Pit Bulls Are Not Our Friends

Statistics show that the more serious an animal-related injury is at a hospital, the more likely it is that the culprit was a pit bull.

The blood-drenched statistics followed accordingly. Animals24-7.org, which publishes annual reports on serious human injuries and fatalities by dogs according to breed, says that between 2007 and 2015, “2,793 pit bulls and close pit mixes have attacked 1,067 children and 1,189 adults in incidents in which 208 people were killed and 1,891 people were disfigured.” Rates have only gone up. Virtually all dog bite–related fatalities of domestic animals (including horses and cows) are committed by pit bulls. I’ve stayed with the subject out of sympathy for the victims. It strikes me as preposterous that there are hundreds of websites that cater to pit-bull love—featuring endless photos of dogs dressed in tutus or posed with sleeping babies—but only one serious publication, Dogsbite.org, that is dedicated to giving a voice to the victims of dangerous dogs.

Pit-bull advocates present dogs as victims that need championing. They know the names of the dogs they believe deserve a second chance, but they usually don’t mention the names of the human victims. Often, incidents involve a dog that had never before showed signs of aggression. One of the most horrific was the case of Daxton Borchardt, a Wisconsin baby who was killed by his babysitter’s two pit bulls—dogs she had raised from puppyhood. The story is unusually well documented, and its particulars fly in the face of all the mantras of the pit-bull lobby: the dogs were “fixed,” they had never been abused, they were well socialized, they had a “good” owner, and there was no “provocation.” Still, they attacked.

STATISTICS SHOW that the more serious an animal-related injury is at a hospital, the more likely it is that the culprit was a pit bull—and the harder it becomes to believe that grave wounds are inflicted evenly across all big-dog breeds. Pit bulls represent 5 percent of the US dog population, but a five-year review of dog bite–related injuries in a Philadelphia pediatric hospital concluded that they were responsible for 51 percent of admissions. Rottweilers were responsible for 9 percent, and hybrids of the two, another 6 percent. The rest were the result of injuries inflicted by about thirty different breeds