The Pits

Styrofeen has asked me to house sit for 2 days. So here is my feeble attempt as a guest blogger.

After reading the Knoxville News Sentinel this morning, I feel the Pit Bull story is quite disturbing and worth discussing. It's hard to believe that a pet loving "mile high city" like Denver, CO would ban and dispose of pit bulls. Are they onto something?

Some “Dog Stats” from Dog Bite:

1. Pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks

2. Dog attack victims in the US suffer over $1 billion in monetary losses every year. ("Take the bite out of man's best friend." State Farm Times, 1998;3(5):2.) That $1 billion estimate might be low -- an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that, in 1995, State Farm paid $70 million on 11,000 claims and estimated that the total annual insurance cost for dog bites was about $2 billion. (Voelker R. "Dog bites recognized as public health problem." JAMA 1997;277:278,280.)

3. Estimated that the direct medical costs of dog bites per year equal $164.9 million in the USA. Quinlan KP, Sacks JJ