Ah. Now, see, there’s the catch. How can we imagine this is true if the local shelter can’t even ID them accurately?
Secondly, there is a very real media bias regarding pit-dog attacks. See here Here And here
When a serious dog attack happens, the breed is often immediately mistakenly identified as a pit bull because screaming “pit bull attack!!!” headlines sell papers.
From the link:
The photo shows what appears to be a labrador on the end of a come-along. Another article reports that police officers were harmed in a “bizarre attack by a pit bull”. The accompanying photo shows a rottweiler. Other stories cited include a rhodiesian ridgeback, labs, boxers, mastiffs, and shepherd mixes all being misidentified in media reports as pit bulls. Also, one story where the headline reads “rabid dog” when the animal in question was a raccoon.
Stories involving, or being reported as involving pit bulls are told in dramatic language with a lot of hyperbole and speculation on mythic properties of pit bulls like “locking jaws” and “1800 psi jaw pressure”. When the attack involves another breed, the language is far more neutral and the breed is downplayed or often not mentioned at all.
They look at it and say “that’s a pit mix” if it’s got a short coat and semi-prick ears.
Furthermore, you say “they get more pit mixes”. Sure. I’ll say it again. If a larger percentage of random-bred dogs in the area are of pit-dog ancestry, then a larger percentage of the dogs that end up at the shelter will be of pit-dog ancestry. That’s just the way the numbers work. More of them exist, therefore more end up at the shelter.
Look, there’s nothing I’m going to say that’s going to even remotely budge your locked-in idea that pit bulls are maniac monster dogs that eat children, is there?
How about this? The American Temperament Test Society, an objective and comprehensive temperament test rates American Pit Bull Terriers at 84.1%. That’s better than German Shepherd Dogs, Rottweilers, Akitas, Bulldogs, American Bulldogs, Bullmastiffs, Cani Corsi, Bichons Frises and Miniature Poodles amongst a wide selection of other breeds.
I think the most puzzling thing for me is that nearly all the hysteria I hear about what maniac dogs pits are generally comes from people who just know what they “hear” and have no real working knowledge of truly aggressive dogs. I work with real serious dogs. I have met a few dogs and a few breeds that I am really in fear of my safety around. But generally speaking, pits are easy, soft dogs. I know you think that’s insane, but spend a little time around a working dog community. Pits are cupcakes.
Missed the edit window. I wanted to add that people who do sport or protection work (wherein you’re purposely training a dog to overcome bite inhibition and bite a person) in general don’t even consider pit dogs because their long history of hard selective breeding against human-aggressive traits makes them pretty much useless for this task.
All sorts of personality aspects can be intentionally or unintentionally bred into or out of dogs. To deny that dog breeds have distinct temperaments is kind of silly and shortsighted. There certainly ARE breeds which are more “vicious” than others, otherwise stuff like “The American Temperament Test Society” would be useless.
Being a miniature poodle owner myself, I can definitely vouch for the fact that they have an absolutely lousy attitude, and I’m not surprised that they’re near the bottom of the temperament rating scale.
The folks at the Anti Cruelty Society in Chicago are dedicated to finding dogs and cats new, loving homes. They are extremely professional. The battery of tests they run the dog through are standard ones used many places and have been developed over many years. As much as possible the dog is not tested in a stressful situation (being a new environment may stress the dog to some extent but by and large they keep external stresses to a minimum as best they can).
For food aggression the dog is not poked in the face at all. The hand on the stick goes for the bowl of food and tries to pull it away. I think you can see the wisdom in not having a real person stick their hand in there. Most dogs do not seem to mind it and just follow the bowl around. Some growl and threaten, some attack the hand.
Beyond this test are a variety of other tests. In the end I believe these tests are indeed a fair indicator of the aggression level of the dog in question. Also realize their goal is to adopt these dogs out, often into families with small children. They simply must be conscious of this and endeavor to assure the public that the dogs they adopt are suitable.
They also put a good deal of effort into rehabilitating problem dogs. Only the most incorrigible of dogs are given up on and it breaks their heart everytime it happens. Dogs that are semi-problematic are noted as such to the staff helping with adoption and those dogs will not be adopted out to inappropriate homes (e.g. homes with small children, homes where it is a first time dog owner, homes with other pets, etc.).
