KC DOG BLOG

Some thoughts on 4th of July Shelter Intakes, and solutions

You don't have to look very far to see a news story about how July 5th is the busiest day for animal shelters.  The theory goes that fireworks, with their loud popping and banging, scare dogs and many escape due to fear and then come into shelters on the following days. There are certainly no shortage of shelters making this claim.

The usually very thorough Emily Weiss at the ASPCApro has written blogs on consecutive years trying to dispel this as a myth, noting that in their survey of pet owners who had lost their pets, these owners said the 4th of July was not the reason their pet was lost. 

I'll preface this with noting that I'm a huge fan of challenging "Common knowledge" that exists in animal welfare circles as many "knowns" seem to be handed down for years with little or no evidence of them being true , including things like the myth about the need for heavy screening for adopters, or only 1 in 600 pit bulls that enters a shelter finds a home,  or the ridiculous math about the number of offspring an unaltered cat may produce or black dog syndrome. Many of these are just plain wrong, and often negatively impact animals in our shelters. 

However, in speaking with pretty much everyone in the shelter/rescue community, and observing the comments on Dr. Weiss's post, most people aren't going along with Dr. Weiss's assertion that the 4th of July isn't a major concern for shelters.

Last year, I ran numbers for KC Pet Project, and we saw a 15-25% increase in the number of dogs that came into the shelter in the days following the 4th of July. 

Kathy Pobloskie of Lost Dogs of Wisconsin noted a roughly 50% increase in lost dog reports during the week of July 2-8. 

Susan Taney of Lost Dogs Illinois cited roughly a 30% increase in lost dog reports during that same time period.

This year, Lost Dogs Illinois is reporting a 100% increase in lost dog reports following Independence Day -- from an average of 22 per day for the last 2 weeks of June to 44 per day during the first week of July.

In talking with shelter leaders and lost pets advocates that I know and respect from around the country, it seems that most report similar numbers -- numbers that indicate a pretty substantial increase in lost dogs surrounding the 4th of July Holiday -- usually not escalating to the level of straymagedon, but not inconsequential either.

And even a small increase in intake during the month of July (which is already the busiest month for shelters) is liable to make every additional intake a life or death situation as the high intakes in July have most shelters already busting at the seems with homeless pets.

So what is a shelter to do? 

Many good shelters are already doing a great job of taking to their websites, social media and even mainstream media about the importance of keeping pets contained during the "fireworks season" and the importance of having your pet up-to-date with their microchip and tags so in the event they DO get lost, they can be reunited with you quickly. If your organization is not doing this, you should definitely do so in your communities.

Meanwhile, another solution is to start making room in your shelter for the new pets by getting the pets that are there OUT before the 4th. For the 4th year in a row, KC Pet Project has hosted a major adoption event on July 4th to help get dogs OUT, before the new ones come in.

While many shelters close for the holiday, it is a day when most families are off work and have time to spend together -- and will often use the time to find a new pet. This has always been a very good adoption day for us, ranging from at least an average adoption day to our highest adoption day ever. (I think day-of-week of the holiday plays a big role in the success of the event). 

So instead of being closed while increased numbers of dogs are being scared into being lost -- KC Pet Project is OPEN -- getting animals out of the shelter to make room. 

And getting animals out, can at least reduce a bit of the sting of the animals coming in.

And finally, when you get lost pets in - -assume they are LOST and not stray. Take pictures, post them online and in social media and work to get them reunited with owners. It's the fastest, and best, way to get them out of the shelter. 

What is your organization doing to help diffuse 4th of July intakes?

 

Myth Busting: Is the Fourth of July the biggest day for lost dogs?

You can't have an Independence Day without frequent news stories about the huge influx of dogs that come into shelters due to fear of fireworks. Really, you can find the similar story in almost every city in the United States. 

Meanwhile, Emily Weiss, who a big fan of myth-busting, disputed these claims over at the ASPCA Pro.

One thing that I've for sure learned about Animal Welfare is that unsubstantiated claims and myths are common and that challenging these claims instead of taking them at face value is a good thing. Some examples of common practices or sayings that have proven to be false are that black cats shouldn't be adopted out around Halloween, that only 1  in 600 pit bulls in shelters finds a loving family, or that one unaltered cat will have 420,000 (or a bajillion) offspring. 

