Caveat

ANONYMOUS HAS A MESSAGE FOR PETA

In an unexpected turn of events, internet social justice group Anonymous has turned its gaze on Peta, the animal liberation outfit that exemplifies the motto "Better Dead than Led".

 Here is their scary video for your entertainment:

 

 

 My friend who blogs at iHowie.ca  (check it out) kindly typed up a transcript for people who have trouble loading videos.

Here is the transcription:

"Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Now is the time that we must see the true lies of the PETA organization. People take animals to PETA instead of local shelters because they believe the animals will be placed in a home and not put down. Unlike local animal shelters, PETA doesn't even bother trying to find homes for these pets. All of them are killed within a few hours. 

PETA doesn't stop with animals that are dropped off at their facility. No, they actively seek out animals throughout the community to kill. PETA sends traps to catch roaming animals all over Hampton Groves. These traps are designed to catch traps. Many of these are not just strays but people's pets. They have even ventured onto a local federal installation where they captured dozens of cats and immediately killed them. The cats at this particular facility were living in a federal cat colony. They were well fed, spayed and neutered and received regular veterinary care at the expense of the government workers.

PETA in their renowned arrogance decided they knew better and illegally entered the installation several times, stole these people's cats and ended their lives. PETA employees and volunteers regularly enter private property to capture animals, which according to former PETA employees are often times people's pets, someone's cat out for a midnight stroll or even just sitting in their owner's yard. 

Car loads of cats are regularly brought to PETA headquarters by employees and volunteers whose job it is to round them up. One such volunteer has brought in hundreds of cats, many wearing tags bearing the name and address of their owner.

The animals are loaded into a small storage shed where they sometimes sit for several hours in the heat and cold waiting awaiting their date with the executioner. 

We must address this now and not waste time. PETA must be exposed and not allowed to conduct any further activities. We will not stand by and allow the creatures of gods creation to be brutalized and killed for profit or cheap thrills.

The time is now. We are anonymous. We are legion. For we are many. Expect us."

 

STOP WHINING AND LET FLUFFY BITE YOU, ALREADY...SHEESH

 

I felt a bit mean in putting up that post about my encounter with Stanley Coren at the All About Pets show on Easter weekend but I got over it.

He put up a rebuttal at the Psychology Today page in which he made a few assumptions, the most hilarious being "As a psychologist I suspect that I know what is going on in her mind."

I guess what I said directly to him about his flawed sources was just a neurotic attempt to hide my real agenda.  Apparently, in arguing against the stereotyping of dog owners I'm similar to a mother whose offspring is arrested for holding up milk stores but pleads with the court for mercy, since she's a good kid.  Denial is a bitch.

But so am I.  Here's his article (comments available at the end where it says 'join the discussion'):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201304/dogs-bite-and-people-dont-listen

"On the second day of the event, a woman accosted me and began to harangue me about statements that I had published about pitbull terriers. The statements which so offended her were reports of research published in respected scientific journals that found that pitbulls, and pitbull crosses accounted for a disproportionate number of dog bite related injuries and deaths.."

Here's the study he mentions in his post.  Obviously I have a problem with the breed ID which I don't see as relevant and I dispute Stanley's new assertion that "pit bulls" make up only one percent of the dog population in Philadelphia, but overall it looks like decent enough research.


 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19644273

Plast Reconstr Surg. 2009 Aug;124(2):551-8. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0b013e3181addad9.

Pediatric dog bite injuries: a 5-year review of the experience at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Kaye AE, Belz JM, Kirschner RE.

Source

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa 19104, USA.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

The objective of this study was to characterize the nature of dog bite injuries treated over a 5-year period at a large tertiary pediatric hospital and to identify relevant parameters for public education and injury prevention.

METHODS:

Investigators performed a retrospective review of emergency room records of a single tertiary pediatric hospital. Records of all patients who were evaluated for dog bite injuries between April of 2001 and December of 2005 were reviewed. All demographic, patient, and injury details were recorded.

***

The rest of the abstract is available at the link.

Here's the thing.  Nobody is disputing that dogs bite.  Nobody is disputing that children tend to be bitten around the head and neck often, due to their stature and way of interacting with dogs.

Nobody is saying that "pit bulls", however you define them, do not bite people.  Quite the opposite (by nobody, I mean those of us who don't believe myths spread by 19th century crooks).

What people who study the issues say is that all dogs are capable of inflicting injury if poorly socialized or poorly trained, or exposed to poorly trained people in unsupervised situations who hurt or frighten them, usually unintentionally.

As someone pointed out in the comments at Stanley's post, "pit bull" is the only dog type where a bunch of breeds are lumped together and then any mutt that may resemble them is included so they all become one breed.  Any statistics based on this flawed method (which are hearsay) are skewed right off the bat.  Nobody is verifying the breeds of dogs involved in bites, attacks or fatal maulings, mainly because nobody, anywhere,  can determine the ancestry of a mutt to any degree of accuracy.  It's all just smoke.  

I wish we could unring that CDC bell from hell, but we can't.  What we can do is move forward, start talking about dogs instead of perceived breeds and look for better ways to prevent nasty incidents.

As I said over at Stanley's place, I doubt we will ever reduce serious maulings or fatal attacks much below what we have now because they are already incredibly rare.  Unfortunately, there will always be people who either don't care or don't know enough to behave responsibly around dogs (or much else).  I think that with some education for parents, kids and public workers, we can definitely reduce nuisance bites and make things better, not only for people and dogs they include in their lives but also for people who don't own or don't like dogs.  That is what has been shown to work in Calgary, the home of the best nuisance owner control system in North America.

