Articles on the American Temperament Society that Reference BSL

http://www.atts.org/ is where you can find out information on the ATTS test.

Stop BSL's Article which mentions ATTS

Dog Bite Org's Article which talks about ATTS

Rios Pitbull Article-Last Article Mentions Temperament Test in Types of Testing (also info on types of aggression, the people that developed temperament tests)

ASWA Newsletter With Article (scroll down) On Someone's Actual Experience With the Test I found it interesting that this person reported that the scoring is 0-10. If you get no zeros, you pass the test. I don't know if I would find that particularly relevant, unless I saw the actual score of the dog (or I should say average cumlative score of the dogs), and not just whether they passed or failed!!

Jim Engel's Article on ATTS-He talks a lot about the concerns that I have, and was one of the earlier supporters of the test. He also talks about the history of the test.

ATTS discussed as an alternative to other more concerning temperament tests.

Here are the initial concerns that I had about the test being used now as a general public temperament in an attempt to fight BSL or assume insurance companies can/will use this information wisely in the future:

1. If failed, it puts the blame on the dog and NOT other contributing factors. Worse yet, it puts the blame on the breed.
2. A test where you can only fail by getting a zero on a 0-10 scale does not impress me. I also don't like pass/fail tests. I used to take those in college to get the credit, and not need to worry about the grade.
3. The statistics provided to the public, and if this same breakdown is all that is provided to insurance companies is way too vague. I would really prefer it more if information such as whether the dog had previous training, the total of the test score, and other information was provided.

I hope you find these articles as informative as I did. I tried to provide every view that I could find without biase. I don't even know that I have a biase, what I do have is a thought process and need to know whether I am truly furthering something or hurting something now or in the future before following the herd.


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