So, I wanted to see for myself what happens at OUR shelter for the fourth of July -- to see what really happens. I am not one to rush to just assume something is true, but I will say, it SEEMS that intake goes up around the 4th of July.

So the following are the numbers of dogs that came into our shelter from any source for the months of June and July, and the individual days surround July 4th:

June: 578 total dogs (19.2 avg per day)

July: 589 total dogs (19 avg per day)

June 29: 16 dogs

June 30: 30

July 1: 18

July 2: 16

July 3: 18

July 4: 20

July 5: 14

July 6: 19

July 7: 26

July 8: 26

July 9: 28

July 10: 18

So, there are a lot of ways you can interpret the data -- which is why I'm leaving it out there for anyone to interpret on their own (and please share thoughts).  And obviously, nothing happens in a complete vacuum, as there are always other factors at play, but here are a few of my thoughts:

1) I was a little surprised that there wasn't a notable increase in intake the days leading up to the 4th of July as many people in our community begin shooting off fireworks the week before the holiday. Yet, the average for the 5 days prior to the 4th was only 19.6 dogs per day -- a statistically insignificant difference from the monthly average.

2) There was not a huge surge in intake on the 4th of July, or the 5th. The average for these two days was 17 - so lower than the average for either June or July.  It is important to note that our animal control was running on a lighter-than-normal staff due tot he holiday (and the 5th being a Sunday) and thus, the lower numbers of officers on the ground may have artificially kept numbers down those two days. 

3) There was a noticable increase in intake though on the 7th, 8th and 9th. This could have been that dogs that ran off scared on the 4th and were finally venturing out for food/water. Or it could be that people who found lost dogs in their neighborhood tried for several days to find the owner before bringing them to the shelter. Or it could be a complete coincidence (which seems a bit unlikely). 

4) The average dog intake for the dates the 5th-9th was 22.6 dogs per day. For the 6th-9th, it was 24.75 dogs per day. This translates as a 15% or 25% increase in intake depending on the figures you use.

Conclusion

The numbers are admittedly a small data-set given that it only represents one shelter for one year, but based on these numbers, it does appear as if there is an increase in dogs coming into the shelter following the 4th of July holiday.  This increase may not happen on the actual 4th of July, and there may be a delay of a few days before the increase comes. But the increase does exist in this limited data-set.

However, the increase is somewhat manageable - -at 15-25% -- and not the straymaggedon that is so often forecast. This appears to be somewhat consistent with what I hear from shelter directors in other parts of the country.

And, it could be, that education efforts around the nation and in our community have led to people taking extra precautions for the holiday. If that's case, it's great news and keep up the good work

But for now, based on my very limited data set, I will conclude that the comments about increase in lost pets for the Fourth of July is TRUE, but with the reservation that it is not as extreme as many people make it out to be.

Do you have numbers from your shelter or animal control division?  What are your thoughts? 

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.

 

More misinformation, deceit and attempts to mislead from Merritt Clifton

It almost seems that if I were looking I could make this a weekly column, but this one is too bizarre to pass up, and given that I've seen the latest piece from Merritt quoted in a couple of places already, I suppose I might as well nip this in the bud.

In the latest issue of Merritt's self published "newspaper" Animal People, Clifton takes aim at the state of Rhode Island with an article "Laws pre-empting breed-specific ordinances pass - but polls tilt the other way".

In the article, Clifton calls out Rhode Island (which has since passed it's law prohibiting laws targeting specific breeds, which is what he refers to as "pre-emption") and why he thinks the law is a bad idea. While most of the article is filled with mistakes, and attempts to mislead (much of it relying on Ed Boks' foolish blog post), there is a paragraph that I've now seen quoted a couple of times that is so full of errors and mis-information that it needs to be addressed in full.

Here's the snippet:

The Nevada, Connecticut and Rhode Island bills, like the similar bill passed in Massachusetts in 2012 were rushed into passage in the last days of their respective legislative sessions, with minimal publicity and debate. Fifteen states now ban breed-specific ordinances, including California, Illinois, Texas and Ohio.

State Farm Insurance, on May 17 2013 disclosed that California, Illinois, Texas and Ohio rated first through fourth in Insurance claims paid for dog attacks in 2011. State Farm paid $20.3 million to 527 victims in California, $10 million to 309 victims in Illinoi, $5.1 million to 219 victims in Texas and $5.4 million to 215 victims in Ohio."