Karen Delise did a great critique on a hospital study from Texas where they postulated a conclusion and then 'proved' it.  It's well worth reading; you can find it here:

http://legal.pblnn.com/9-uncategorised/121-why-the-texas-study-on-mortality-mauling-a-maiming-by-vicious-dogs-is-scientifically-unreliable

 

POP GOES THE SCIENTIST

"Sweetheart, I'm a scientist!"

"That's hot but I think I'll pass."

This weekend, as we've done every Easter for a few years, we worked a booth at the All About Pets show at the International Centre out by the airport.  An estimated 40,000 people visit the show although this year it wasn't as busy as in previous years.  People always rush over to our booth to sign petitions and talk about the ban. We got a couple of thousand signatures this year and only 8 people refused to sign. That's about right, ratio-wise, in terms of support.

Presenting at the show again this year was Stanley Coren, the author of  The Intelligence of Dogs and other pop-science books about our canine friends.

I was very anxious to speak with him, since I'd come across a news report the previous week in which he was quoted:

Stanley Coren, the Vancouver author of over a dozen books on dogs and their behaviour, is sharing some statistics compiled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is quite astonishing. Although pit bulls make up only a half per cent of the total number of dogs in the US, they are responsible for 43 per cent of fatal dog bites,” he points out.

“That says something about the wiring of the dog.”

I wanted to find out what his sources were for the population and the percentage of dog bite-related fatalities (DBRFs) he attributes to "pit bulls".  Luckily for me, he stopped right near our booth to talk to somebody about their dog so I was able to sneak up on him and pounce.

He said he got his DBRF number from 'available data' because in the US there is a requirement for bite reporting only in cases of fatalities.  It's all in some database, apparently but he couldn't remember how to access it.

He said his "pit bull" population estimate, .5% (yes, one-half of one percent), was obtained via UKC and AKC registrations for  American Pit Bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers and Staffordshire Bull terriers.  I asked why he didn't include ADBA.  He didn't know about them.

I told him his DBRF data came from news reports, as stated by CDC, which is his source.  He disputed this and said I had no understanding of data. I told him it's right in the journal articles themselves, that there is no 'database' of DBRFs, that they scanned news reports, that there were missing death certificates and other weaknesses.  He became rather argumentative  at that point.

I said that in a population of 78 million dogs, 30 fatalities a year, while a horrific for the people involved,  are not statistically significant enough to predict any kind of trend.  He insisted there are 12 fatalities a year, not 30 on average.  I then realized he was talking about 5 fatalities attributable to "pit bulls" on average, per year.

I told him I think there are probably at least 5 million dogs that could be construed as "pit bulls" in the US.  He was sputtering by now and said that would mean 1:10 dogs are "pit bulls".  I said yes, that would probably be about right but actually it would be roughly 1:16.  I asked him if he includes mutts in his "statistics" he said no, just those three breeds.  I asked him who would be able to determine the purebred status of a dog in the US involved in an attack, since there is no requirement for identification. He didn't have an answer for that.  He didn't respond to my point about how most "breed" attributions are guesses or hearsay.

I didn't bother getting into how he determined how many were alive or  how he must be the only person who doesn't count mutts because they are in every piece of legislation, etc because by then he was kind of yelling that he was a scientist, repeatedly.

I had reminded him about our email conversation from 2006, when I had found his claim about 2000 psi pressure in a bound book after reading it in several news reports. After trying to throw me off-track and failing, he finally had to admit he couldn't find a reference and thought he might have overheard it. I have spared him the publication of our email exchange because I actually feel kind of sorry for him, but here is where he finally admits I've got him by the nuts over the 2000 psi:

 

I really can't be more specific. I apparently simply noted the
 essence of the findings to use as an aside in a talk I was
 giving. I always felt that  I could recover the original
 reference if I needed it, although you have proven  that 
this is not necessarily so. This has happened several times
 in the past,  where a bit of interesting data was briefly 
noted by me and then my contact with  it disappeared in the
 dimming memory of an aging psychologist. One would think
 that I would have learned to be more obsessive by now but
 being only 9 months from  retirement probably means that 
I have lost the window of opportunity to change my habits.

 

He told me on Saturday that he isn't responsible for what media write about him.  I said he's responsible for what he tells them - was he now accusing them of making it up?  "They can't print what you don't tell them and when you have an audience you should be careful about what you say."

He started yammering about his friends who have done studies recently but couldn't remember their names, which university they are from or what the titles of their papers are.  He thought they had a couple of papers in the Journal of Public Health. I said I'd look for them.  He mentioned a lurid paper from Detroit - one we have all seen that was written by an ER doctor. I said that "pit bulls" are very popular in Detroit, so it makes sense there will be more bites by that type.  He said they aren't popular there at all.

I asked him why he doesn't talk about Canada.  He said there aren't enough data.  I asked him how many people have been killed by "pit bull" types, ever, in this country.  He didn't know.  I asked him how many had been killed by "sled dog" types.  He didn't know.  He kept saying there are not enough data in Canada.

He then beetled off down the hall at top speed.

So that's pretty much what Stanley Coren is about. He's not interested in accuracy, he's not interested in science, he accused me of being closed-minded about "pit bulls" and incapable of understanding data.

Somebody's neurons are misfiring, but I don't think it's "pit bulls".

Postscript:

Later that day somebody visited our booth and said "Stanley Coren said that "pit bulls" used to be called the nanny dogs".  I said "That's not true.  Dr Coren says a lot of things that aren't supported."  She said "But it's good, right?".  "If it's not true, how can it possibly be good?"

 

Rupert considers marking Stanley's leg but is too polite

Note belt and suspenders!