school and really hated going. Tried my luck in college and that was a complete waste of time, can’t write 3-5 page essays for English, so was never able to finish my AA degree. I was always a fan of WWE wrestling growing up and that was like my dream to be a wrestler, but again, being short and untalented and uncharismatic, that was never going to happen. I can say I at least tried for it though, trained for almost 2 years before getting a minor tear in my shoulder.  I have no real skill set when it comes to work, I’ve spent my entire life working in warehouses through staffing agencies. Not being good is an understatement when it comes to job interviews. No matter how much I try and prepare for the questions, I always just freeze up like a deer in headlights. I hate working in warehouses to begin with, companies just treat employees like slaves, especially if you’re through an agency. They literally need no reason to end your assignment, so if they just look at you and decide they don’t like you, you aren’t going to last very long, that or they’re going to have you do the lowest type of work they have and force you to want to quit. They make you work 12 hour shifts days a week and only want to pay you minimum wage or slightly above that while as a company they make millions of dollars. And they do this to employees year round, regardless of weather conditions. So during summer, when it’s 102 degrees outside and your in a truck loading or unloading, it’s going to be like 110-115 degrees inside that truck and same in winter times, when it’s cold outside, it’s even worse inside, especially if you’re on a forklift, cause now you’re driving up and down lanes pulling pallets and you’re feeling the freezing wind as you drive. So I haven’t worked in about 2 weeks now and not sure when my next assignment will come, or if I’ll even take it. Obviously I need to so I can have money for food for my dog and myself, but it’s so depressing that I have nothing to show for my life. I’m in and out of motels these 3 months of being homeless, my checks barely cover the cost for a week at a motel. So my other bills don’t get paid, or if they do, their constantly being late. Having around $45,000 in bills/debts ain’t fun neither. I don’t even know why I made an account here and am writing this, I doubt anyone will read this and even less likely I will get any help. I’ve heard of Tumblr, but never really knew what it was. I only just found out after watching the Netflix documentary on Elisa Lam. When I have friends that won’t help, family that put me in this situation, why would complete strangers want to help me. I’ve tried GoFundMe and have had absolutely no luck there, I feel like you have to have a huge friend base on social media for that site to work. You post to your friends who share to others and so on and hopefully get people to help whatever the cause that person posted about, so for me, that just was a waste of time. Same with Twitter and TikTok, people respond how they feel bad for me but I can’t get anyone to want to help me with finding a job and a place to live. I can’t rent anyways, as I found out in December after applying to several places and being rejected, my grandmother put something called a judgment on my background so when apartments run a check and that pops up, they immediately decline my application. And renting a room isn’t an option neither as people don’t want my dog. I just feel hopeless and defeated in life and don’t see a reason to go on. I was just reading about the horrific car pile up accident in the Fort Worth, TX area the other day and feel bad for all those people, but at the same time, wish I was one of the six that died so that I could be gone from this world. Same if I could, I would gladly trade places with a child that’s dying from cancer or even if it was for one more day, trade with an someone’s parent, so that they could have that one extra day to tell that parent how much they love them before the parent passes. To be unloved in life, to feel completely invisible and unnoticeable to everyone around is one of the worse feelings I think you can have, and that’s how I feel everyday of my life. I don’t know why I keep hoping my life is going to get better, reality is it only ever gets worse by each passing day. And I don’t fear suicide or death in general, for me, it’s the pain I’ll endure in those final moments that scare the hell out of me. Like slitting my wrist or throat and bleeding out, or drowning. All the things that probable flash through your mind as your body reacts and obviously goes into fight or flight mode and tries to survive. Even jumping off a building or a bridge and watching yourself fall to your death, the panic you probable feel of how much pain you will feel when you hit the ground or get hit by a truck, or taking a gun and pulling the trigger, hoping that the bullet goes through exactly the way needed so that you hopefully don’t feel a thing as you fall to the floor dead. To me, it’s the process of dying that’s scary, not death itself. Death itself is mercy, I no longer will feel any pain, physical, emotional, psychological or any other way. Just nothingness, much how I feel my life is. 