Not only is Clifton's information largely erronious, is is purposefully so in an attempt to mislead people into fearing prohibition of breed-specific laws. It's a desperate grasp for something, anything, that would lend support.

State Legal Process

For all four states that have passed prohibitions on breed-specific laws in the past 12 months (yes, that's FOUR in 12 months, and very noticably trend), all went through the usual process for state laws. The laws were introduced at the beginning of the legislative session. They were sent to committees and discussed, and then, once passed out of committee they went to the House floor, were voted on, then went through the same process in the Senate, and eventually signed into law. Because of the lengthy process of the committee structure, most bills are passed very late in the session.

In Nevada, the bill passed both houses of the legislature with only one dissenting vote. 

In Connecticut, the Senate only had 4 dissenting votes. 

In Massachusetts, the bill spent 5 full months in the democratic process before being signed, so it was hardly a rush job. 

But really, the reason that the bills had less debate than others was because NO ONE OPPOSED THEM. Really, in a world where absolutely no professional support for breed-specifc laws, state legislators were met by knowledgable advocates and organizations in those states that helped pass the laws. This wasn't some rush job. I was a no-brainer based on the fact that there is almost no support outside of Clifton for breed-specific laws.

Ohio

First of all, let's set the record straight. Ohio does NOT pre-empt breed-specific legislation. Ohio law is a breed-neutral, dangerous dog law, that targets dogs based on behavior, not breed. However, the state law does allow local juristictions to pass breed-specific laws. 

So this information from Clifton is just flat wrong. But wait, it gets worse.

Up until February, 2012, Ohio was actually the only state in the US that targeted specific breeds. This law was overturned in February, 2012. 

Now, keep in mind, that Clifton was using Ohio's high bite numbers (and payouts) as a reason why pre-emtion was a bad idea. However, Clifton was basing  this on 2011 data -- a time when Ohio actually TARGETED specific breeds of dogs. So not only is Clifton wrong in trying to use the data to prove his point, in doing so, he actually makes a case against himself. 

Oh, but it gets worse for Merritt.

Keep in mind that Clifton is using only one insurance company for his data -- State Farm. State Farm has a policy that doesn't allow them to insure "Vicious" dogs. Because of the way the Ohio law was written (pre 2012), State Farm WOULD NOT insure pit bulls because state law declared them "vicious" because of breed. So based on this policy, it is unlikely that ANY of the 215 victims and $5.4 million in payouts Clifton attributes to Ohio victims was due to a pit bull bite. None. Further demonstrating how his falsifying of information here is actuall working against his point, not in favor of.

California, Illinois and Texas

So what about these other states?  In their case, it is true that they prohibit breed-specific laws (although California allows for breed-specific mandatory spay/neuter laws).  Why did they have so many bites? 

It's a simple answer:  Math

If you look at the total number of people in each state in the United States, the following are the 7 largest states based on total population:

1) California -- 38 million people

2) Texas - 26 million

3) New York - 19.6 million

4) Florida - 19.3 million

5) Illinois - 12.9 million

6) Pennsylvania - 12.8 million

7) Ohio - 11.5 million

Two things jump out at me on this list:

#1) All 6 of the 6 most populous states in the US have laws prohibiting laws targeting specific breeds.

#2) The best correlation among states with a lot of people bitten by dogs is that these states have a lot of people, and dogs. (New York would appear to be the exception here, but New York actually way under-indexes on dog ownership because such a large percentage of the population lives in New York City where high-rise living is less conducive to dog ownership than in most other parts of the country). So where you have a lot of people, and a lot of dogs, the likelihood of someone getting bitten increases. There's a reason why Maine, which also prohibits breed-specific laws, is not on the list.

This is rocket science.

So it appears that the number of people, and dogs, is the likely cause here, not the laws in place. Except Ohio maybe, which actually TARGETED breeds of dogs, and jumped several states with much higher population than them. Hmmm.

Inadvertently, Clifton then destroys his own data

Over the years, a lot of space has been dedicated here, and elsewhere, to breaking down Merritt Clifton's dog bite data.

