I don’t know what the actual statistics are, but I feel safe in saying I am far more concerned about being attacked or killed by another human being than any dog. And indeed there are countless acts of heroism performed by dogs who have saved the lives of many humans, with a level of selflessness most of us humans could only hope to display.
Rottie attack in October doesn’t count?
No true maulings.
The statistic is that every dog mauling/death I’ve heard about involved a Pit bull. The statistic is that every owner I’ve come across has had to have the dog destroyed. That’s what I’ve learned in 50+ years.
If you don’t like what I’ve experienced I don’t care. Seriously, I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINION. I know what I’ve seen, and the people who didn’t listen to me had to suffer for it. Live your life how ever you see fit and adopt 100 pit bulls. Nothing would make me happier.
This is General Questions. The facts are that people are awful and identifying dog breeds, and the press generally over reports pit bull attacks or misidentifies the breeds. Your 50+ years of personal observations are relevant, but not determinative. What statistics we have don’t support your general observations.
That attack was more than one dog. Any breed in pairs or larger group can obviously be potentially dangerous. Sorry I was not clearer. I was thinking fatalities when I wrote ‘attacks’, my bad.
But I think my point still stands, when those who love the animal, and know it best cannot predict it’s behaviour, as is clearly the case with every stunned owner of a dog that has attacked who later appears on the news, then I believe the state is justified in enacting legislation to protect the vulnerable.
Given the choice between: owners who can’t get one particular breed of dog, and no more innocents maimed or killed, well, I think for most people it’s a no brainier. The province doesn’t seem to suffer any consequences from the ban, whereas children ARE safer!
Researcher and author Karen Delise has written two excellent and heavily-cited books about the statistics behind dog bites.
http://www.fataldogattacks.com/
In a nutshell, what she found was that breed (Rottweiler, pit bull, Chow, etc) was really not the determining factor in whether a dog would bite. The determining factor was owner characteristics - and these sorry-assed owners disproportionately tend to own high-drive dogs.
In other words, almost without exception, strong, high-prey drive dogs were disproprtionately owned by people who:
Never socialised the dogs as pups.
Never did one iota of formal training.
Did not exercise their dogs off their property.
Disproportionately owned intact, chained-up dogs - that over months and years of being chained up and given zero opportunity to learn how to be properly social dogs, are practically insane with frustration and pent-up energy, so when they escape or have opportunity, tend to behave very aggressively.
Owners of such dogs were disproportionately low-income, in high crime neighborhoods, and furthermore did not get routine veterinary attention and/or grooming for their dogs.
The millions of people who own pit bulls, Rottweilers etc who train, socialize, work and compete with them were and are utterly absent from the bite/mauling statistics. ** elbows** I maintain that whatever owners you saw who claimed that they had no! idea! their dog could do such a thing, and “it just snapped!” are by definition, clueless.
As a long-time Rottweiler owner and frequent pit/pit mix foster home, I am more than willing to acknowledge that high drive, strong dogs (regardless of breed) need extra-responsible, savvy owners. Because yes, with dogs like this (regardless of breed) there is potential risk with your average owner who wants a coffee-table dog.
And, what Telemark said. The statistics are skewed because a: the general public as well as veterinarians and animal control officials are not much better than the average Joe at determining dog breeds, and b: anything that might be, or might be a pit bull mix, or looks vaguely bully-dog-ish, is invariably reported as a pit bull in news stories or reports.
Absolutely, pit bulls are over-represented in dog bite and fatalities, but it is NOT because of an inherent issue with the breed. It is ALL about an overabundance of idiot and ignorant owners.
I have lived for almost 30 years with “killer” :rolleyes: Rottweilers. I have fostered about a dozen pits/mixes. I have professionally trained dogs, and put CH titles on a few. And I work in people’s homes for my IRL job, often around hinky dogs. My only animal-related injury in over 30 years? A cat that attacked me out of then blue and shredded the shit out of my leg, causing a really nasty infection.
