KC DOG BLOG

More deceit from Merritt Clifton attacking shelter pets, Information Availability - & how Time magazine got it wrong (again)

This is a weird story. A long story. And it's hard to really decide where it starts. Or if it's really ended. There are more than enough villains to go around. And victims. But we're going to try to make some sense of this as three stories merged into one bizarre news story this week.

Let's start with Merritt Clifton

Long-time readers of this blog are familiar with Merritt Clifton. Few people have spent more time in their lives trying to villify pit bulls than Clifton.

For 30 years, Clifton has claimed to track the number of fatal dog attacks, and "Maimings" and "Maulings" from dogs. Clifton has never made his list of these attacks public (he no doubt is aware it would never withstand public scrutiny). The list is compiled 100% from media reports, which already subjects it to media bias wherein news outlets determine the relative news value of similar stories differently depending on the perceived breed of dog involved.  

Because the information relys on media solely on media reports, it is neither a complete list, nor is it a random sample that could be used for statistical purposes. 

Over the years, I, and many others, have found many snafu's in Clifton's information.

 -- He's misrepresented insurance information to try to show that breed ban pre-emption laws lead to more insurance claims (when, in fact, population of dogs and people is the largest influencer, it just so happens that the six most populous states in the US also have pre-emptions on breed bans). 

-- He's used significant numbers manipulation to try to "prove" that Mandatory-Spay/Neuter for pit bulls was a good idea, but the argument suffers from severe sample bias.

-- Clifton's data represens a very small sampling of  all dog attacks, and in fact, includes less than .05% of the the total number of dog bites that require hospitalization. 

-- He actually had one 3 year stretch of data in which he counted more dog attacks by pit bulls, Rottweilers and Presa Canarios than he actually recorded by the total of all breeds combined, demonstating how inaccurate the entire data collection set is.

-- And then, there is thereality that as Clifton has become more technologically savvy, dog bites have gone up. At one point in 2011, Clifton was championing the claim that 22% of all "maimings" and 24% of all fatal dog bites over the previous 29 years had happened in just the past 19 months.  We'll get to this trend-line in a bit, but this information was definitely a far cry from all reliable statistical studies (hospital reports, CDC reports, etc) that had shown a decrease in dog bites from the 70s through the 80s as pets came to run outdoors less and were moved into the homes, and then slightly increased from the mid-90s to present as the population of people and pets began to grow. No reliable study has ever shown the type of increase Clifton has reported over the past 5 years.

Anyone who would take even just a few minutes to scrutinize Clifton's data would find its credibility severely lacking.

Information Availability

The single most likely factor in this dramatic rise in Clifton's numbers is the availability of information. Clifton started his infamous data collection in 1982. At the time there were 3 networks. There was no internet. While some data would not doubt be collected from Lexus/Nexus searches and scrolling through rolls of microfilm, having spent my college career writing papers this way makes it very apparent that even if the media decided to report dog attacks, it would have been virtually impossible to gather information on all of them.

Enter the 1990s, and you find cable news networks, 24/7 news cycles, etc, and no doubt the amount of time dedicated to news increased. Then, by 2000, the Internet was completely ubiquitous. Now, anyone can type in "dog attacks" into a Google News searh and get a complete run-down of the day's news stories from around the globe. The searches include print and broadcast media, as well as a host of online only news services and citizen journalism sources -- many of which didn't exist even 5 years ago. It would make sense that the number of discovered news stories about dog attacks (very different from the number of actual dog attacks) would have grown substantially. We have access to so much more information, right from our own laptops, than we've ever had before even at the best research libraries. 

Clifton completely denies this reality.

When it comes to access to information, one other thing has changed dramatically -- and that is the amount and TYPE of information that is available. 

Prior to 2006, if a news story happened, you pretty much found out about the story exactly what the media reported in the study. That was about it. However, by 2009, more than 84 million US Citizens were on Facebook. By 2013, that number is up to 152 million. And there seems to be no limit to the amount of information that can be gleened from it.