Essentially, Clifton has a report of dog bites, as reported by the media, that he has tracked for 30 years now of severe dog attacks in the US.

The errors of the report are plentiful, from the total reliance on media reports, to increasing the number of pit bull attacks during a three year window by more than the total number of attacks, to his not understanding that his discovery of Google caused 20% of all of the bite cases in a 29 year report to have appeared within a 19 month window.

Now, I periodically get Clifton's reports just to keep tabs on things, so I don't have an exact window for 2011, but on Dec 22, 2009, Clifton had 2,694 "attacks causing bodily harm" in his report. 

On December 26, 2011, the number was 3,498 -- an increase of 804 (this was during his period of mysterious increase in bites).

So if you consider this 2 years worth of data (which it essentially is), then we can divide by 2 and say that average number of dog bites "causing bodily harm" for the two years is 402. So it appears that Clifton recorded 402 dog attacks in 2011. 

However, based on the numbers he reported in his recent story, one, singular insurance company, State Farm,  paid out insurance payments to 527 victims JUST IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA THAT YEAR. According to insurance market share reports, State Farm carries roughly 25% of the Property Insurance Policies in the state of California. So based on this, we can estimate that there were nearly 2100 insurance payments for dog bites -- just in California.

And yet, Clifton's report only notes 402, for the entire country. So again, his own data if making his biggest source of "fame" completely invalid for it's utter incompleteness because the media does not report all major dog bite incidents. The media doesn't (nor should it), and without a complete report, Clifton's data is useless and now, self-contradicting.

Inaccurate info, data out of context, and attempts to mislead

And this is where the last gasp is coming. States continue to take the leadership role in prohibiting breed-specific laws. With all credibility slipping away in favor of listening to real experts, Clifton, and the handful of other haters out there are finding themselves quickly on the wrong side of history. In a last gasp effort, they are flinging out inaccurate and misleading data in hopes of scaring people into not doing what's right, and effective, to try to scare people into being afraid of pit bulls.

It's not working. In response to the letters, and the fear mongering, the Governor of Rhode Island signed the bill prohibiting breed-specific laws in his state into law. 

Knowledge and truth are winning.

The popularity of breed-specific laws -- is 600 a lot? Some perspective

It seems that almost any time that there is a story about a city considering passing a ban on breeds of dogs, it doesn't take long before a (generally anonymous) commenter shoots out a statistic that is made to seem like it's a compelling argument for passing breed bans. It generally goes something like this:

"Over 600 communites across the country have passed policies banning pit bulls."

As if the number is supposed to encourage more cities to pass breed bans. But is 600 accurate?  If it is, is it a lot?  

First of all, the number 600 is a bit debatable. Seems like the number 600 is a popular number to use in myths.

The National Canine Research Council estimates the number to be closer to 300. I've seen how the pit bull haters have arrived at the 600 number and it contains a lot of errors, (including the failure to take out a lot of repeals, and several bans that were overturned by statewide legislation) and essentially takes any county-wide ban and then groups dozens of small communities in the county in order to rack up numbers very quickly. 

The real number is probably somewhere in the middle of these two numbers.  But for the sake of argument, let's go with the 600 juristictions that have BSL. Does this make a compelling argument?

Not if you're good at math.

According to "The Straight Dope", there are 19,355 incorporated places in the United States. And another 3,143 Counties (or county equivelents). That's 22,498 total law-making bodies.

So if we do a little math, if the 600 is the number of juristictions that have breed-specific laws, that means that only 2.6% of the total juristictions have breed-specific laws. It's 3.1% if you assume that their inflated number includes just cities. And keep in mind, the 600 number is the high end of a debatable number.

This means that an overwhelming -- and I mean OVERWHELMING -- number of cities and counties have made the decision to target laws toward dogs based on the BEHAVIOR of the dogs and owners, not based on breed.

This 3% number of cities with breed-specific laws is pretty telling. That's small. To put this in perspective, 18% of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth.  So yes, you're 6x as likely that a random person you meet with think the Sun revolves around the Earth as you are to pick a random city or town and they target breeds of dogs.

And both ideas are equally as silly.

