Bronwen Dickey

4.5 stars

The first half of the book starts with a history of dog breeds, dog fighting, “pit bulls” (however defined, as it constantly changes, but it’s mostly based on looks although there is one actual “American Pit Bull” breed, but many others tend to be lumped in, as well) as seen in history. In the second half of the book, the focus is more on dog bites, breed specific legislation, the media and politics.

The author has done an incredible amount of research here. She looks deeper into some of the media accounts (which are rarely, if ever, based on any kind of proper research), interviews people (on both sides of the “debate” over whether “pit bulls” should be banned or not). I learned of a few myths (like “bait dogs” – apparently they don’t really use bait dogs to train dogs to fight).

This was really interesting and I was impressed how, with very little information she was able to dig deeper, particularly into statistics, to find that most of the stats in the media accounts are just not based on valid (can’t think of a good word) stats. That is, one of the first “peer reviewed” (shoddily done, it seems) articles (which, of course, was then cited in later peer reviewed articles) that did find that pit bulls caused the most deaths was based on very flawed stats (“flawed” is the word I’m looking for).

I’m really impressed with this book and the amount of research that went into it. I feel like a lot more people should read it!… (meer)