Two mastiffs at the home of actor Ving Rhames may have mauled a 40-year-old man to death. The body was found on the actor's front lawn in Brentwood, California, and the dogs were two of four Fila Brasileiro mastiffs at the house.According to an interview the actor gave in 2001, he has eight of these massive dogs that were once reportedly used to track slaves and fugitives.
An investigation is under way to see if the groundskeeper (who also took care of the dogs) might have died from a heart attack while being mauled or if the bite wounds themselves were the cause of death. The victims's body is reported to have been covered in bite wounds.
More to be revealed later, no doubt.
This is tragedy any way you cut it -- for the poor unfortunate groundskeeper on the lawn (a man still without a name in the news accounts), for Mr. Rhames (who was not present when the attack occured), for the dogs (who will no doubt be killed, if they have not already), for Brentwood (which, after O.J., needed this publicity like a hole in the head), for large molosser breeds of dogs in general (such as pit bulls) and even for black Americans (as this comes so close on the heels of the Michael Vick dog fighting story which will no doubt color the Rhames case).
And yet, was it not predictable? Not necessarily in this situation, of course, but in some situation, some time? Dogs are pack animals and will "fire off" on occassions, and sometimes in an unexpected manner and for reasons that are a mystery to humans. This is true for all animals, I think. Human are no exception -- look at how many people are murdered by humans. Meanwhile, over in Las Vegas, Siegfried and Roy are still trying to figure out why Montecore, their pet white tiger, which they hand-raised from birth, fired off and almost killed Roy.
And yet, isn't it predicatable? Is there anyone who has had a parrot, dog, cat, hawk , ferret, or gerbil, who has not been bitten sometime?
Of course birds, small dogs and rodents are not likely to kill you. It's a simple matter of size. But if you put a tiger or a Fila Brasileiro mastiff in the equation -- or several of them, as in this case -- the scales can swing rapidly in a different direction.
You have the other issue too, of course: the Nature of the Beast. As I wrote on this blog earlier this year in a piece entitled "What the Hell is an American Staffordshire Terrier?,"
"[O]owners of these dogs will tell you they have worked hard to breed all aggression and prey drive out of their charges. And no doubt many have. What a comical thing that is, of course -- a bit like an auto club bragging that their sport cars have no engines. The only thing is .... it's not always true. 'Bad breeding' and 'poor socialization' are often blamed when dogs descended from pit and catch dogs attack small children, but ... could it be .... perhaps ... that a small bit of genetic code remains unbraided as well? It is certainly in the realm of possibility, is it not?"
In an earlier post, I have written about how odd it is that black Americans are embracing redneck culture in the form of pit fighting dogs.
Perhaps the ultimate extension of this, of course, is to own a dog that was designed to capture and kill escaping slaves. As Ving Rhames himself told The Los Angeles Times in an 1999 interview which featured a 170-pound Fila by the name of Kong (picture at top):
“'The dog was actually bred to guard slaves,' Rhames said. 'It was the only dog they found that had the temperament to guard a slave. It could be around you every day, but if you tried to run away, it would deal with you like it never saw you before.'"
That's a quote that's likely to be heard again ... in court.
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12 comments:
One theory that I haven't heard presented yet, and which IMO makes more sense than good dogs randomly going bad and attacking someone they know (who feeds them), is a seizure.
I have seen first hand an otherwise angelic dog become neurotic and panic when its owner had a seizure. I also know that other dogs are trained to warn epileptics of an impending seizure, so apparently dogs understand such happenings on a different level than humans do.
It's not uncommon for dogs to turn aggressive when they are bent out of shape by a particularly unsettling stimulus, so perhaps the keeper had a seizure and the dogs responded by attacking him.
One of my dogs hates the sound of a kazoo or a human made duck quack and if she hears it she becomes agitated and insists on nipping at the lip of the omega dog in our little pack.
As Patrick said, some animals just fire off, and when the behavior is as rare as it is extreme, no amount of clicker training is going to condition the dog out of it. You'd have do induce the behavior so much you'd be more likely to permanently ruin the dog than you would be to teach it manners.