So, with this new data source, there has become an interesting (and disturbing) trend. Now, when a fatal dog attack occurs, the minions at dogsbite.org's facebook page start trolling the facebook profiles of the people in question. They get pictures of the people. Their significant others. Their kids. The house. The Neighbor's House. It's just flat creepy.

Along with that information is often the information about the dog. There is a picture. And a picture of the owner with the dog. Maybe information about the name of the breeder where they got the dog. Or the rescue organization. Or whatever. And then I've seen the minions, like pirahna on their prey, attack the web & facebook pages. I've seen many pages just shut themselves down completely.

And all of this was information that was virtually inaccessable until 2008 or so. And now, it's all available to anyone who is intersted in diving in.

This brings me back to Merritt Clifton

For the past couple of weeks, Merritt Clifton has one again been using his faulty "data", but this time to villify shelters and shelter dogs. 

Last week, Clifton posted a report on the increase in the number of dogs that originate from shelters involved in dog attacks since 1982. Now remember, in 1982, the only information available to Clifton would have been what he found on microfilm, and what the reporter and editor decided to include. 

However, now, Clifton is able to note a significant increase in the number of US Shelter dogs involved in fatal dog attacks since 2009 -- amazingly, when the availability of the information on where people got their pet became more accessible. The numbers are not reflecting a huge increase in shelter dogs being involved in attacks -- it's reflecting the amount of information that is actually AVAILABLE  for him to garner that type of information.

In the final paragraph of that article, Clifton notes that "35 shelter dogs have participated in killing people since 2010". This data point appears to be a very cognitive effort to a) fear monger by making this number seem really high, b) try to cast doubt on shelter directors who adopt out pets and c) to make shelter pets seems unsafe. 

However, again, upon further scrutiny, it turns out that "35" (assuming it's true, which at this point, is a lot to assume) is roughly 20% of the dog bite related fatalities during that time. When you then note that 30% of dog owners get their pets from shelters, you realize that not only are shelter dogs extremely safe (as are all dogs), but their adopters seem to be more responsible by putting the dogs in tragic situations at a lower rate than non-adopters.

So shelter pets remain an extremely viable option for people in spite of Clifton's fear-mongering.

But it gets worse. 

Late last week, Time Magazine released what was the worst piece of "journalism" I've read in years regarding a 3 year old girl, who was attacked by three dogs, and then supposedly asked to leave a KFC because patrons thought she was too "scary" to be there.

Except the entirety of the KFC sequence was false. 

In the piece, the Time writer, Charlotte Alter, quotes almost exclusively from Merritt Clifton and Dogsbite.org about the this mythical increase in dog attacks, and particularly tageting pit bulls. In it, they run a new chart based on Clifton's data.

In it Clifton completely fails to recognize that his data is biased based on media bias and availability bias. It's also likely further pronounced because the media bias is now such that clicks, and click throughs matter for determining what stories get published.

And similar to how the dogsbite.org minions handle their affairs on facebook, the glob on to any story involving a pit bull and copy/paste comment after comment to drive up traffic and SEO for the site....

However, Clifton takes it one step further. And blames the increase in pit bull bites on the animal welfare community. Says Clifton:

"The Graphic...starkly illustrated the rising number of pit bull attacks since the Michael Vick dogfighting case caused the Best Friends Animal Society and ASPCA, among others to ramp up advocacy."

So now, Clifton has decided to ignore the complete failures of his own data and take on most progressive animal welfare groups in this country by blaming them (not his own data gathering) for the miraculous increase. And also completely fails to recognize that correlation does not equal causation -- and just because the timing of two events correlate, doesn't mean that one caused the other.

But if Clifton wants to try to draw faulty correlation = causation conclusions based on no evidence of true cause and effecthe may want to be careful, because there is another interesting correlation that is more likely to have had a causal impact....as I have taken a littler liberty with Clifton's chart on the left.

I think a more likely argument could be made that the driving force in the increase in discovered dog bites is the presence of Colleen Lynn, the founder of dogsbite.org, which came online the same year as Mike Vick was convicted.

Let me be clear, Lynn, has no knowledge or expertise in dogs, or dog behavior. She is 100% biased against pit bulls in everything she does and her only experience with dogs is having been bitten by one. However, Lynn, as a web developer is web savvy, and good at gathering information and not doubt helped Clifton in his information gathering. 