And dogs that have bitten or attempted to bite me - despite living with Rottweilers and having extensive experience with pit bulls and dogs in general: Maltese, miniature Schnauzer. toy poodle (more than one), Australian shepherd, German shepherd, Daschund (more than one), Husky.
I haven’t seen any evidence that this is true. Breed based bans don’t have evidence to support that they are effective at reducing dog attacks. There may be many other factors that have reduced dog attacks (better enforcement, higher awareness), it may simply be poor reporting/tracking, or the number of attacks is so low that any change can be attributed to random chance.
And has been said multiple times in every pit bull thread, irresponsible owners who want untrained and anti-social dogs simply move on to a new chic breed like they have in the past. The actual breed of dog doesn’t really matter; most 40+ lbs dogs can become dangerous if treated and trained improperly.
As is obvious from my previous post I think breed specific bans are ll-advised and agree that the dangerous owner will just switch to another breed that has the potential to be a dangerous dog. A well socialized and well trained Pit is no bigger risk than a well trained and socialized St Bernard or a Huskie.
But that does not mean that some dogs are not more easily made into dangerous dogs than others. And that is not only a feature of size and jaw strength. It is much easier to make some dogs aggressive than others; breeds do have predispositions to certain temperaments. My greyhounds have a predisposition to chase after small fast furry things, for example.
Are Pits, compared to other dogs of their size and jaw strength, more easily made into dangerous animals? Does it take more effort to adequately train and socialize a Pit as a family pet in a chaotic household, than it does to adequately train and socialize, say, a St. Bernard?
More than many, yes.
The problem is almost no study I’ve ever seen (I’m an owner of dogs, grew up with a mother who was a show breeder and am still will acquainted with many people in that world) really does very much to verify what the breed was. Most injury reports, if the dog resembles a pit bull then it gets written down as a pit bull.
In the dog breeding world there are three American bred dog breeds that will generally be accepted by most as falling under the vague and non-specific term “pit bull.” The UKC registerable American Pit Bull Terrier, and the AKC American Staffordshire Terrier and Staffordshire Bull Terrier breeds.
In addition to that a large number of breeds will be called pit bulls when they bite someone including but not limited to: Old English Bulldogs, American Bulldogs, Boxers, all are commonly confused for pit bulls by ignorant people. Now also, believe it or not a large number of dog breeds that bear almost no superficial resemblance to the actual breeds commonly called pit bulls, are commonly called pit bulls when involved in a biting incident, including: rottweilers and doberman pinschers.
So the truth is statistics on pit bulls are almost pointless.
What is worth knowing is this, any large dog can kill a person in the right circumstances. Any dog through mistreatment can become dangerous and violent. Any dog can be born with some defect that makes them untrainable and dangerous (this is extremely rare, but I’ve ran into it a few times in my life that a dog from good pedigree is just not able to adapt to being a pet, this is rare because dogs have basically evolved for about 20,000 years to be human companions, if not longer.)
Any restrictions by breed are highly faulty because for one it is very difficult to determine a breed if it’s not a registered dog with a known pedigree. Incidentally dog owners who buy from professional breeders who maintain such information are unlikely to have dogs involved in biting incidents, a lot of pit bulls will be bought from puppy mills or backyard breeders who are probably just throwing random dogs together that “look like a pit bull” and selling them as purebred pit bulls. Thus it’s highly unlikely these dogs can easily be generalized about, as without a breed standard you do not know what traits they were bred for or anything of that nature.
Sure, but there are hundreds of breeds. In truth the three American breeds I mentioned (American Pit Bull Terrier (UKC), American Staffordshire Terrior (AKC), and Staffordshire Bull Terrier (AKC)) all have a temperament in the breed standard that says they should be “people-pleasing” type dogs. Dogs of this type are generally some of the easiest to train.
The hardest dogs to train are more aloof breeds, which often correspond to traditional breeds that were used to guard farms and livestock without much human interaction. An example is the Komondor, a livestock guard dog that properly raised will be very friendly to family but are not really ever fully trustworthy around strangers, and never safe for strangers to approach by themselves. Chow Chows have a similar disposition, and are not great around strangers.
