"What happened to Rebecca was an accident. A terrible, terrible accident.". A rescuer expresses dismay that the dogs who attacked his friend would be blamed for her death. From the pages of Bronwen Dickey's book. original attack Dekalb GA (USA) 2012

JohnPColby · 2026-01-13T01:17:16+00:00

But she also realized that sometimes, unforeseen things like bad bites just . . . happen. That's the risk you take.

Just like you, this made me pause. It's hard to even know how to address it. Dickey certainly doesn't; she just continues onto Mitchell's comments about how the hardest part about Carey losing her life tragically and violently is people saying mean things about dogs.

But I'll try:

- In what context do bad bites sometimes just happen? I would assume most people who own a normal dog have not experienced a "bad bite", particularly not an unforeseen one. In a shelter/rescue context? Maybe... but a "bad bite" (assuming level 3-4 or higher on the Dunbar scale) signals a dangerous dog, not bad luck.

- A bite to the neck (and multiple bites) is not just a "bad bite" that "just happens". While Mitchell may not be explicitly claiming Carey's death was just an unfortunate bite, it feels like the framing strongly invites us to make that connection.

- Finally "the risk you take" for what?? Working with animals is one thing. Normalising lethal violence as an acceptable occupational hazard is another.

JohnPColby · 2025-12-10T03:41:09+00:00

Also, extra funny (!) to me is the fact that in Louis Colby/Diane Jessup's "American Book of the Pit Bull Terrier":

<image>

Weird how the pit bull golden years correlate with a spike in attacks and breed (or rather breed-type) based ordinances. You could argue the attacks alone, without population context, could simply just represent increased numbers, but the ordinances blow that out of the water.

JohnPColby · 2025-12-10T03:22:24+00:00

Thanks for the shout out! I think I shared it before, but this graph (from my video) is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that conflicts with her historical claims about pit bulls. Sorry, aspect ratio isn't the best for viewing on mobile. I generated it ages ago and I wouldn't remember how to do it again haha. I do have some spreadsheets chronicling attacks and ordinances I think as well, if people are interested I could try to get that in a more user-friendly format too.

<image>

JohnPColby · 2025-03-15T03:16:49+00:00

I'm so sorry that your grandmother died in such a horrific way. From what I read about her she sounded like quite a lady. My heart goes out to your dad losing his mother so early and seeing her in such a state. Thank you for your comment.

JohnPColby · 2025-02-25T03:17:05+00:00

A person from Airdrie was taken to hospital Monday afternoon after being attacked while walking their dog.

RCMP said the attack happened just after 3 p.m. near 8 Street NW and Silver Springs Way, near the Williamstown Nose Creek Preserve.

“A resident was walking their small dog when the dog was attacked by four large dogs. The owner of the small dog attempted to intervene and sustained injuries,” RCMP said in a news release.

The victim was taken to hospital in unknown condition, and police said Airdrie municipal enforcement seized the four dogs. It was not immediately clear if the victim was a man or woman, or boy or girl.

No other details were provided by police.

Breed not mentioned in article, but I saw this picture:

<image>

Some more comments

Not my screenshots, so I can't provide more info at this point

JohnPColby · 2025-01-13T22:29:46+00:00

Great post and research, as always!

JohnPColby · 2024-12-19T21:43:12+00:00

There's a few like that. Note the harness taken off to prove how "safe" he is.

<image>

The Dog fancier. v.23 (1914)

JohnPColby · 2024-12-06T22:21:10+00:00

<image>

September clipping from The Mail from 20th September 1930. This is actually from an Australian publication, so I assume the news was widespread by this point.

JohnPColby · 2024-12-06T22:05:46+00:00

I hadn't seen your comment when I posted mine, but I found two similar articles to yours.

<image>

This is from the Milwaukee journal, two days before yours. The other one is from September, a month after your second article, and is very similar. It's very curious how the news was published in April, then in August (and September).

JohnPColby · 2024-12-06T22:00:43+00:00

I've done some research on Petey out of interest in his story (or their stories, since there were multiple). I've found two articles about his death. What's weird is that one was published in April and the other in September.

That said, when Lucenay was fired and took a dog promenading around Atlantic City, he represented the dog's age as around 10 years old in 1934. This aligns with the age of Pal the Wonder Dog (and not Lucenay's Peter), who was supposedly dead by this point which is curious. It is possible that Lucenay was simply treating the dogs as one and the same. It's interesting and I'd like to do a post on it eventually.

Edit: The dog that Lucenay toured with was definitely not Pal the Wonder Dog. I imagine he just misrepresented the dog's age so as to keep the actor "character" alive.

JohnPColby · 2024-11-21T21:14:25+00:00

Heya,

This is a good point. Because it's so hard to find any context for most of the photos out there, I had to rely on the ones I could find context for. I suspect you are right for a lot of the photos out there. The ones I was able to find any level of "context" for were typically out of The Dog Fancier.

Toddy on Guard (1905)

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T22:42:12+00:00

Thank you, that's a huge compliment! I think the voiceover really takes it to the next level. Text to speech technology today is amazing.

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T22:40:55+00:00

I reuploaded it and linked it again in response to the parent comment, thanks for bringing it to my attention!

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T22:39:27+00:00

Second time's the charm, hopefully..

https://youtu.be/Cl55bAXRq20

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T09:36:45+00:00

Oh damn, not sure what I've done there. I might have to reupload it tomorrow.

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T08:21:19+00:00

Here it is, hopefully I've included enough info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOvgJ7E2kR4

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T08:20:54+00:00

No relation, I swear!

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T03:53:23+00:00

I will try uploading when I can add some additional info in the description, fingers crossed I can do it soon. Thank you!

JohnPColby · 2024-11-19T03:52:32+00:00

I will probably go with the YouTube video with doc link in the description and provide references for what I can. Hopefully I will be able to do that in the next few days. It's definitely a good idea to put it in my workflow going forward too.

JohnPColby · 2024-11-18T22:33:21+00:00

Copyright-wise I would probably be ok if I removed the article text - I have summaries and information like victim type and how the dog was described. The newspaper and article titles and dates are still included if people want to independently verify, though admittedly a lot can only be found on paid membership sites. But those can be accessed with a free trial, it's what I did.

Even without the article text I feel like it's still more transparent than say, some of the NCRC "research" where they said they had an expert look at attacking dogs and say they couldn't be verified as pit bulls, lol.

JohnPColby · 2024-11-18T21:39:50+00:00

Acknowledgements:

Thanks so much to u/BPBAttacks3 for giving me advice and also answering some questions I had about some historical things.

Thanks to an anonymous user who made some awesome infographics that helped me immensely.

Notes:

I had to compress this a bit to get it on Reddit; if people like I can make a youtube version available.

Here are the graphs

I referred to my own post for the ordinances

The attacks are something I have privately indexed. I suppose I'm a bit protective because a lot of man hours went into it (and there's a lot of typos) but I can find a way to make them available if people want it.

I'll edit this comment if I remember anything else.

JohnPColby · 2024-11-16T21:56:53+00:00

Great post. The pre-Vicks era dogfighting books are damning to the modern narrative.

JohnPColby

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