She has also become an active voice in the 'pit bull debate' that creates the media's favorite need for two sides to every store (even if one side is filled with experts, and the other side only contains Clifton and Lynn) and encouraged them to write more stories.

She has also filled the debate with mounds of nonsense that makes the situation more confusing for pet owners -- making the debate about "breed" instead of about owner responsibility and canine/human behavior -- instead of taking an expert-led community approach. 

And, as an added bonus, Lynn and her minions are great at filling up comments pages on these articles to "reward" the media outlets for the articles, ensuring further media bias in the types of storiesthey choose to cover.

It's actually pretty obvious where the problem is, and it's not what Merritt Clifton wants to blame and it's certainly not the organizations that are working to save the lives of these animals.

Time Magazine

I would be a bit remiss if I didn't say a little something about the article in Time Magazine. In all honesty, I'm completely embarrassed for Time. For starters, the article is based on a completely inaccurate premise of a girl being kicked out of the KFC (which turned out to be a hoax). It is one thing for a local media outlet to pick up a story based only on the supposed victim's facebook post and no verification from anyone at KFC or that was visiting that KFC. It's quite another for Time magazine to fall to such a standard.

Then, to basically run the anti-pit bull article based on the reports of Clifton and Colleen Lynn with little to no communication with the bevy of experts and science on the opposing side. Heck, they could have done better research had just read the article that had appeared in their own magazine over the past 3 years, including: The Softer Side of Pit Bulls, and Can Attack Dogs be Rehabilitated. Apparently Ms. Alter does even read the magazine she works for.

So from an incorrect premise, to citing the least credible of sources, the Time article is an epic fail in news journalism, and it's a shame they've sunk to such a standard in the hope of keeping up with Buzz Feed for internet clicks (but hey, at least Time may get a mention in the next Buzz Feed List, "The worst researched news stories of all time"). 

For more on the epic fail, where virtually every data point is wrong, please read this post from Sway Love that breaks it down nicely. 

Oh my dog also has a nice post: "We're talking about the wrong things: Pit bulls, KFC and Journalistic Integrity"

And the Huffington Post reports: "It's time to end the prejudice against pit bulls"

 

More Acceptance for Open Adoption Policies

About a decade ago, long before we ever conceived of the idea of KC Pet Project, or running a shelter, or writing this blog, or me ever being much involved in the idea of advocating for animals, I had several run-ins with some of the challenges people often have in adopting from shelters or rescues.

And over the course of many of these run-ins, I had an epiphany about shelters, rescues, and how many of them were actually hurting the animals they were claiming to help, by actually preventing them from going into homes that were readily available to them.

During a fairly short amount of time:

1) My father-in law was denied from adopting. He lives in the country, and has horses. He spends most of the daylight hours outside tending to his land and horses and was looking for a dog to be his partner in his work. The dog would spend all day with him at the farm, and would sleep at night in the heated horse barn after a long day of running free. He was denied because he wanted an "outside dog".

2) Some friends of ours were asked if their last dog (a Cocker Spaniel that died at the age of 19 after a great life) was kept up-to-date on all of its shots. He said "no", and that at the advice of his vet, quit giving his elderly dog shots because as an inside dog the shots would be more harmful to the dog than the likelyhood of her getting a major disease. He was denied for not providing proper vetting to his previous pet. 

3) Another friend was an avid runner. He lived in an apartment, but ran a couple of times per day and was looking for a running partner that he would give plenty of exercise to and would help make sure he stayed motivate to run every day.  He was denied adoption because the rescue didn't believe a high-energy dog shouldn't live in an apartment.

4) Another friend was denied adopting because she didn't have a fenced in yard, and her upscale historic neighborhood wouldn't allow people to put up a fence.

5) Another person we met, a very successful, young professional woman, was denied from adopting because the rescue thought her job as a lawyer would be too demanding and that she wouldn't be able to have time to properly care for the dog.

6) One rescue group I volunteered with for awhile completely refused to ever do same-sex adoptions, even though nearly every foster home for this group had 3 or more dogs in the home and were able to manage those same sex dogs just fine.