[orcinus-ocean]

Pit Bulls Unleashed: My dissection (part 1)

So, I said I was going to tear this documentary apart, and now I’ve finally got the time to do it. I quit watching after less than 15 minutes the first time because I thought “I need to make a review and write it as I watch”. So here you go.

(After a while I realized I would have to split it into several parts, because it’s already getting too long and no one would read any longer than this.)

Disclaimer about sensitivity: This film deals with the very real tragedy of a child being violently killed, and the trauma the babysitter suffered. I in no way wish to be disrespectful to this. I am not a parent myself, I have no idea what it’s like to lose a child, let alone in such a brutal way, and I have never been present for a brutal attack or death. That however, does not mean people in shock and grief know what they are talking about, and if I hear them saying false, misleading or ridiculous things, I will correct it, but that is all in the interest of getting to honesty and truth, not dancing on a poor child’s grave or their grief. So I don’t need comments telling me how insensitive I am.

The film opens with a real emergency call of a woman screaming about two pit bulls attacking a child, cuts to footage with blood in the snow, then cuts to the same woman saying to the camera that she would "never have imagined in a million years that my dog - my PET - would attack me, and kill a child".

It cuts to the child's father graphically describing the sight of his son after the attack, with a picture of the toddler before it happened.

Overall, with the choice of clips and music, I get a very “modern sensationalist drama-docu feel”, similar to Blackfish and Fatal Attractions.

The first scene depicts about 30 dogs (a dozen of which being "pit bull type dogs") from a shelter in California being welcomed in Calgary. The organizer of this move explains they are taking in dogs on “death row”, that no one has so far shown interest in adopting, and if they didn’t take them, the dogs would be dead. (Then the narrator says these airlifts are done by an “animal rights group” - I think he’s a bit confused about what that term means.)

It cuts to a promotion video showing the pit bull as a perfect family pet, as well as celebrities owning and promoting pit bulls, including Cesar Millan explaining how he raised his kids around pit bulls, and that he hasn’t had a negative story with them.

It then cuts back to the woman in the intro, Susan, saying she used to watch Dog Whisperer before getting "the puppies", and that the show and number of celebrities getting pit bulls was important in convincing her that the dogs were safe.

This is warning sign number #1 to me. They thought the breed must be fine, because "X celebrity has them". I've watched most Dog Whisperer episodes, and in every single one it says "don't try this at home", but I also know how much the average Joe doesn't understand at all what's going on in the show, and so they think they can deal with a dog and be more likely to end up being Mr Millan 2, than one of the horrible cases he deals with (and typically, the cases he works with did watch his show, they just didn’t get the message at all or misinterpreted it horribly).

I may be reading too much into it, but it feels like she’s blaming Cesar for her failure. Meanwhile, he has a vast pack of dogs, maybe half of them pit bulls, often with bad stories, and they never attack each other or a human. He said the breed is fine, he never said every single person can own them. He even lists them among what he calls the “powerful breeds” frequently.

It then cuts to big warning sign #2 for me, as the narrators say how Susan and her boyfriend “adopted two puppies” crossed between pit bull and staffordshire terrier. I couldn’t believe it when I first watched and I hope it’s taken out of context, because it shows puppies maybe 3, 4 weeks old in her arms, and being fed milk in a bowl.

Again, I hope this is out of context and it doesn’t mean that a person with perhaps no dog experience took in these young puppies without a mother, but what’s certain is they took two littermates (or puppies the same age), and raised them together.

That is a horrible idea, as everyone with dog experience knows. You never buy two puppies at once, because you can’t influence them as well as if you had them one-on-one, or only with older dogs. And if she really did take them at barely a month old, that is another huge alarm bell going off.

An animal taken prematurely from its mother will not be as mentally sound as if it had a mother. A human can never do the job as well as a mother of their own species. Let alone a human that perhaps never owned dogs before.

I’m already not surprised it went the way it did. And of course she’ll blame the dogs.

She goes on about how the dogs were trained, socialized with other dogs, how friends’ kids would come over, and that the dogs were loved. I don’t doubt this at all. But this is the common error people make - they think that in order for a dog to attack, they must be abused. So in her mind (perhaps), if the dogs weren’t abused, and they did attack, it must be the breed’s fault.

