Assessing Credibility

Here are two articles' summary that were part of my collection that I feel you will enjoy too. . .

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Aggressive behaviour is affected by demographic, environmental and behavioural factors in purebred dogs is the first article that I picked. I decided to go with this article because I am interested to see the correlation the author makes between aggressive behavior and how external factors contribute to it. While the study was conducted among Finnish dogs, the study did produce interesting results that hit vital factors such as age and gender. In the study, it was concluded that older dogs do have a higher aggressive rate, but that’s not all encompassing. Additionally, it was found that smaller dogs (non-specific in breed) were scaled as having higher aggression compared to medium and large dogs. When it came to environmental factors, it was concluded that dogs that lived in single dog homes, first-time dog owners, and fearfulness all had a large role in their aggression. Interestedly, they state that a lot of aggressive behavior stems from fearfulness. From there, they were categorized into three groups (high, moderate, andlow) and were grouped as “high” if they showed fear towards strangers or other dogs around 50 percent of the time. They even went further to observe the size groups based on the AKC standards that were available at that time. As for the origin of the data for there search, all data was not conducted around humans, solely cancines, and collected by volunteer participants and done so before their GDPR regulation was implemented(Mikkola et al., 2021).

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To build on the notation of human interaction and their role, I chose the article Punishment to Support: The Need to Align Animal Control Enforcement with the Human Social Justice Movement. This article discussed the need to have policies reformed and the harm that could result within the socially disadvantaged, low-income communities.The author made some some striking human social agencies and/ or means of reformationand assistance that made me ask the question, “why isn’t this happening for pit bulls and bullies?”. For example, the author speaks upon human welfare, e.g. moving away from zero-tolerance policy but this isn’t always beneficial. My son was threatened he was going to be stabbed by someone that has been harassing him and his brother for the past two years. But because of the new progressive views being taken, the zero-tolerance policy is absent and, in fact, every school year, “troubled” students get their “record” reset and start the new school year with a clean start. I know – crazy. But if this if this is the case why is society not doing the same for animal welfare? Instead of hearing the vast majority of animal bites being from a specific breed or breed-like dog, why not create animal social support systems (e.g. education outlets). One point that I like within the article is that it speaks upon the individual level and broad community level of possible options to implement or extend upon. Overall, the fundamental point that the author tries to express is that there is a need to shift away from punishment and towards supporting into services that will help, not hurt, our fur babies (Hawes et al., 2020).

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SOURCES

Hawes, S. M., Hupe, T., & Morris, K. N. (2020, October 16). Punishment to support: The need

to align animal control enforcement with the human social justice movement.

MDPI.Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://www.mdpi.com/2076-

2615/10/10/1902#cite.Mikkola, S., Salonen, M., Puurunen, J., Hakanen, E., Sulkama, S.,

Araujo, C., & Lohi, H. (2021).Aggressive behaviour is affected by demographic,

environmental and behavioural factors in Purebred Dogs. Scientific Reports, 11(1).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88793-