You get the idea. Even as someone who was barely involved in rescue (or maybe because of that), I saw the strangeness of claims that animals were dying in shelters because no one wanted them, and then realizing that many homes that seemed like great homes (and a couple that I knew for a fact were great homes) were unable to adopt because they were getting denied adoption.

Then, a few years later, I was at the Best Friends Conference in Las Vegas, and one of the speakers was talking about the idea of open-adoptions. That speaker (and for the life of me I can't remember who it was) said something that really resonated with me. She noted that when they approach adoptions, they looked for ways to turn people into good homes, instead of trying to look for reasons why they should be denied from adoption.

Over the years, I've attended a lot of sessions and read a lot of materials about open adoptions, and the overwhelming theme is that all shelters have a diversity of animals in them, and that the needs of those animals is as diverse as the adopters that come in. So making appropriate matches is what is important.

It is also important to note people who come to your shelter to adopt have already made a decision that they want to do a good thing by adopting. If we make that an unpleasant experience, it is no good for the adopter, no good for the animal who needs a home, and no good for the concept of adopting as a whole. And if you turn an adopter away, they will still most likely get a pet from somewhere, but you are making sure that it most likely won't be from a shelter (and definitely not your shelter), and may or may not come vaccinated, altered, etc. And in the process, you are pushing people who WANT to adopt to buying dogs, which increases the demand, and revenue, for bred dogs. 

Now let me clarify one more thing about how I describe "open adoptions". This doesn't mean that every person who wants to adopt a pet gets a pet. Most shelters that practice open adoptions do deny adopters who just have no business owning a pet. But those people are going to be a very small minority of the people who come to your shelter. 

While many people may not know a lot about pets when they come there (that's why they came to you, YOU"RE the expert on pets, not them), they genuinely want to do the right thing (that's why they came in the first place) and with a little help are going to be pretty good pet owners. 

Open adoptions means that you look for ways to get to 'Yes" instead of reasons to say no. It means educating (when necessary) instead of interogating. It means understanding that most people  want to do the right thing, and want your help in doing it. It means removing blanket adoption restrictions that artificially minimize the pool of potential adopters and treating each adopter and adoption on an individual basis. It means that "no, adoption is not for you" should be a rarity.

Last year at the Best Friends No More Homeless Pets Conference, Dr. Ellen Jefferson of Austin Pets Alive made a great statement -- and I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this:  "If I'm in a pond and there are a lot of animals drowning in the pond, I'm going to jump in and start giving those animals to the people who come to the shore to help me. I'm not going to ask the guy trying to help me if he has a fence or if I can do a home check first, I'm going to get him the pet and save the next one as soon as possible."

Folks, the pond is our American Shelter System. And animals are drowing in our shelters. We have the power and ability to save them, but we need to quit turning away the people who come to help us.

 For a long time, I've felt like Open Adoptions were, for reasons I can't quite understand, one of the most controversial parts of the No Kill Equation. However, recently, a lot of more mainstream organizations have begun to open up to the idea and are even now promoting it. 

Last month, HSUS held it's annual sheltering conference. While I've oft been critical of HSUS having to be drug into more modern thinking by other outside influences, I've heard from several people who were at the HSUS Conference this year that it was a completely different tone and feel and that it was by far the most progressive HSUS conference thus far. 

One of the sessions was about open adoptions. The session included speakers from HSUS, the ASPCA and from Petsmart Charities. I think it's a very good sign for the movement to have these three major organizations pushing for more open shelter (and rescue) adoption policies. Such policies will find more animals homes, and thus, cause fewer to die in shelters.

Here's that presentation in its entirety. It's an hour long, but make sure you take the time to watch. Because it's solid. It talks about how there is no "we" and "them" -- but that We are them.  It talks about "free" adoptions. Pets as gifts? What happens when policies are replaced with dialogue? There is also a lot of great research here about people in under-served communities -- only 3% of whom adopt from shelters (compared to 30% of pet owners nationally) and are open to the adoption/rescue message. This section on adopting to low-income pet owners is particularly insightful and valuable (it's the 2nd half of the presentation).

