It all started with the maligning of pit bulls. The first efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) towards dogs began with coining the phrase of determining a dog’s character by the dog’s deeds and not the dog’s breed. Most of us in animal welfare accepted that as a fair assessment. However, over the years, the deeds of the breed caused greater concern towards the dog’s breed. Too many people were being killed by a single breed to not accept the fact that there is something different about that breed.
As the maligning of pit bulls got worse. To combat against people seeing the pit bull as a dangerous breed, news media began leaving out the breed of the dog engaged in acts of violence. More and more news reports of dog attacks are not reporting on the breed of the dog engaged in the attack. Some will say that the reason is that pit bull dogs are hard to identify and are often mistaken in these incidents. In some ways, they are correct. There are so many pit bulls and pit bull mixes that it is becoming more and more difficult to identify the breed amid all of the other breeds mixed into an offending dog if you don’t consider the wide forehead of the offending dog. Let’s face it, pit bulls have a single phenotypical characteristic that is too hard to disguise. That wide forehead is hard to overlook.
So, the best way to not allow pit bulls to be maligned in a dog bite incident is to not report the breed of the offending dog. In today’s society, reporting the dog as a pit bull is just racist.