w w w .psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201906/dog-breeds-pose-the-highest-risk-hurting-children?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost&fbclid=IwAR3b9eNnBnSXR_gLt9OWeIRDbb3tLcmHQW69ZUVl_2yim7k33E_k6niEWrM

I couldn't get that to come up, so I googled psychology today dog bite study. I got one about the highest risk to children, so I think it is the same study you are trying to share.

The trouble with that study, and any dog bite study using statistics about dog bites, is the the breed of the dog that did the biting is often misidentified.

I worked in animal control and we had to identify any dog with stand up ears as a German shepherd. In the year I worked there, we reported hundreds of bites by German shepherds when in reality, there were only two actual German shepherd bites, one of them righteous and the other was justified from a dog's point of view.

The other several hundred dog bites reported as German shepherd bites were done by mixed breed dogs with no German Shepherd in them.

We could not report a biting dog as mixed breed. It had to be reported as a pure breed of dog.

The study was more about the size and shape of the head of the dogs who bit, and the severity of the bites, rather than the actual breed as that could not always be determined.

From the article:

"Dr. Essig recognized that there was a major problem with these data, "because mixed breed dogs account for a significant portion of dog bites, and we often didn’t know what type of dog was involved in these incidents, we looked at additional factors that may help predict bite tendency when breed is unknown like weight and head shape."

The head shape measures looked at the ratio of the maximum skull width compared to the maximum skull length and were used to characterize dogs of known and unknown breeds in order to organize them into three groups: brachycephalic, mesocephalic, and dolichocephalic.

Specifically, dolichocephalic dogs have longer heads, such as the Afghan hound and the Greyhound, where the length of the skull is greater than the width.

Brachycephalic dogs have shorter heads and flatter faces, such as the pug, bulldog, and some pit bulls, where the width of the skull is greater than the length.

Mesocephalic dogs have heads that are more balanced since the measurement of skull width and length is relatively equal. These include dogs such as Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers, Siberian Huskies, and so forth.

I like to meet my potential tenants pets to see if they are friendly before doing a background check. On several occasions that wasn't possible.

I don't always, but my preference is to screen dogs PERSONALLY. Is the dog (or other animal) friendly to ME?

I met a new dog just this week. Very friendly to me.