Spuds

Oh Fine, Another Ignorant “Pit Bull” Freakout…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

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.:

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From the Babylon Bee: Ignorant Misinformation That Will Get Dogs Killed Even If Kristi Noem Isn’t Around…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ugh. More ignorant pit bull hysteria, as usual spread by someone who knows little or nothing about dogs.

“Not the Bee” is supposed to be a site the highlights bizarre events from a conservative perspective, so how its concluded that advocating a “pit bull ban” was a legitimate topic escapes me. However, people using false and misleading statistics to stampede lawmakers happens to be a topic of great interest to an ethicist. I’ve written about this annoying and recurring phenomenon before, many times. The primary post about the pit bull breed-deranged website Dogsbite.org, an Unethical Website of the Month back in 2015, and one of the all-time Ethics Alarms comment champions with 354 comments so far.

Ian Haworth wrote the irresponsible Not The Bee piece today, “Is it time to ban pit bulls?” I should title this post, “Is it time for people who write about pit bulls to learn what a pit bull is?” As soon as this article began, I knew readers were in the grip of someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about:

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Apparently My Dog Thinks I’m Woke

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Times opinion editor Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer used a podcast to explain how the great political divide affects dogs. Training styles and methods can be as much about identity as efficacy, she has realized. “Are you imposing colonial concepts on your dogs? Are you harming their mental health? Is your style of training woke?”

Alicia’s rescue dog likes to chase joggers. “There are a few ways to deal with your dog having a jogger chasing problem,” she says. “And these solutions maybe fall into one of two camps, positive reinforcement training or balanced training. Positive training is a style of dog training that basically says, we’re not going to make your dog physically uncomfortable in order to get it to behave the way you want. So what it argues for doing is rewarding behavior you like, and basically managing your dog so that it can’t engage in behavior you don’t like, and just kind of ignoring it.”

Balanced training, however, or what I would call Skinnerian training, involves negative reinforcement. “If your dog is doing something that you don’t like,” Alicia explains, “to discourage that, we want to make it uncomfortable for the dog to do that. We want to give some kind of negative stimulus. Sometimes that might be a noise, or sometimes like a squirt of water to the face.”

“But sometimes it’s more physical discomfort than that. That means punishing your dog. And usually that punishment comes in the form of something called an e-collar, a tool that will give your dog an electricity stimulus.”

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Everyday Ethics: The Really Nice People You Are Indebted To Who Come For A Visit And Refuse To Leave

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

That was the classic SLN skit from the Seventies that kept going through my mind today, and I felt guilty about  it. After all, it wasn’t a rude John Belushi who had come to our house. It was the wonderful woman who had rescued our dog from neglectful owners, taken him to her home, nursed him to health, and allowed us to adopt him. We are so grateful to her for her compassion and kindness, so when she and her friend, who also had been involved in the rehabilitation of Spuds, asked to stop by and see how he was doing after being a member of the Marshall family for three weeks, of course we said yes.

Spuds was, predictably, thrilled to see them, and they were emotional about seeing him in such good health and spirits. We invited the two women in, of course, offered them refreshments, engaged in conversation about our dog’s progress and adventures.

How long would you say would be a reasonable time for such an encounter? They stayed for three hours, from 2 pm to 5.

We showed them the house, Spuds’ toys, and the neighborhood. I allowed them to take the dog for a walk, with me as guide. The only topic of conversation the entire time was this dog and other dogs, because we have nothing else in common really, though it’s not as if they wanted to talk about anything else. Continue reading →

In Honor Of Our New Dog Spuds, A Timely Ethics Alarms Encore: “Unethical Website of the Month: Dogsbite.Org”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That’s not Spuds above; that’s Brad Pitt’s wonderful Staffordshire Terrier in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,”, one of many breeds dog ignoramuses lump into the category of “pit bull.” Spuds, whom we brought home today, is almost certainly at least part American Pit Bull Terrier, like the dog in the “Our Gang” comedies, but we’ll know better when he gains back more of the weigh he lost when his owner stopped feeding him. Here he is in our kitchen tonight..

Since he is among the  types of dog who will be subjected to the breed bigotry that has led to the deaths of so many smart, loyal, affectionate and harmless dogs across America and Europe, I’ve decided to re-post this essay from 2015. It is the all-time champion Ethics Alarms post for comments, with 339 and counting. It is also the post that has continued to attract comments the longest after a post went up: the last flurry of reactions from anti-pit bull hysterics was in February of this year.

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Unethical Website of the Month: Dogsbite.Org

This despicable website, created by phobics, liars, fools and bigots to promote dog breed prejudice and persecution of responsible dog owners, is discredited by the vast, vast  majority of dog experts, breeders, and people with any knowledge of dogs. It is useful in a way, in that its rhetoric mirrors that of the anti-Jewish, final solution advocates of the Nazi regime, and the most virulent American racists, like the KKK. (A dog breed is exactly like a human race.) It also apes the logical fallacies of those who want to ban guns or engage in racial profiling.

Although a mass of data and history proves that pit bull-related breeds are no more inherently dangerous than any powerful breed and arguably less, Dogsbite.Org is leading a vendetta against both the breeds and lawful, loving owners, reasoning that dogfighting uses pit bull-type breeds, and pit bulls used for fighting are more likely to be dangerous (as any dog so abused  may be), so to kill two birds with one stone, it makes sense to wipe out not just any individual dangerous dog of the type but any dog that is a hybrid of the a “pit bull breed” and any dog that looks like what people think is a “pit bull”, in part because there is no such breed as “pit bull.” Continue reading →