Last month, Animal Farm Foundation had a nice info-graphic showing the realities that most communities that look into breed-specific laws end up listening to experts in their community and deciding AGAINST breed-specific laws in favor of behavior based laws. Many other communities are realizing the mistakes of the past and repealing their laws. This is great, as far as it goes, but doesn't take into consideration that most cities never really discuss the idea because they realize it's a bad idea without any debate.

So let's put this in perspective. More than 97% of law-making juristictions out there have not decided to single out breeds. Regardless of the anonymous fear-mongers try to convey, it is not the popular option. 

Truth, and knowledge, do generally win out. 

 

The world of made-up statistics

 In my mind, it used to be that statistics were based on data. Data existed, and you extrapolated statistics from that data.

In the world of the internet, everyone has a voice. And while generally that's a good thing, sometimes that privilage is abused andthat voice comes with the amazing ability (and willingness) of some people to make up data and statistics.

While it probably has always been this way, our ability to fact-check this information has never been greater. Unfortunately, with media outlets making severe cuts to news crews, cutting investigative journalism, and apparently fact checkers, it almost seems more common for made-up statistics to make their way around the internet and via twitter. One such "stat" is the idea that "Only 1 in 600 pit bulls finds a home." "The offspring of one unspayed cat will, within five years, will have 420,000 cats" is another.

Some of these are commonly used. They've been passed down for years by rescuers in the same way that urban legends are passed down. Most people don't mean to be malicious with their false statistics, but that still doesn't make them true.

But some people ARE malicious with their claims -- and those claims can also be just as made up.  A couple of weeks ago a lawyer's blog popped up in my news feed.  In it was yet another "statistic" that if someone thought about it for even a minute they would realize couldn't possibly be true. But there it was, in all its glory.

"Together, pit bulls and Rottweilers account for half of the 4.7 million dog bites reported in the United States in 2011."

Wow. That's quite the statistic.

Well, after one of my fellow advocates did a little sluething, here is the source for this astounding statistic.

The first, the 4.7 million dog bites, is the per year estimate routinely given by the Center for Disease Control and Humane Society of the United States. The source for this is actually a study from 1994 in which they garnered national "statistics" from 5,300 phone interviews that not only had a small sample size but also just "made up" data for age groups that were not accounted for in the study. I don't necessarily fault the author of the article for not tracking down the source (I do fault the CDC and HSUS for repeating it for the past 2 decades as if it is a reliable stat), it is more than a little dishonest to attribute this estimated number, from a study done nearly 30 years ago, as the exact number of bites that happened in the specific year 2011.

Meanwhile, datapoint in the second part of the "statistic" is apparently Merritt Clifton's 30 year report on "maimings and maulings".  Clifton's data has often come under scrutiny on this blog, and Luisa did magnificent work on this several years ago here, here and here. In this case, the source is a huge miss.

However, even if the data source wasn't bunk, the data she used isn't even related to the first data point. The Clifton Report that was cited featured 30 years worth of data, not one year. And the report never professed to cover all dog bites. At its best, it was only meant to cover the worst-of dog bites (at it's worst, it's completely flawed in both its methodology, its record-keeping, and being completely non-comprehensive). 

So, instead, the author of the blog reported two pieces of information, that were not related in any way shape or form, one with data from the past 30 years, and one that was literally from 30 years ago, and tacked them together for one "statistic", for one year, in 2011.

It's wrong. And I believe done to be malicious, fear-monger, and drum up business.

Accuracy is important. And making up data to create fear-mongering is not accuracy. But unfortunately it does represent the world of made-up statistics that we live in. 

So please everyone, if you are using data from the internet, PLEASE consider your sources wisely.

"1 in 600 pit bulls"

It's been years since I've seen this "statistic" -- but apparently it's been making a resurfacing of late....and a google search shows a cool 2.8 million references to the "statistic".  I can't completely trace the origination of the source of the number -- but it seems to be yet another one of those urban legends of shelter that continues to exist in shelters.

The statistic, which you've likely heard before, is that "1 in 600 pit bulls finds a home".

If you are one of the people who has parrotted this popular phrase -- please stop.

Now, let me say, I don't know what the real number is --- I doubt anyone really does. But I know 1 in 600 is not the right number.  Some simple math makes this comment seem so outrageous that it doesn't even come close to passing the sniff test.

So let's talk a bit about the numbers -- and why this number cannot even be remotely close to true.   Keep in mind that all numbers are estimates -- because no "real" number exists.  But I've tried to provide a fair representation of the numbers.