And as Patrick also noted, sudden rage is no stranger in bipedal circles, and the scary thing is not how so many of these people are supposedly driven mad and homicidal by years of abuse and inequity... but how many of them seemed to be perfectly "normal" before hand and how quickly it all went wrong. It make it very hard to think that it couldn't be you or someone you know.
And so yes, it could also be your dog. And yes, you're playing with fire when you decide to express your fine taste in dogs with a breed that was created to hunt and kill large game.
The "but we bred it out" excuse is baseless. Even breeds where this supposedly has been a long concern, such as Dobermans, end up so bottlenecked genetically that they are diseased wrecks. 50% of Dobes have a fatal heart condition, and thats just one of the many diseases they suffer from.
You'll notice though, that while the aggression has supposedly been bred out, the extreme size and muscles have remained. The large teeth and jaws remain. And it's not the personality that kills you, it's the jaws and the teeth and the muscles.
Is it certain they were the Filas? The news story I read identified them as a pair of Bullmastiffs and an English Bulldog. Granted, I wouldn't put it past the media to identify a Cocker as a pit bull, but the video I saw had two dogs that looked pretty much like ordinary, waggy, slightly confused Bullmastiffs.
It's a nitpick, though; any dog in a pack situation- or a freak situation- can fire, and fire with deadly force.
"pit bulls" are not molosser breeds.
They are "bull and terrier" breeds.
The pit bull breeds are not "large" dogs either.. they are "moderate" dogs.
And their genetics do NOT predict that they will fire off on to humans. Quite the contrary, if you will read their history. Their catch/hold/fight to the death breeding was consciously and carefully directed to other animals and not to people. Of course there are bad pit bulls that bite people. Though far fewer than the press wants us to believe.
From reading your blog (which I very much enjoy despite your complete wrong-headedness about pit bulls), I understand that you contend that terriers are all small earth dogs (where exactly does the "King of Terriers" fit into that equation???), but the history of the pit bull TERRIER breeds is very well documented. There is absolutely no doubt, by recorded history or by behavior, that the American Pit Bull Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier (not to mention the original Bull Terrier) have terrier as a significant component. The American Staffordshire Terrier derives from the UKC APBT, with NOTHING added or subtracted.
The fact that there are large sloppy (English) bulldog-ish looking ASTs today does not contradict that history.
From the photos, the Rhames dogs are bull or English mastiffs, and not even Fila Brasiliero's. But in any case, Fila's haven't been used to track and kill people for oh, like 300 years.
So I'm not really sure what point you're making.
EmilyS
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Emily,
The notion that a Pit Bull is a true terrier is laughable to anyone that actually has terriers.
Here's hint: a terrier is what its name says it is -- a dog capable of going to ground (*terre*). That's not too complicated is it?
If you look at the history of the larger "terriers" that do not go to ground you will find they have little or no no terrier base. An Aierdale, for example, is almost pure Otter Hound, while a Black Russian Terrier is mostly Rottweiler. And a Pit Bull, of course, is mostly a mixture of molosser breeds crossed with a little greyhound.
A Pit Bull is a molosser breed, simple and true. You can go to Wikipedia and look up "molosser" and get that information, or you can go to the home page of Molosser World, and see how many newly minted molosser breeds are derived from American Pit Bulls.
In fact no one in the world of molossers has much of a problem recogizing and accepting a Pit Bull as a molosser breed and not a true terrier, since not a scrap of terrier can be seen in the animal.
As for what breed Ving Rhames has on his property, time will tell, but he told people he had Filas (a type of mastiff) though the dog in the picture looks like a Neopolitan Mastiff. A molosser site notes: Filas are "probably the only breed that was selected for centuries to deeply dislike the humans they were not raised with, and, to this day, temperament tests run during championships require the dogs to attack without being coached, to remain self-confident during a shooting test, and to openly show their suspicion of strangers. The standard prescribes that, even at dog shows, Filas should not 'allow the judge (a stranger) to touch it. And if it attacks the judge, such a reaction must not be considered a fault, but only a confirmation of its temperament.'"