This is entirely false. All it takes is an owner who misunderstands and disrespects the animal’s nature, and with her ignorance displayed so far, that’s pretty obvious to me.

She sounds exasperated at the fact that the dogs were cuddling with her in her bed “that morning”, and it again cuts to the image of the toddler boy, Dax.

The narrator explains how, on the morning of March 6th, 2013, Susan was babysitting Dax as she had many times before, and it cuts to his dad, Jeff, describing his boy. The narrator then explains how that morning, Susan let the dogs out while holding Dax, and that within seconds, the dogs went “from pets to predators”.

"They just kept coming at us, and Dax... they pulled him out of my arms, and...“

I wasn’t there, no one but her was there, to my knowledge there is no footage of the event, but what I can guess at is that the two dogs - brought up together as puppies by an inexperienced owner, perhaps allowed to jump and lick and play very “rambuctiously”, because she thought they were “perfectly safe” (no dog is “perfectly safe”, unless it’s a 15 year old Chihuahua with no teeth), were running around, playing, engaging in normal predator-play fight behavior between each other.

Then they went over to Susan and Dax, and started jumping on her in a “playful” manner, and she held Dax back (again, this is all speculation), something people almost always do when holding a child and dogs interfere.

What happens then is as you move the child (same if you’re holding an object, like food), it becomes a target. As it moves away, the dogs want to follow, and have it more. Then the two of them would have been jumping on her, still in predator-play/fight mode, and it switched very quickly from play to reality, to adult predator mode.

I said it the other day in the other post, I’ll say it again, because people need to get it - dogs are not rational.

DOGS. ARE. NOT. FURRY. HUMANS.

In 2012, a case happened in Sweden that could have led to a death, but didn’t. Two Alaskan malamutes were out running in the forest, far away from their (irresponsible) owner. The dogs came upon a few women riding horses, and so chased the horses (prey animal). The horses bolted, and eventually, one of the riders jumped off as she could not control her horse, and the dogs proceeded to savage her.

She survived, but both dogs were killed. The owner faced no charges. Of course. It’s what always often happens. I was enormously frustrated at this, becuase most likely, there was nothing wrong with the dogs. Nothing at all.

They were just predators (malamutes have this stronger than many other breeds, and they are very large and powerful, but all dogs have it to some extent) running together in the forest (pack behavior, egging each other on to a state neither dog could have been on their own), they found large prey animals, they chased the prey animals, all these hormones would be coursing through their systems, preparing them for “the kill”, and then a human fell to the ground.

At that point, all rationality, all the years they’ve spent being loved by humans and perhaps never showing aggression even once, go out the window. The human is now just a piece of meat on the ground, a prey that has fallen. The dogs might have been completely normal, they just ended up in the wrong situation, because of a stupid, reckless owner, who went unpunished and could then go and just buy another two large, powerful dogs and set them loose in the forest and the same thing would happen again.

(Also in Sweden at the time, debates emerged about “Is the Alaskan malamute a dangerous breed?” Because apparently, there are “dangerous breeds”, and there are “safe breeds“, but that’s for later.)

Fredrik Steen, Sweden’s #1 “dog expert” said the following (translated by me): “We [in Sweden] romanticize dogs way too much. We forget that we’re dealing with predators, we don’t understand that basically all dogs are fully capable of doing this.”

Back to the film.

It cuts back to the original emergency call, with Susan screaming hysterically and crying for an ambulance.

Jeff explains how he was notified that Dax had been "bitten" and was taken to the hospital, and he thought "it's a dog bite, I was bitten by dogs before, how bad could it be?"

He describes that as he arrived at the hospital, he saw Dax being given CPR, and how his face was “just gone, from here - down, was just mangled”, and “there was blood everywhere”. The doctors could not save him.

