Jack writes:

John, you haven't answered any
of my questions. For example, how
many times would she need to be
wrong before it would qualify as
a very, very bad decision?

That's a question only a complete
moron would even ask. I was politely
ignoring it.

How many times would you have to
be wrong for it to qualify as a very,
very bad decision to go outside
during a meteor shower?

Once, obviously.

But obviously, the REAL question is
what is the likelihood that you WOULD
be wrong, ie struck by a meteor during
a meteor shower?

The answer is not zero, but it's close
enough to zero to count as zero in
everybody's risk calculations.

Now, what are the chances that
someone highly familiar with the
body language of a breed well
understood (by those who in fact
UNDERSTAND them, anyway) to
be highly trusting and accepting
of strangers would stumble
into a truly bad situation in the
sort of context that Kelly describes?

Not as low as getting hit by a mteor,
but low enough to make your initiial
response look just plain ignorant.

Let me count the ways that she was wrong:

1. Taking an at least somewhat risky chance,
and one which was totally unnecessary.

My response, which I should have made
clearer earlier, was strictly about the
basic riskiness versus lack of risk of
a Pit Bull savvy individual approaching
a Pit Bull who is giving off the right
vibes. If this were anywhere near as
dangerous as the thread catastrophizers
seem to feel, the Pit Bull rescue community,
whose members regularly interact with
shelter Pit Bulls of unknown history,
pick the buggers up off the street all
the time, handle them closely precisely
to guage temperament, etc, etc would
have long since been decimated by
all the unfamiliar dogs approached and
handled over the years. In fact, I'm
one of the relatively few members
of the club who have ever been
bitten by a Pit Bull, and I made it
clean from the early nineties to
last week, when I was bitten not by
an unfamiliar dog giving off misleadingly
good vibes, but by a dog I was handling
only because I don't let anyone else
handle this known JERK of a dog.

As I admittedly belatedly noted, I
agree that Kelly's move was unnecessary
and I admit that I clouded the issues
needlessly by not making it clearer
how narrowly focussed my response to
the responses was meant to be.

2. Leading with her face(!)

Yes. No argument there.

3. Showing an utter lack of
consideration for the dog's owner

If this had clearly been made the
focus of the criticism, I would have
joined the chorus. But everyone either
said or refused to make clear that they
were NOT saying that what Kelly did
was highly risky, citing the behavior
of dogs they choose to own who I
strongly suspect that Kelly never
would have approached in the same
way.

JohnR
Pit Bull Libertarian

Never sneer at the power of a little
pink squeaky toy!