Excellent tesimony we will no doubt see introduced at trial if these appear to be Filas.
One of the amusing things about most of the molosser breeds, including Pit Bulls, of course, is that the dogs are so often cross-bred and poorly bred, the breed definitions themselves are a bit vague, and many of these "ancient" breeds are, in fact, not very old. My bet is that whatever "breed" these dogs are that killed this person on Mr. Rhames' property, they will deny it was a purebred. It will be described as "not pure" and "poorly socialized" and coming from a "disreputable" or "rogue" breeder. Furthmore, we will be told that the offending dogs are "not representative of the breed." You bectha! Heard that before, eh?
I realize that the folks that own Pit Bulls today want their dogs to be adopted from shelters. That is all well and good and I am all for it. Most of these dogs are fine dogs. But please, let's not try to palm these dogs off as "terriers," and let's not deny that they have molosser, dog-fighting, and security-dog roots, eh? Go down that road, and next we'll be saying that American Pit Bulls are descended from 6-pound lap dogs just because some breed books says so.
P.
A quick thought game: type the name of any breed into "Google News" and then follow up with the word "attack" and see what you get. Not too many attacks by beagles and cairns, bloodhounds, standard poodles or Labrador Retrievers. Quite a lot from pit bulls and mastiffs. Suprisingly few from Dobermans. Considering the number of GSDs, they do OK.
Hmmn. I have clients tell me all the time that their parrots bite them randomly and yet I have never seen a parrot bite without reason. There is some sort of provocation whether the bitee is aware of it or not. Behavior always has an antecedent. There is a reason those dogs did that. "Sometimes it just happens" is neither a correct nor a helpful answer.
The word in the animal trainer circle (and I feel fairly confident of my sources) is that there is plausible speculation that the cat the grabbed Roy was reacting to a seizure that Roy was having (stroke?) grabbing him by the neck like a cub and pulling him off stage where he dropped him. Having talked with tiger trainers over the years, it does seem odd that a cat would grab someone by the back of the neck, move him, but not maul him in a variety of places. I thought Roy slipped up, but having gotten more information over time, I'm actually buying this explanation.
There are no TRUE mysteries in behavior, only matters we choose to name as a mystery and stop investigating. It isn't enough to say dogs just "fire off." Someone died and shouldn't have to have died in vain. There's a reason and it should be sought logically and not anecdotally.
EmilyS -
Your post is rather amusing considering your claim to enjoy Patrick's writing. How have you missed all of the many posts regarding fabricated breed histories and baseless puffery that goes on in the "purebred" dog world?
Having a breed club or even a kennel club declare a dog belongs in one category or another doesn't make it genetically or practically or ethically or functionally so! The kennel club names and classifications aren't science, or even truth. They are every bit of a concoction as Santa Claus: widely held to exist, but utterly baseless and pleasant fiction. And your supposed "well documented" history of AmStaffs is probably just like the extensive cannon on St. Nick: much ado about nothing.
Remember, the American Kennel Club didn't have a "Herding" group until 1983, when it split a hand full of dogs from the "Working" group. It wasn't for another 12 years that the premier herding dog, the Border Collie, was even in the Herding Group. And even less surprising is that the most successful "herding" dog in the show ring, the German Shepherd, is genetically clustered with the guard breeds, not the herding breeds, and you'd have a hard time finding any time or place where the German Shepherd has ever been seriously used to herd stock!
Just because someone can weave a convincing story doesn't make it true. Heck, J.R.R. Tolkein combined existing myth with volumes and volumes of created places, created races, created events, created languages!, created genealogies, and new myth. Many of his "histories" are more convincing and documented than anything a breed club has come up with, and the extent of public acceptance of his and others' myth is astounding. Many people KNOW more about the origin of elves, dwarfs, dragons, and spells than they do about their own dog.