Open adoptions are what all of us (shelters and rescues) need to be doing to ensure that more animals are finding homes instead of drowning in our shelters. People want to help us. And we should let them.

 

Sunday Video - -The KC Pet Project Story

This is a short, 4:30 video that gives a little insight into the KC Pet Project story. I think it turned out really well and gets to the heart of why we do what we do at KCPP. Enjoy.

 

If you can't see the video via your email feed, you can view it on YouTube here.

Dearborn County, IN joins growing list of communities repealing breed-specific laws

Last week, Dearborn County, IN (Population 50,000) became another sign of progress after the council passed a new law that elminates breed-specific provisions in the county code.

Now, all dogs in Dearborn County are declared vicious based on their actions and behaviors, not on their appearance. In addition to pet owners benefitting by not being targeted based on how their dog looks (or how someone else thinks it may look), the PUBLIC benefits by improved public safety with the limited animal control resources now being focused only on dogs that really are potentially aggressive.

This is the second in a great line of news out of the Hoosier State recently. Just 2 weeks ago, South Bend, IN also repealed its decades-old law targeting specific breeds. These two communities represent a larger trend of communities around the nation removing outdated breed-specific ordinances and replacing them with breed-neutral, behavior-based laws -- which the expert professional community overwhelmingly supports.

Great news, and great job by the folks in Dearborn County, IN.

UK reports that people in deprived areas 3x more likely to be victims of dog bites than those in affluent areas

This is a report that's been out for a month or so but my recent hiatus is causing me to "catch up" a little. 

However, in late April, the Health and Social Care Information Center in the UK released a full report on dog bites in the UK.

It found that once again, dog bites are up 6% in the UK -- this is a part of a long-term trend in the number of hospitalizations due to dog bites in the UK that has been going on for years in spite of, or perhaps because of, the nation's insistance on targeting dangerous dogs based on breed instead of based on behavior.

However, maybe the most intereting point of the study is tht they noted that people who lived in the 10% most deprived areas of the nation entered the hospital due to dog bites at a rate of 24.1 persons per 100,000, compared to persons in the the 10% least deprived areas being hospitalized at a rate of 8.1 persons per 100,000.

So, persons living in the least deprived areas of the country were 3x more likely to be victims of dog attacks than people in the most affluent areas.

For several years I've been noting when coving dog attack fatalities in the US that a disproportionate number of incidents happen in areas that are afflicted with very high poverty -- so this mirrors data that we know in the United States as well.

But I think it's very relevant from the standpoint of understanding that there is very strong evidence to indicate that dog attacks are not a breed specific problem, or a problem with dogs in general, but that they're actually a symptom of a larger societal problem in impoverished areas.

The report does not make any conclusions as to why dog attacks are more common in impoverished areas, but based on the evidence I've seen, I have a few theories, some of which are likely working in tandem together to make the statistical difference:

-- Dogs potentially less likely to live in the home as a part of a family unit

-- Inability to afford proper fencing that may lead to dogs being more likely to escape or be chained as a primary form of containment

-- People living in resource deserts are less likely to have access to veterinary instruction or training resources to help identify and deal with problems

-- Dogs may be more likely to roam at large or in packs and these packs less likely to be reported to authorities

-- Higher incidents of dogs being used for guarding or protection purposes

-- Higher incidents of children (the most likely victim) being left unsupervised 

Now, I mention all of this with some caution, because I in no means want to imply that low-income people are bad pet owners. That's simply not a true statement. Keep in mind that even in the areas with the highest likelihood of someone being attacked, only .02% of people were badly injured. Even in the toughest areas of the UK, people are VERY safe from dogs, which is a good testiment to the dogs and the people in low-income neighborhoods.

However, it does point that there does seem to be more likelihood that dogs and people are put in more risky situations in these neighborhoods. So given this, if the goal is to even further minimize dog bites (from an already very low level), figuring out which of the potential options above are the biggest causal factors and helping break down those challenges is the key to creating even safer areas.

It's interesting data -- and hopefully we can further use it to cut the .02% number even lower.