Now, I’ve never owned a pit, but I live in a very dog-friendly apartment building, so I’ve interacted with all sorts of breeds and their owners during that have come through the building. In my (totally anecdotal) experience, the pit bulls in the building and neighborhood never really showed aggression toward people; they mostly obeyed their owners and had decent manners. However, they did seem to be a lot more dog-aggressive than the average dog. It seemed that many more pit owners than average had to use the dog run solo or walk their dogs on the street, because they couldn’t be trusted not to fight with other dogs. My impression was that dogfighting breeds were bred for dog, not human aggression.
I could easily see a rescue placing a dog-aggressive pit in a family with no other dogs and having no problems, as long as the dog is controlled. Also, remember that someone willing and able (I’m assuming they aren’t homing these dogs to just anyone) to take on a rescued fighting dog is going to be light-years from an average owner in their ability to recognize and eliminate potential problems before an attack occurs.
Curious: do they claim the dog is dangerous is if tries to stop the hand but doesn’t jump to attack it? And if it does stop or attack the hand, so what? Frankly, if smeone tried to just grab my food, I’d beat the snot out of them, too.
Likewise, if they tease a dog with a doll, and the dog bites it, then what? I know many dogs who’d consider something small and brightly colored (which whatever colors they see) to be quite a great chew toy.
Anyway, in closing I’d like to say that the most vicious breeds I’ve seen are the small ones. They tend to run wild and nip because owners consider such behavior “cute,” at least until they chew up something the owner cares about. But no one bothers reporting a chow-chow as a dangerous animal if it growls and bites you.
There are no black and white answers in these evaluations. The tests are administered by vets or volunteers trained to do so. They need a good background in understanding canine behavior and have good observation skills.
The tests, as I mentioned, run through a variety of things. Initially it is just observation of the dog to see how it is responding on its own and also how it responds to the presence of the tester (is it shy, does it solicit attention on its own and so on). Then they will pet the dog. At first in non-threatening ways and then progress to areas that may be more problematic (head for instance).
They then try physical restraints. How does the dog respond to a leash?
The doll is more a play/prey response. How fast does the dog engage in play? How quickly does the dog ramp up its response to play? Does it move to more aggressive play? How fast does the dog calm down after play has ceased?
The food aggression test is in there somewhere too. Some dogs do not seem to care. Some will growl a little but leave it at that. Some will display their displeasure very noticeably and some will outright attack the hand.
Anyway, the point being is there is a continuum here. These are not yes/no tests. The whole dog is looked at and evaluated.
This seems backwards to me, for two reasons. First, they test individual dogs, not breeds. And second, if the temperament could be determined by identifying the breed, there would be no need for a test.
All dogs are capable of all dog behavior. No dog under the control of a responsible owner has ever harmed anyone (excluding guard dogs, military dogs, etc.)
You’re too dominant and/or aggressive to be a good family pet.
But you also presumably have the intelligence to realize, if someone is reaching their hand near your plate, that they’re probably just trying to get the salt shaker or straighten the tablecloth or wipe up some crumbs or something, and you wouldn’t beat the snot out of them in that case- you know that people generally aren’t going to snatch your plate away while you’re eating. A food-aggressive dog doesn’t necessarily know that a kid reaching down for something near its dish isn’t going after its food. The one that bit me didn’t see the ball (that I had been using to play fetch with it) next to its food dish and reason that I was reaching for that instead of its food.
I’ve read that a pit-bull dog, a breed which was considered as always mean, was the type of dog used in the old “Our Gang”/“Little Rascals” shows. The dog in that show was so nice and gentle that the word “mean” never entered into consideration.
Well…making assumptions based upon breed is certainly doable as long as you realize that it is more a guideline than a rule.
Temperament can be judged to an extent by breed. Certainly any dog can be a good dog and any dog can be a vicious bastard. That said some dogs, due to breeding, tend to be closer to “vicious bastard” than another breed may me. Think of it more as a disposition to certain behavior. Training and socialization can by all means modify a lot of that and a good owner should understand their breed and account for their unique requirements.
OK, anecdotes. I’ve got a few. For starters, I’ve never met a mean Rotweiler. My daughter used to play with the one next door with nary a problem. Mind you, the thing was poorly trained and would knock someone down trying to get them to play, but never a bite or a growl.
