skunkstripe
02-14-2008, 01:31 PM
One of my pet peeves is that even though it is extremely difficult to recognize a breed or breed mix by "just looking," there are a lot of people out there who think they can. Worse, news reports of attacks relies on the opinion of the general public, while enforcement of BSL laws relies on law officers to correctly identify a breed.
I happen to have made it a hobby to try to ID mixes and if there is one thing I have learned, people are terrible at it. We are usually mislead by color and markings, whereas really the things to go by are size, build, head shape, and ears. And another thing that most people don't realize is that there are a lot of purebred dogs out there who don't meet the standard. But that doesn't always mean the dog is a mix, it could just mean it's a PB that doesn't meet the standard.
So how good are people at recognizing "Pit Bulls?" Or American Pit Bull Terriers? There is a online test with pictures that gets posted on dog forums a lot, but get this: someone did a study using canine professionals (including vets, AC officers and dog show judges) along with plain ol' average people, and asked them is this or isn't this an APBT and guess what?
Most could not correctly identify an APBT.
And these were not pictures, they were real dogs! :eek:
Presented with 22 dogs of different breeds including a boxer, mastiff, Golden Retriever, Jack Russell Terrier and a single pure bred APBT, participants were asked to identify all of the dogs that were APBT. Of those surveyed 30% identified an adult boxer as an APBT, 63% identified an Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog as an APBT, 45% identified a mastiff as an APBT, and 44% identified a Presa Canario as an APBT. Only 2% of those surveyed correctly identified the APBT, without also incorrectly identifying other breeds as an APBT.
...
Finally, it was found that every individual that reported a dislike of the APBT failed to correctly identify the APBT the majority of these individuals 85% instead considered larger breeds such as Alano Espanol, Boerboel, Dogo Argentino, Mastiff, and the Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog to be APBT. These breeds were also the most commonly misidentified in general. It should be noted that breeds such as the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the American Bulldog, the Bulldoggue and a variety of short haired mixed breed dogs were not included in this analyses because of the final discrimination index was too high. In other words, these breeds were incorrectly identified as American Pit Bull Terriers by nearly all of those who participated in the survey including 93 of the 100 canine professionals.
http://www.canineresearch.net/breedID.pdf
I happen to have made it a hobby to try to ID mixes and if there is one thing I have learned, people are terrible at it. We are usually mislead by color and markings, whereas really the things to go by are size, build, head shape, and ears. And another thing that most people don't realize is that there are a lot of purebred dogs out there who don't meet the standard. But that doesn't always mean the dog is a mix, it could just mean it's a PB that doesn't meet the standard.
So how good are people at recognizing "Pit Bulls?" Or American Pit Bull Terriers? There is a online test with pictures that gets posted on dog forums a lot, but get this: someone did a study using canine professionals (including vets, AC officers and dog show judges) along with plain ol' average people, and asked them is this or isn't this an APBT and guess what?
Most could not correctly identify an APBT.
And these were not pictures, they were real dogs! :eek:
Presented with 22 dogs of different breeds including a boxer, mastiff, Golden Retriever, Jack Russell Terrier and a single pure bred APBT, participants were asked to identify all of the dogs that were APBT. Of those surveyed 30% identified an adult boxer as an APBT, 63% identified an Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog as an APBT, 45% identified a mastiff as an APBT, and 44% identified a Presa Canario as an APBT. Only 2% of those surveyed correctly identified the APBT, without also incorrectly identifying other breeds as an APBT.
...
Finally, it was found that every individual that reported a dislike of the APBT failed to correctly identify the APBT the majority of these individuals 85% instead considered larger breeds such as Alano Espanol, Boerboel, Dogo Argentino, Mastiff, and the Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog to be APBT. These breeds were also the most commonly misidentified in general. It should be noted that breeds such as the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the American Bulldog, the Bulldoggue and a variety of short haired mixed breed dogs were not included in this analyses because of the final discrimination index was too high. In other words, these breeds were incorrectly identified as American Pit Bull Terriers by nearly all of those who participated in the survey including 93 of the 100 canine professionals.
http://www.canineresearch.net/breedID.pdf