Ibizan and Pharaoh Hounds have a much better claim to their history as ancient sight hunters than the AmStaff has to being a "terrier;" at least they look the part and could conceivably do the work. Even so, genetics shows that they are not ancient, but ultra modern concoctions bred simply to look like long dead breeds.
For that matter, the American Stafforshire Terrier name just REEKS of co-opted and implied gentry. Just like a layman could easily confuse the "Westminster" dog show for occuring in England (land of Kings and English-speaking-royalty nonsense), the inclusion of "Staffordshire" in the name is a similar advertising ploy to lend a sense of class and respectability to a scrappy and dangerous breed.
And even then, the Staffordshire bit isn't nearly as fraudulent as the Terrier bit. Calling such dogs "terriers" makes the word almost meaningless. AmStaffs have as much in common with terriers as Australian Shepherds do with Australia, or Pharaoh hounds have to do with Ancient Egypt. Little to nothing.
And the last stab attempt to whitewash the breed is the "they're great with children!" bit. Come on! This is the same thing people who keep large snakes, alligators and crocs, Big Cats, and spiders say. Pretending that some significant number of people call this breed a "nanny dog" doesn't make it so. And it doesn't make you any less dead or scarred when the dog doesn't live up to the fraudulent name you've given it.
Just because you can't see beyond nostalgia for your poor choice in dogs doesn't mean the rest of us have to drink your Koolaid.
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I would agree with Rebecca that there is almost always a reason an animal does something -- or at least that is my experience.
It is also true, however, that we may not understand the reason an animal does something.
More often than not, humans do not see the signs being sent, even though the animal may be screaming very loudly in its own language.
Do most dog owners pay attention to ear position, tail position, the lean of a dog's body, the eye contact the animal is making, or the curl of the dog's lip or the position of its head?
No.
After the attack, the human almost always says the same thing: "For no reason at all, and without warning ..."
In fact, most of the time there was plenty of warning, but we humans were oblivious to it. A symphony of warning was sent, but we were deaf.
It is true that at the top end of the animal behavior world, especially among trainers who work with one type of animal repeatedly, a human may be able to interpret a lot more signals than the basic pet owner can.
Monty Roberts does that with horses, for example, and Cesar Millan and others do it with dogs. I have known someone who spoke "cow" well enough that it was pretty amazing to watch.
That said, most people just scream at their pets and have no idea of how to read signs of mounting tension, fear, confusion, aggression or arousal. Instead of speaking dog or horse or parrot or elephant, most people simply scream louder (and generally repeatedly) in English -- a language the animal generally does not understand or is misinterpreting at that moment.
Similarly, humans who are poor at receiving body-language signals FROM animals are generally not very good at sending body language signals TO animals, even though this is the "language" so many animals communicate in.
YES, it may be interesting to do a little psychological forensics to figure out why an animal has attacked a human, but if the attaching animals are an attacking circus elephant, or an attacking Fila Brasileiro, it may not be too germane to the victim if he or she is dead.
But, let us get outside of the field of human mortality for a second, eh? After all, when animals fire off, it is not just to attack humans is it? Dogs explode down field and across roads for no apparent reason that we can discern (“it must have seen a rabbit or cat” we tell ourselves), and they are also prone to do such fun things as eat the couch or feather pluck (“it must be bored or have separation anxiety” we tell ourselves), or to howl and bark all day long (“it hears sirens and barking is a self-reinforcing stimulus” we tell ourselves). In these cases, the human may not end up dead, but the animal has a very good chance of ending up that way because the animal is “firing off” for no apparent reason we can discern or remediate.
Animals can also fire off and kill us without intentionally attacking us, can’t they? Look at horse-related deaths, for example. Most people will tell you they love their horses and their horses love them, but in fact a horse is never under complete control of a human, and a human can never completely understand a horse. As good as Monty Roberts is, he is not the species Equus, and bad things will always happen with horses. They WILL fire off for reasons known and unknown. It is a predictable thing, and it is part of the bargain of riding horses.