On the subject of the hand and the food dish. My last dog was a mix of Husky and St. Bernard and looked like an enormous, brown wolf, main and all. Our neighbor’s little girl (about 3 years or so) crawled away once and got in the kitchen where the dog was eating. She grabbed his food bowl and pushed it around, dumped out the food and generally made a mess. I can’t prove it but have a suspicion she ate some as well. :eek:
The dog just followed his food bowl around and tried to eat whenever she would let him.
I’ve always owned large dogs (Bull Mastiff, GSDs, and the aforementioned brute.) as I like their temperament but I have never had one that would growl or snap over food. My own belief is that this is a learned behavior when a dog is a pup and people tease it with food. The dog learns to snap or the food is gone. I never let kids (or asshole adults) tease the dog with food.
I’m certainly no professional dog trainer and would love to hear whether this behavior is learned in instinctive in dogs. I have had a sample of four dogs that would allow you to take food from their mouths without any grief at all. Little kids could also feed them treats or whatever without risking their fingers.
Lots of them. In my time at the Anti Cruelty Society we had many problem dogs come through and by no means were all large or “mean” breeds. A Beagle and a Maltese that could not be rehabilitated particularly stand out for me (there were others but for some reason I recall those two).
Another dog came in, mixed breed, around 35-40 pounds, which had been horribly mistreated and required a good deal of health care. That dog, for some reason, was incredibly lovable despite all that.
As the other poster noted I personally have never met a mean Rottweiler. Every one I have known, I have known well over a dozen very well and run into many more, were big babies and not a mean bone in their body. One I knew was a particularly huge male and quite powerful. Bubbles and balloons flipped him out and he’d run like a baby. Dunno why but it was humorous to see this brute of a dog run from soap bubbles.
I have great personal experience with German Shepherd Dogs. All save one have been perfect canine citizens (my brother-in-law had a rather dodgy GSD). Again as the previous poster noted I (or others) could take food right out of their mouth and they wouldn’t blink. My brother when he was a toddler had a habit of sticking is hand and arm in our GSD’s mouth. She could have removed that arm…she never hurt him in the slightest or even showed the slightest aggression towards him. Not ever. Not even a hint.
As for food aggression in dogs I think being protective of their food is somewhat of a default stance for all dogs (in the wild you need to be aggressive to get your share). My guess, and I do not know, is dogs who either have not been fed in a regular fashion or have had to compete for their food may go this way. For a dog (like mine) who get very regular meals and some treats here and there worrying about their food never occurs to them. If someone messes with their food they do not really care because they have never had a reason for concern. Just a guess though.
Oddly, the worst-scoring dog (with more than 20 tested) was:
BEARDED COLLIE
45 specimens tested,
24 passed,
21 failed, for a pass rate of 53.3%
Has anyone ever heard of a Bearded Collie attack?
My candidate for nutjob dog is the Chow. I’ve heard too many anecdotes, including one involving my mom, who has been a well-practiced dog owner since nearly birth…
From what I’ve heard, food aggression is often a dominance issue. Dogs naturally live in packs, with an alpha dog at the head of the pack. You, as dog owner, are supposed to take on that position as alpha dog- if you don’t, the dog will, and then you’re in trouble. In a pack, the alpha can take away food from animals that are submissive to it. A dog not letting you do that shows that it does not consider itself submissive to you.
I’d believe that some dogs are food-aggressive not out of dominance but because kids or asshole adults teased them with food. The dog that bit me had a history of that sort of teasing.
I’m told that in Britain they’re sometimes called “nanny dogs” because they’re so gentle with children.
Time for my anecdote: my huge pit bull has been attacked twice by off-leash dogs. Both times, his response was to come sit between my legs and comfort me as I caught my breath.
One of the attackers was a totally unsupervised German Shepherd (I think he was out for a joy run, but he scared the daylights out of me). He didn’t do much damage but he did leave a big scratch. The other was an incredibly dog-aggressive little Korean hunting dog thing that should NEVER be permitted off leash, he bolted towards us as soon as he saw us and wasted no time in attacking my (leashed and muzzled) dog, whose head alone probably weighs half as much as that little yapping POS.
Yet if my dog had engaged him in that unprovoked scrap (instead of sitting on my feet), it is my pittie that would have been put down. Jimbo came home with several cuts on his back (tooth or claw, I wasn’t sure). No vet attention was required but I called animal control to report it anyway (to get some non-pit bull mix attacks on the record!) but they weren’t interested.