I am making my own records from the list of “fatal dog attacks in the United States” on Wikipedia, and by March 6th, 2013, I find this, with more details of the attack than in the film:

When babysitter, baby in her arms she went out into her backyard let her two 45 lb. , they became "nippy", jumping up at the pair, so she batted them off. The dogs then attacked, and bit & scratched her, shredding her clothing and knocking her down, causing the boy to hit the ground, whereupon the dogs attacked him. The babysitter tried unsuccessfully to stop the attack, and redirect the dogs' attack onto her.

So I was right in my speculation that the dogs started by jumping and switched from previous play behavior to predatory behavior.

A neighbor heard screams but did nothing as he thought it was kids having a snowfight. She got the child away from the dogs and called 911 but left the baby unattended & totally naked on a cold hardwood floor. The boy was taken by ambulance to the hospital, and by helicopter from the hospital to a medical center later that day, where he was pronounced dead of dog attack. Before the attack, the veterinarian center where they had been spayed, neutered, and otherwise cared for had not seen them as dangerous, but one was described as "standoffish" while at the facility. The owner said she had got the three-year-old dogs as puppies and that they had never shown signs of aggression. After the attack, the dogs were euthanized and tested negative for rabies, and the authorities decided not to press charges against the babysitter.

They decided it was not her fault at all, while I often see these cases (again, in the list of cases in America) ending up charging the owners for “criminally negligent manslaughter” or similar things.

She went off completely free, despite it being her dogs, her responsibility, and she put the child in this situation. Maybe the dogs needed to be killed, I don’t know, but I think it’s a disgusting tendency (also seen in said list), where dogs are killed immediately, with no evaluation, but the owner goes free without any charges.

And as for what the film does, this is a very common tactic. A film brings up a highly emotional, devastating anecdote, and tries to use it as their #1 argument. And the thing is that it works, because humans are emotional beings. We’re not as irrational as dogs, but we’re still mainly guided by emotion.

If the film instead had said “in the years 2000-2015, X number of children were killed by pit bulls”, it wouldn’t at all have had the same effect as this one case did, showing it in such detail, talking about the boy’s personality and showing his pictures and footage. Documentaries on pit bull and “dangerous dogs” almost always do this.

While of course the long list of cases where labs and huskies (or other “non-controversial” breeds) kill children, are completely irrelevant. If they had made a documentary about “killer labs”, and brought up one of these cases in the same way, it probably wouldn’t have had the same effect, because the cultural narrative is that “pit bull = baby eating devil dog”.

The film explains the same thing, how Susan was found “not to be at fault”, and Jeff goes on to say how she didn’t do anything wrong, because “she didn’t abuse ‘em, the dogs were in good health”. This again. I’m finding it very difficult to be respectful right now, because grief doesn’t excuse you saying ridiculous, damaging things on TV.

I’ll repeat myself: You do not need to abuse, starve, beat or train a dog to fight in order for it to attack someone. Doesn’t matter if it’s a pit bull or another breed. All it takes is an owner disrespecting the predatory nature of dogs and being the type of person who would say “I would never in a million years have imagined this!”

If you say that, you are the problem, not the dog. However, pit bulls are large, powerful terriers with a very intact killing instinct towards other animals, and it makes it even more important that they aren’t placed with these idiot owners who think dogs are just living teddy bears/furbabies.

“They were good-natured dogs until the day they weren’t” Jeff says - spoken as a true ignorant person who doesn’t understand animal behavior.

Susan then says "Who wants to admit for even a second that their family pet could kill one of their family members?"

I do. No hesitation.

^ See this guy? This is my dog. Eight and a half year old Mallorcan bulldog, distant cousin to other bulldogs and mastiffs. People who see him would think he’s a pit x rottie mix. He’s bigger than a retriever, and a very serious guard dog. I raised him from a puppy, my first own puppy.

I trained bite inhibition with him from the start. He never bit a human in aggression, in fact after about 10-12 months of age, he never bit me even in play, unless I simply got in the way when he was chewing a stick or something. My mistake, not his. He knows not to ever bite people.

I trust him with my life, as a highly loyal guard dog, who loves us and takes his job very seriously. Does that mean I think he’s a “human”, my “furbaby” and that he could never act irrationally, or out of character? Absolutely not.

