This has been a continuing topic on Ethics Alarms: the longest-running EA post in terms of comments is this one, about the too-often quoted Dogsbite.org. Today’s hysterical purveyor of anti-pit bull propaganda is the conservative site Not the Bee, which I occasionally find useful as a resource but which is marred by ethically dubious commentary as often as not. It already made Ethics Alarms with an earlier pit bull bigotry post, in 2024.

The current post begins, “So are we allowed to talk honestly about this problem yet or nah?” My answer is “nah” if the “problem” is the alleged natural viciousness of pit bulls and the “we” are people like the author who obviously don’t know what they are talking about. A one-year-old girl was attacked and killed by the family dog which all news sources are calling a “pit bull.” A tragedy, of course, but Not The Bee posts this chart, from another incompetent site which took it from (Gee, what a surprise) Dogsbite.org.:

“Pit bulls are far and away the most common breed involved in deadly dog attacks” says NTB. Bulletin, morons: There is no such breed as “pit pull.” There are at least eight separate and distinct dog breeds that are called “pit bulls” by those who don’t know anything about dogs, including police officers, journalists, and conservative bloggers: the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the Miniature Bull Terrier, the Pitsky, the Red-nose Pit Bull, the Blue Nose Pit Bull and the American Bully. Only two of these are recognized by the American Kennel Club, and the classic pit bull breed, the American Pit Bull Terrier (like “Petey,” the “Little Rascals” dog) , is not among them. Then there are the dogs that look like what people think pit bulls look like (this is the brilliant standard used by Dogsbite.org: if it looks like one, it is one). These include the American Bulldog, various mastiff breeds like the Bull Mastiff, Dogo de Argentino, the Corso Cane, the Dogue de Bordeaux and even Boxers. Posting that deliberately misleading chart is signature significance for either a fraudster or a dummy: of course a “breed” category made up of many breeds is dramatically larger than those confined to a single breed, and even then the chart is untrustworthy. Who decided which dog was which breed after an attack? When I adopted Spuds, whom I think is a pit bull mix, the rescue organization first identified him as a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and later as an American Bulldog. He is neither.

I find it fascinating that the articles about this “pit bull attack” have no photos of the dog, which was destroyed. Frequently when there is an attack, the accompanying photo shows a mongrel with some “pittie” characteristics, like the wide jaw, the terrier ears, and the whip tail, but it is a mongrels…Heinz 57 dogs that are no more pit bulls than retrievers or spaniels When dog owners do DNA checks on their dogs, the pit bull breeds show up somewhere an amazing percentage of the time. Never mind, though: the cop says it was a “pit bull,” the news reports say it was a “pit bull,” the family thinks they had a pit bull, so it goes into the database as a “pit bull attack.”

If Elizabeth Warren wanted to claim she was a pit bull, she would have no problem getting away with it.

And then there is this: Any family that leaves a small child around a large dog is irresponsible. It doesn’t matter what the breed or mix is, or how friendly it has been. Dogs are animals, they react when frightened, startled or alarmed, they have triggers and traumatic memories in some cases, and it just takes one unpredictable stimulus to cause a disaster. My son was attacked by our Basset Hound, by all accounts one of the least aggressive breeds there is—but they have large mouths and lots of teeth. I see “cute” videos on Facebook literally every day showing toddlers walking up to huge dogs, sitting on them, bonking them on the nose, pulling their ears. The videos give me shivers. I was at a lawn party where the host’s friendly Siberian Husky suddenly chomped down an a three-year old’s neck. No large dog should ever be in a position to harm a baby or toddler. It is unfair to the dog and dangerous for the child.

Well, I’ve gone on too long: this is all stuff I’ve posted many times. But I have vowed to slap the ignorant pit bull myth down every time it rears its stupid head, and now I have.

Say hi, Spuds…