In a sense, then, owning animals is a bit like owning a gun; they come in different calibers and different levels of construction and manufacturing. A gerbil or a cat or a rabbit is like a potato gun or a cap gun – not much harm can come from it. A large parrot or a small terrier is a bit like a Red Rider BB gun -- it might put out your eye, but it's not likely to kill you if it goes off accidentally. A German Shepherd might be thought of as a .22 -- a gun that can kill you if you are unlucky, but more likely it will just leave you with a limp if something really bad happens. And then you have the really large dogs like the Fila Brasileiro, which is like a .50 cal Desert Eagle; it is not designed for anything but one thing. And in the case of the Fila, there is no safety on the gun.
Now, let me talk heresy.
I am not altogether happy that a Desert Eagle can be owned without taking a gun safety course. Similarly, I am not all that happy that a dog like a Fila Brasileiro or a Pit Bull or a Rottweiler can be owned without taking a course in canine management and training. Pit Bulls and Rottweilers alone account for more than half of all fatal dog attacks in this country, and maybe its time we kept them legal but made ownership conditional on the owner taking a course in canine management. Similarly, perhaps it is time that we license breeders of these types of dogs so that there are fewer “defective manufacturing” cases walking around. Notice that the animals would still be 100% legal; they would just be a little harder for the knuckle draggers to own. breed and dump. We did this kind of "special weapons oversight" with machine guns and as a consequence we do not see too many legal full-autos used in crimes (zero last I looked), while hunter safety courses have made fatal shootings in the woods fall like a rock.
P.
Hope you talk to some state legislators about your proposal; with the widespread publicity surrounding both this incident and the Vick case the current environment might be favorable for such a reform.
marmot
YAY Patrick. I'm a self confessed libertarian who has no interest in drugs (the big L party's main issue) and a heretical view of gun control.
Mainly yours. I'm fully against a Nanny State (and "nanny dogs" for that matter) and see no constitutional issues with requiring responsibilities commensurate with rights.
I'm all for owning a gun. I'm all for the make-my-day law. But I see no problem with having to take a class or two and pass a competency test to own one, and even more graduated requirements for weapons that do more damage. And I can clearly draw a line between a hand gun and a weapon of war. How about mandatory gun locks with each sale?
I'm tentatively for legalization of some drugs if the government could demonstrate to me that they could do a better job protecting the sober from the inebriated. They haven't so far with Alcohol and illegal drugs. But I do drool over the gigantic untapped fortunes that the government could tap by legalization and regulation and TAXATION of home grown drug companies instead of cartels overseas.
I can see such monies paying for medical research, 12 step programs, insurance coverage for victims, the bankrupt social security fund, protecting our borders (especially against drug traffic), and so on.
I can see the same logic in requiring licensing (education and payment) for serious dog breeds. That makes much more economic and practical sense to me than bans. Bans require a lot of baby sitting by underpaid state employees and bans don't generate the funds required to run the programs unless you catch people and fine them (and the odds that the money from that ever makes it back from the general fund is about nill).
Econ101 taught me that finding the optimum level of a good can be achieved with incentives and disincentives instead of hard line caps. And a ban is a cap of zero, and is thus grossly inefficient.
Patrick-- I agree that it's almost always about our inability to read animals. Although the problem isn't so much that we can't is that we are cock-sure that we can.
Speaking to legislation and it's inappropriateness...I had to take a gun hunter's safety course to hunt with a raptor. Yet, I don't even own a gun. 'nuff said.
Christopher-- Don't forget when you look at your Econ101 basics to include a little applied behavior analysis in there too. In fact economics+ABA=freakanomics. (or at least that's one animal trainer's read on it) Incentives and disincentives are a fabulous start, but you still have to break down behavior and the ancedent is often key to that breakdown. This is where the solutions are.
Rebecca,
So true. One of my favorite quotes from Econ1 was "you're going to hear a lot of 'in the long run' in this class, and we're going to be making assumptions about aggregate data, groups of people, and at times gross generalities. While these models are useful and have their place, don't forget that in the long run, everyone is dead."
I often find that when things don't make sense, it's often because the perspective is all wrong.
:c)
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