When he was living with my man and his family for a while, my sister-in-law had a baby. I told my man to not let Wikus (the dog) in the room with the baby for any reason. I don’t mean “unsupervised”, I mean at all.

He was six years old then, never showed aggression to a child in his life, in fact he lets neighborhood kids hug and pet him, under my strict supervision, and has been around my sister’s young kids, just calmly ignoring them. I trust him with me. I didn’t trust the people he was with, including my dear man, to read him right and be able to predict the situation. Wikus was fine with kids, but he had never seen a baby before, and I wasn’t there to judge the situation. (Also, Wikus was not himself while living there and started attacking cats, after years of being completely fine with cats when with me.)

I’m not going to be so stupid as to think “he’s a nice dog!” and leave it at that. Or feel a need to “prove” how “sweet” he is and let him nuzzle the baby.

So what do I do, briefly, do make sure my dog doesn’t hurt anyone?

It sounds nebulous and abstract, but I “respect him as a dog”. I realize he’s a 70 pound case of muscles and teeth, and could do terrible damage in the right (wrong) circumstances. I realize he has strong protective instincts of the pack and territory, and though he has never shown predatory behavior, he still has the wild dog or wolf inside, buried very deep down.

I obedience- and recall-train. I only have him loose when other people and dogs aren’t around.

If I thought he was dangerous, as a dog that might actually go after another animal or person (and you need to know this about your dog), I wouldn’t have him loose in an unfenced area at all. (This might sound confusing. If I thought he had a 1% chance of attacking someone, I wouldn’t have him off leash. I don’t think there’s a 0.1% chance even, but it still exists in all dogs. Not all dogs are equally dangerous, but the risk is never exactly zero.)

I made sure to socialize him with kids as a puppy, but in later years I’ve sometimes said no to kids asking to pet him, because while I can account for my dog, I can’t account for their behavior, and kids often don’t listen.

I do play tug-o-war with him, especially when he was younger, but it was always strictly structured and I needed him to have an “off-button”. As soon as I say stop, he stops, as soon as I tell him to let go (of the rope or stick), he lets go. If he has an object he wants (anything), he drops it when I ask him to.

Structure the walk. People let their dogs leave the house when over-excited, and that’s the mindset that sets up the rest of the walk.

Build a working relationship with the dog, beyond “he’s my baby and I luv him and he’s so sweet and would never hurt a living soul”, because you don’t know that.

Susan continues; “Who wants to for a single second think that that's possible? Think that that could be a reality? I know I certainly didn't. I never would have imagined in a million years before this that my dog, my pet, would attack me, and kill a child.”

I hate to say it, but she is exactly what is wrong with this breed. People who are this ignorant, this naive, and this careless. And then either they or other people go on to blame the breed.

Years ago on a dog forum, I saw someone say, and this may seem ridiculous to some, but I like it: “Better to think you have a lion on the leash and act accordingly, than to think you have a lamb.”

That is exactly what a lot of dog owners think, perhaps especially pit bull owners. They need to prove to the world that their dog is actually a lamb, and when this woman failed, she blamed the breed, she blamed people like Cesar Millan for speaking highly of the breed, she blamed everyone but herself, because it couldn’t possibly be her mistake!

I often hear the same from people campaigning against exotic pets. They’re a failed owner, and so the animal must be banned. “If I couldn’t do it, and I’m so awesome, then obviously everyone must be at least as crap as I was!” Extremely arrogant and naive.

Listen, mistakes happen. Sometimes tragic, fatal mistakes. I don’t want hate on her, I don’t want her thrown in jail, but I want her and others like her to take some responsibility. Because if they refuse to admit their own mistake, they are doomed to repeat it.

You can never make sure something like this attack never happens again, you can’t insure the world against mistakes and human error, but you can take actions to prevent a lot of them. And the first part of that is educating yourself.

Don’t be like these people.

