Here in Chicago, it’s mostly dogs labeled as pit or pit-mixes and chihuahuas. I would estimate that at the city shelter, it’s probably like 60% pits, 20% chihuahuas, 20% all others. It’s similar at the Animal Welfare League down in Chicago Ridge (a shelter in the southwest suburbs), but the pits are all labeled as American Staffordshire terriers. In both cases, pits/AmStaffs and mixes make up the majority of the dogs on the adoption floor.
I pretty much acknowledged this in my first post. The point still stands that we have no idea of the genetic makeup of any of these dogs.
It’s pretty similar here. Any small dog will get snatched up within a couple of days. They don’t last long. Medium to large dogs (pits included) probably last on the floor an average of two to three months or so before being adopted, fostered, or going to a rescue. The pits go slower than the few labs I’ve seen around, but the medium-to-large dogs just in general stick around for awhile. (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a golden retriever or cocker spaniel there, but that may be because they are snatched up so quickly. Typically, it’s pits with the occasional American bulldog, some shepherds, a couple lab mixes, and one or two husky/malamutes. Even had a pit/dalmatian mix around a year ago. Cute dog that stood out from the rest, but even she was there for about three months or so.)
There is also a misconception that anyone can walk in, hand over some money, and get any dog they want. Even thought it’s a big city shelter in Chicago, about half the people applying to adopt a dog get rejected.
Of course not. We are going by phenotype, like everyone else except a very small number of people who verify registered pedigrees with DNA testing.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: Why are we even bothering to try and estimate percentages when there is virtually no identification process beyond throwing darts at a wall, blindfolded?
My mother runs a rescue shelter. (Or she used to, she just retired a couple of months ago) Where she lives, she’s only allowed to hold x amount of pit bulls (by law). In all her years of running that shelter, I don’t think she’s ever been below that number.
Where were pit bulls in the 1970s & 1980s? I know they existed, but it just flummoxes me that mere trend can cause such a huge rise in a given breed’s or phenotype’s population. Guess it happens, though.
FWIW, anecodtally, used to see a lot of people that owned German Shepherds, Rotweilers, and Dobermans about 25 or 30 years ago. Barely ever see these breeds anymore. Have pit-bull phenotype dogs overwhelmed this “tough dog” niche that thoroughly?
Um, I can tell a pit bull or a mostly pit bull on sight, as I can virtually all breeds that occur in the US with any regularity. Most average folks can tell at least ten or so breeds, and pit bull is usually one of them. After all, it is one of the most common breeds in the US. Why can’t I, or anyone else, tell pit bulls on sight? They are quite a distinctive breed. It is not random at all.
Pit bulls are medium-sized, have a very distinctive head shape and ear set, a slick coat, long tail set and carried low, and a muscular body. They don’t share all these exact traits with any other breed.
I am guessing that the reason you pose your question is a political one, not a common sense one. If half the dogs in shelters were Golden Retrievers, which we identify by their medium-large size, undistorted body type, retriever-shaped head and ear set and distinctive coat type and color, would you be asking this question?
I still see Shepherds around quite a bit, but not so much the Rotts and Dobermans. Growing up in my neighborhood, we had a reasonable mix of all those dogs and a couple pit bulls and malamutes. Now, if you have a medium-sized or larger dog in the neighborhood, I’d estimate that around 75% of them are pit bull-type dogs. I can’t think of a single doberman within a mile of my house, whereas when I was growing up in the 80s, they were probably the most popular guard-type dog.
And pit bulls and similar breeds are not just penetrating the “tough dog” niche, either. In my circle, at least, I’ve noticed a marked rise in their popularity as family dogs for college educated, middle class households, both urban and suburban.
We are talking about mixed breed dogs. The individual traits people associate with any one breed are often shared by many other breeds. In most cases, it is impossible to know which breeds contributed to a mutt.
If pits are overtaking shepherds in popularity, I’d suggest two reasons. First, they’re smaller which makes them cheaper to feed and puts them under house/apartment rental weight limits. Second, they have very short hair and therefore don’t shed much. There are two dogs in our household. One may be a pit mix, while mine looks like a half sized rottie with a pointier nose. My girl provides the household with most of its dog hair.
My own guess is that there’s two things going on in terms of their popularity. This is just my conjecture, so take it for what it’s worth, and this is my perspective as a resident in the city of Chicago, where pit bulls make up the bulk of the city shelter dogs.