For this "1 in 600 pit bulls finds a home" statement to be true, then the assumptive correlary is also true -- that 599 out of every 600 pit bulls is eventually killed by a shelter somewhere.

In this country, it is generally agreed upon that somewhere between 4 -4.5 million animals are killed in shelters every year. The majority of these are cats -- leaving roughly 2 million dogs killed in shelters each year.

Of those 2 million,  based on the percentages from a lot of the data from urban shelters around the country, about 40% or so of the dogs killed in the shelters are "pit bull" type dogs. This number could be debated -- and can be wildly influenced by how widely you cast the net for the term 'pit bull" --but I think 40% sounds like a somewhat fair number to use. There are some shelters where the number is higher than that -- but a large number that have very few pit bulls in them.  But this number gets us to about 800,000 'pit bulls' killed in shelters each year. 

If only 1 pit bull finds a home for every 599 that is killed, for the "1 in 600" data point to be true, that would leave only 1,333 pit bulls that are adopted from shelters or rescues (800,000 divided by 600).  Given that in the Kansas City metro alone we adopt out more than 150 each year (which is 12% of that number) 1,333 seems REALLY low.

But let's check it a separate way.

Current dog population estimates have the total number of dogs in this country at around 78 million. Most estimates for the number of "pit bull" type dogs is between 5-10 million -- again, depending on how narrow or wide your definition is.  Again, based on the percent of dogs in shelters and in ownership, I think splitting the middle here will work, and let's, for the sake of argument, say there are 7.5 million owned pit bulls in this country.

If a 'pit bull' lives on average to be 12 years old -- that would mean that each year, 625,000 (7.5 million divided by 12) pit bulls are aquired by people each year (this number is probably a little higher than that since for a variety of health/accidental reasons dogs (of all breeds) die before the age of their life expectancy). 

So, if 625,000 pit bulls are brought into homes each year, but supposedly only 1,333 are adopted from a shelter or rescue, that would mean that only.2% of all pit bulls that go into homes come through adoption.

A fairly recent research study from GfK Roper indicates that  30% of all pets are gotten from shelters or rescues (this is for dogs and cats -- cat numbers tend to be lower because people have a higher tendency to "take in" cats).  A similar study from PetSmart Charities indicated that 24% of people got their pet from a shelter or rescue.  It seems statistically improbable that 24% of all dogs are adopted from shelters, but only .2% of all 'pit bulls' (a type of dog that makes up roughly 10% of all dogs) are adopted from shelters. 

If 24% of all 'pit bulls' were adopted from shelters, that would mean that each year, roughly 150,000 of the 625,000 new 'pit bulls' taken into homes would be adopted from shelters (not 1,333 - which would be the number if the "1 in 600" were true).  This  would make the number of pit bulls that enters the shelter finding a forever home as closer to 1 in 6 -- not 1 in 600.

Let's try one more way.

If we base our assumption that there are about 7.5 million owned pit bulls in this country - and let's say, for arguments sake, 20% are gotten through adoptions (the national number is probably somewhere between 24% and 30% based on the studies above).  That means 1.4 million of the owned pit bulls out here were aquired via adoption. If the 1 in 600 number were to be true, this would mean for each of these adopted pit bulls, there would be 599 that was killed at a shelter.  That would mean that over the past decade, there would have been over 838 MILLION pit bulls killed in shelters -- even though the total number of all DOGS killed at shelters is generally agreed to be around 20 million.

Now I realize that most of these numbers are approximations -- but even if you adjust them to a different reasonable number, it is impossible to get anywhere near the "1 in 600" number. Not even close.  Unfortunately it seems that many think sharing a "shocking" number will startle people into spaying or neutering, or adopting, or whatever the intended goal is.  But I'm a bigger fan of being honest about the problems and trying to address them appropriately. Using an outlandish number like "1 in 600" only makes the dogs seem unwanted -- adding to a stigma that already exists.

Yes, there are still too many 'pit bulls' being killed in shelters. Yes, we need to overcome stigmas that prevent them from being adopted, prevent them from ever making it onto the adoption floor or prevent them from being spayed or neutered.  But we need to be honest -- and not use outlandish statements that make the stigma worse, not better.