Part 2

Part 3

[crystalracing]

Rohn Jay Miller

, Sportswriter / Editor, UPI, Knight Ridder at United Press International (1974-present)

Updated September 28, 2019

Read, and understand F1:

Not everyone is a driver racing to win the race. There’s 20 drivers and 10 places of points, each point being worth millions in prize money, plus more bargaining chips in all kinds of negotiations—sponsors, drivers, among F1 teams. Plus F1 is broken into two distinct races: the driver’s championship for the top driver and the constructor’s championship for the top team, based on points earned by both (all) the team’s drivers. Three or four drivers may get knocked out in a given race, and the winner gets a trophy—but the remaining drivers, and their teams, are fighting for their careers, and places in the complex F1 pecking order.

The cars are comprised of engines, tyres, aerodynamic design, drivers, chassis, support teams, and owners. Oh—and brand. Can’t forget brand equity, eh? Any of these components can adversely affect how a car runs an entire season, let alone a given race.

These are the most technologically advanced cars competing in the world. They are driven by the very best drivers in the world, on the most challenging race courses, fighting for the largest amounts of money. Over $2 billion is spent in the 10 F1 teams annual budgets. The big teams have perhaps 1,000 people. F1 is a big, international deal. So there.

Everything in F1 is total opera, from the team finances and owners, to the drivers, to sponsors, the weather, and the giant uber-magnums of champagne. It is a mad opera written by the Marquis de Sade, for the court of the Medicis in 15th century Italy. Hold your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Remember, Ferrari is grandfathered in to F1. In all of the deals—money, sponsorships, fans, magazine column inches, great dinners, hot super-models, etc. The teams make money, but Ferrari makes more money.

The engines for all the F1 cars are made by four companies, including three that are also competing race teams—Ferrari, Mercedes, and the French corporation Renault. These big three sell their engines to their own teams and one or two others in the F1 field, each forming kind of “powered by” families. Honda is the fourth engine builder, supporting Red Bull and their stepchild team Toro Rosso. Which engine you use matters, and the customer relationships between teams and engine companies are fractious.

The drivers are the superstars of the F1 movie—and they move with the slinky grace of European football players on a couture catwalk during the Transfer Window—-just way too cool for school. Which teams they race for, how they got screwed by other drivers, and with whom they are sleeping are all of fanatic interest. Many of them have one word names like, “Alonso,” “Kimi,” and “Checo.” They all glint with their eyes into the sunset, when talking to the press, like Clint Eastwood used to.

Race Qualification is called “Qualie,” in a cute accent, and takes place on Saturday morning, one day before the race. It’s an hour of regulated track time divided into Q1, Q2, and finally Q3. In Q1 all 20 cars try to get one official timed lap time around the course—the top 15 times advance to Q2. Q2 is the same musical chairs, except the top 10 times in Q2 move on to Q3. The final 10 cars run one more time, and everyone’s official Q3 top lap determines their place on the top spots in the 20-car starting grid for the race. The top 10, who’ve make it to Q3 have to start the race on the set of tyres they ran their best time in Q2, for some reason. Everyone else gets to choose from whatever sets of tyres they have in their personal, per race inventory of 13 sets. (Note: Tyres are fundamental in F1, since they wear out in 10–30 laps, and as they degrade, their performance becomes worse: slower, and more skiddish, until the car has to pull in for a pit stop to change tyres—and those pit stops are key moments of an F1 race.)

NetFlix has a 10 episode documentary series called “Drive To Survive,” which recounts in 10 forty minute episodes the 2018 F1 season. Even if you have a mate or friend who doesn’t like sports, you and that person will really enjoy this series, start to finish. It’s damn fascinating, filled with the people, drama and absurd humor of F1 today. The series was made by top documentarians and they were given almost uneasy total access to most of the F1 teams. This, more than anything, is your primer to understand F1. You can ignore everything else I said just now and follow this rule and you’ll be just fine. “Drive To Survive” is where the whole thing gets to be like the Medicis.

Almost all the people you read or see on the F1 scene—especially Team Principals and Owners—have something they’re trying to sell, and they are each therefore “unreliable narrators” of their own story. One small example: every team will spend almost every race week running down their cars and their prospects for the coming weekend. Blah, blah, blah. Remember, at best Team Principals divulge half-truths they utter in professional marketing code; at worst, it’s all bullshit.