Originally Posted by
urbanknight
Maybe I'm not clear on your argument then. Large dogs have a higher potential for damage so they should not be allowed to exist? Humans can cause more harm than any dog, as can be seen by your father and his gun. Please rephrase your point.
My experience is that no one thing is effective against all dogs. They have their own personalities and therefore different things work with different dogs. I can tell you that my dog loves to "attack" anything that makes a high pitched, electronic noise. I suppose the good thing in that case is he'd bite your Dazer instead of you, but it wouldn't really work as a repellent.
Restate: Hmmmm... Not larger dogs, just dogs that have a tendency to attack. While a lab might chase you, would it attack, not likely. If a rot chases you, would it attack, not sure but the statistics prove that it is much more likley that it will? It is not about large vs small as much as the nature of the dog and/or how it was trained. Even it a small dog is trained to attack, it is unlikely to do anywhere near the damage of a larger dog.
Here is a quote from here that I think states my point better than I can.
http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html
Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, has conducted an unusually detailed study of dog bites from 1982 to the present. (Clifton, Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, September 1982 to November 13, 2006; click here to read it.) The Clifton study show the number of serious canine-inflicted injuries by breed. The author's observations about the breeds and generally how to deal with the dangerous dog problem are enlightening.
According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon children, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings. In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question. Clifton states:
If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed--and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.
Clifton's opinions are as interesting as his statistics. For example, he says, "Pit bulls and Rottweilers are accordingly dogs who not only must be handled with special precautions, but also must be regulated with special requirements appropriate to the risk they may pose to the public and other animals, if they are to be kept at all."
Also, that bold section is one of the scarier parts.