First, they are the “tough dog du jour.” I’ve moved back to the same neighborhood I grew up in. It is an ethnic working class neighborhood. In my youth, it was mostly Polish. Now it’s mostly Mexican, although with a good bit of Polish left, and some Chinese starting the next wave. Where there used to be dobermans and rottweilers used as protective dogs, there are now mostly pit bull-type dogs. The shepherd population doesn’t seem to be much different–there’s still a good number around, and there were a good number around then, too.
Second, over the years there has been a social push to adopt shelter dogs vs. picking a dog up at the pet store. When I was a kid, I remember the pet store being where you got your dog. Now, almost all my friends with pet dogs have gotten them from a shelter. Also, there have been shows like Pit Bulls and Parolees and even The Dog Whisperer that have somewhat helped to clean up the popular (negative) image of pit bulls, so more people outside the “tough dog” demographic are considering them as viable pets. So, if you’re in Chicago and want to adopt a shelter dog, pitties are mostly what you have to pick from. There are, of course, breed-specific rescues you can adopt from, but the city shelter is going to be mostly pits.
In my hometown, shelters seem to be dominated by what I call American brown dogs - part Lab, part German Shepherd, part Rottweiler, part something else.
In Denver, it seems like more than half were Lab mixes of some sort. Since the City of Denver bans Pits, I doubt many are in area shelters.
Among the 20 dogs now at the no-kill shelter in my small Upstate New York town, there’s …
10 Lab/brown dog mixes
5 Pit mixes
4 Beagle/hound mixes
1 Husky mix
Growing up close to “the 'hood”, it seemed like each generation had their own breed of tough dog. As a kid, I used to see Dobermans everywhere in the ghetto. As my childhood neighborhood changed through the late 1980s and early 1990s, incoming residents far more often than not tended to have Rotties. Today, when I visit the block I grew up on, the only dogs I see are bully breeds.
Five to 10 years from now, rappers will probably be rocking Dogo Argentinos and Fila Brasileiros, shelters will full up shortly afterwards with “Argentine mix” dogs, and message boards will be busy with debate over bans and the “real temperament” of the breeds.
Breed identification can be debatable, and it’s true that many street pits are mixed (or just badly bred), but the pit bull is a type of dog rather than a breed per se, so I don’t think it’s nonsense to call a shelter dog a pit bull.
In my experience, a large number of the young people who see my dogs talk like they’re under the impression that there’s easy money to be made breeding pit bulls. And remember, some of them may have been too shy to bring it up, or had something else on their minds, so an even larger number of young people may actually believe it than have expressed that belief to me.
It seems likely to me that this perception of pits as a tax-free (assuming you don’t report it) source of ready cash may have a LOT to do with what we see in shelters these days.
Looking at my local municipal shelter’s currently 26 adoptable dogs, I see the following (counting crosses as 0.5 dog):
Pit bull 9
Labrador 0
German Shepherd .5
Chihuahua 3
Unknown Mix 0
Aus. Cattle Dog .5
Shar Pei .5
Korean Jindo .5
Border Collie .5
Generic Mastiff 1
Maltese 4
Beagle 1
Bull Terrier .5
? Schnauzer 1
Bichon Friese 1.5
Mini Poodle .5
Dalmatian 1
Whippet 1
Total 26
Just over 1/3 seem to be pit bulls.
Just a snapshot, of course. Suburban area. What stands out to my eye is not the prevalence of pit bulls and Chihuhuas (Chis are enormously popular right now; I’m not sure if that’s related to the influx of immigrants into the area, but it seems possible), but the total absence of Labs (Lab fans might say “no one dumps a Lab!” but it could just be a statistical fluke). I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Lab mix mislabeled as a pit bull (I’ve certainly seen the reverse!) but the pictures in question don’t look like misidentified Labs to me – just regular ol’ pits.
The absence of dogs described as generic mixes is less surprising, as they may have felt the need to append a breed guess to every dog.
There’s a relatively large Maltese population. Is that typical, or a spike? I don’t know.
I also would have expected to see more Border Collies (and other working breeds suburbanites are attracted to, but can’t keep actively employed) in the shelter.
It seemed like 3 out of every 4 adolpted dogs in the 90s were labeled lab-mixes. I’m surpried there are so few now, despite the fact that labs are still extremely popular.