An At-Risk Dog By Any Other Name
To best target and focus spay/neuter resources in a community, it is vital to gather and analyze data that represents at least 85% of the intake in the community – because what enters a single facility may not tell the full story. The Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland, Oregon, has been working together for several years with this community-focused model.
Recently, we have been working with several of the partners in the Alliance, to map their animal data into our GIS tools. The Alliance will use GIS as another tool to better analyze where intake for at-risk populations is highest, so that S/N services can be most accurately applied.
After a few months of training, cleaning, and developing reports to best pull the needed data, we were able to geocode the Alliance’s data and load it into our GIS viewer. When I began to analyze the data, I focused on both cats and one of the most at-risk breeds of dogs – the pit-type dog. It quickly became apparent that we had a bit of a dirty data issue to clean up for the community. When I searched the tool for “American Pit Bull Terrier,” I found all the data points on the north side of the river – curious, eh? When I searched “Pit bull, American,” all of the data points were located on the south side of the river! Running a frequency count of all breeds, we found that pit bull-type dogs were represented by more than 7 different names, including mastiff.
Why does the name matter? Take a look at these two map images… 
A community risk is hard to analyze with data points like these – and it is possible that there are even more! “Mastiff,” for example, was the fifth largest intake, though few remembered many actual mastiffs entering their facilities. Certainly I understand the urge for creative coding to help the public look past breed to see the dog inside… however, what gets coded into the shelter software should go in under the philosophy of “I need this data to help me better focus my limited resources toward the animals most at risk…”
While it is very likely that some of the dogs labeled under the pit-type label may have little or no American pit heritage, based on looks they are often most at risk in shelters. If an agreement is made to code them all the same in the shelter software, we can be assured to be better able to support them and help get more home and keep them out of the shelter. The Portland shelters are working to clean up their breed categories, and I suspect you may want to as well.
Can we start here by agreeing on a category? What should we call this group of dogs?
Related links:
“Are We Hitting Our Target?”
“Barriers and Pit (bull) falls”
“I Am Not a Breedist”
Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland
Tags: GIS, Research, Research & Data, Saving Lives
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EmilyS Says:
whatever you call them, it should NOT be “pit bull” unless there’s reason to believe that the dog really is an APBT or AST (based on genuine expertise, not the typical ACO “check off the box for this appearance characteristic).
Otherwise it should be called what it IS: a mixed breed dog of unknown origin.
I don’t get this trend to call ANYTHING with short hair and a blocky head a “pit bull”.
How does it help the Lab or boxer mix to be labelled a “pit bull”? How does it help the REAL APBT if every Lab/boxer mix is called a “pit bull”?
Leslie Harris Says:
I should start by saying that our adoption center does not perform animal control functions and thus only rarely serves stray dogs. I should also say that the dog breed most at risk of homelessness in our community is a bully breed of some kind, usually called a pit bull. Because we almost always have our admission clients’ statements about what breeds our dogs are, if they say the dog is a pit bull, the dog is a pit bull. If they say he’s an Am Staff (and they don’t often bother getting all fancy because most of them bought their pitty with pride), we say he’s an Am Staff.
I see nothing wrong with labeling a pit bull a pit bull, (or a pit bull mix). But when it comes time to review our data looking for ways to keep pits out of our local animal shelters, we look for a variety of bully breeds to make sure we are being as accurate as possible. Why? Because in our community, an Am Staff will get treated the same as an American Bulldog or a Lab/Pit mix or a pit bull bought on the corner. In our community, a pit’s a pit. If we want to help them, we need to not quibble over semantics, but we do need good data. Calling a Lab/Pit mix a Lab mix might make a less astute adopter consider him more closely, but it makes him invisible in the system…meaning our prevention efforts in that dog’s neighborhood may be hindered. And that’s a loss for the other dogs who might be at risk.
Emily Says:
Usually Pit mixes… Not to stigmatize our dogs, but adopters need to be aware of what they’ll deal with when they adopt a bully breed. It may or may not have some sort of Pit Bull Terrier in its blood line, but as adoption counselors we owe it to the potential owners, and our pups to set them up for success.
I’d love to see the American Shelter Dog breed take off, but I think the ground work for that change begins outside of the shelter and it’s labeling of breeds. In today’s society, I think adopters really need to be made aware of what insurance companies, neighbors, landlords etc will label their mixed breed-if it looks pit, it’ll be called pit.
A broad spectrum breed title doesn’t begin with what we want to call the dogs. We have to educate others that you can’t judge a dog by his shape or markings…That breed characteristics aren’t all there is to a specific dog. Nuture/nature effects dogs just as well as it effects humans.
As far as for intake tracking purposes, I think our computer programs offer too many choices. And when an intake person is identifying a mixed breed, it’s really pretty subjective. There is no right or wrong unless you can DNA test them all! Perhaps changing the software programs to simpler, if catch-all categories… Bully breed-to encompass block head dogs; retriever-for our lanky labs and goldens; ankle biters for the well you know
DRO Says:
I was unable to convince anyone else at the agency I worked at (where I have seen the staff label Shar-Pei mixes, Mastiff/Rottweilers, Boston Terriers and mixes, even purebred American Bulldogs and many other dogs that were obviously NOT pit bulls to someone that has spent time around many breeds of dogs), but I favor the term “Bulldog-type” or “Bully-type.” When you are guessing heritage on mixed breeds by physical characteristics, and the characteristics you are referencing are shared by all of the Bull-type breeds (various “Bulldogs,” Boxers, ABPTs, ASTs, etc.), it makes sense to make the label inclusive. It has gotten so bad here that any dog with brindle coloring, for instance, is labeled a pit bull mix, even if it doesn’t have the traditional blocky head! In reality, this particular area has seen the introduction of true Pit Bulls and Staffies in relatively recent (last 5-10 years) history (and we are on an isolated island, so you can actually see those kinds of trends), whereas Rottweilers and Mastiffs have been part of the gene pool for longer. In my opinion, staff got caught in the “trendiness” of calling these dogs “pit bulls” and “pitties” after attending national animal control training and interacting with staff from areas that truly have large populations of these breeds and, essentially, copying their lingo. A review of the archives reinforced my opinion. I wonder how many ACOs and shelter staff around the country also just pick up the habit of labeling these types of dogs as “pit bulls” because it has been the trend for the last decade (at least)? The label certainly isn’t the most accurate or descriptive, in many cases.
Margaret T Says:
I don’t think that guessing at a dog’s heritage is setting up the dogs or the adopters for success. We breed label dogs because we think it is some sort of predictor of behavior. If we are GUESSING at the breed or breed-mix, we are only guessing at expected behavior, too. Who does that help? And, unless it is a verifiable pure bred dog, it is impossible to even begin to predict behavior based on guess at breed mix. The DNA that determines a dog’s physical appearance is only a very small percentage of a dog’s genetic composition.
What should we call them? DOGS.
If you want to help adopters, then tell them what you actually know about the dog (house trained, doesn’t like cats, likes dogs, treat motivated, etc) rather than guess at what might be.
Emily Weiss Says:
My post focused not on how we present the dog to those walking in our doors – although that is a fascinating subject for our shelter R&D dept – but instead how we track those dogs in our shelter software. It is vital that we track the animals in our shelters through as many data points as possible – from date of birth and address where found to breed type and size… as how can we possibly develop programs to better support those at risk if we can not identify the risk factors?
אילוף כלבים Says:
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It is very important to follow the dog, and with this way it is gonna be much easier.
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אילוף כלבים Says:
Finally the technology is offering us something that is really important and vital for our life and keeping safe of our pet dogs that we love so much!
thank you very much for the post!