Both of those breeds I just mentioned are naturally a lot harder to handle, more likely to be aggressive to random people, and very large and very strong (the Komondor is much larger than an average pit bull and the Chow Chow is about the same size.) Note, I’ve known great, lovable Chow Chows and they are delightful dogs when well socialized, but I’m talking about trends, inherent breed temperament and the average animal from the breed.
Another type of dog more likely to be dangerous to humans are sled dogs, Husky type breeds have strongly independent temperaments and improperly socialized (and they require a lot of work) they will be much more likely to be dangerous than your standard of the pit bull type.
Basically any dog bred for guarding livestock or homes, or for independence or strong will will almost always be more likely to have bad behaviors in the hands of the average dog owner than dogs not bred for those characteristics.
Pit bulls usually need to be abused to become aggressive, most of the above breeds I mentioned will become aggressive just due to a lackluster or absentee owner, left to their own devices and not mistreated the three pit bull breeds are actually less likely to become dangerous than many other breeds.
Thank you. I for one have now had my ignorance reduced a few notches.
As far as I’ve observed any mixed pit-bull has held the same characteristics which include a zero-to-crazy time of less than a second, a continuation of the behavior once started, and the ability to do a lot of damage as a result of the first 2 characteristics and relatively strong jaw muscles. So I’m not buying into the “it’s not a pit bull” argument because newscasters don’t always get it right. Almost any dog will snap at someone or another dog from time to time. This is not why pit bulls are dangerous. They’re dangerous because when they do attack it starts on 11 (on a scale from 1 to 10) and it doesn’t stop. Most other breeds will back off when they snap at someone or another dog.
Trying to pass off these genetic characteristics as the fault of humans is an excuse that doesn’t apply to the majority of other breeds. So I call shenanigans on the research. There are plenty of other breeds owned by hilljack assholes who don’t go berserk at the drop of a hat. Different breeds have different characteristics and it’s not a pit bull-versus-the-universe argument but there are observable characteristics that make this breed of dog more dangerous on average than other breeds.
If by size you meant height and length, then they are more muscular and have larger, stronger jaws than most dogs in that category. But that makes them very densely built, and dogs of the same weight tend not to have that kind of jaw strength, or be built the same way. Not all, but some dogs with longer narrower jaws won’t tend to latch onto something and hold the way a Pit Bull will, but they can harm you just as much with multiple bite wounds. Pound for pound, a Pit Bull who would attack a human may be slightly more dangerous than another breed in the same circumstances, but there are many larger and heavier dogs which are just as dangerous, or more so.
But as has been stated in this thread (and every other pit bull thread) pit bulls don’t generally have those characteristics. They were bred to not be human aggressive; as mentioned above by Martin Hyde there are some breeds that were meant to be human aggressive but for the most part they haven’t become chic to own by folks who want aggressive dogs.
Note in Canada, sled dogs were disproportionately represented in fatal dog attacks followed by mixed breed dogs. Most of the problems in America with pit bull type dogs (or dogs that look like pit bulls, which covers a much larger number of animals) are owner problems, not breed problems. Note that some of the dogs confused for pit bulls are descended from breeds that do not share much genetic ancestry with any of the three pit bull breeds.
Further, your “11 out of 10” comment doesn’t sound particularly scientific or sourced to me. In my experience when a dog is attacking something it is attacking something. There’s a big difference between a dog’s aggressive attack and a dog’s hunting behavior and a dog’s play behavior. A dog attacking something because it perceives it as a threat doesn’t attack on a 1 to 10 scale, but it attacks full out. Dogs are animals and simpler than humans, when they’ve committed to fight in a flight or fight situation it’s pretty much a full commitment, so if a particular dog has been abused or mistreated or is just plain temperamentally disposed to attack when it shouldn’t, those attacks are going to be full out attacks, not 5 out of 10 attacks or whatever. That’s regardless of breed.
Yes yes, your post is your cite.
I actually run 100% goofy love happy Pit Bulls all owned by well adjusted Middle Class and above dog owners who love the specific breed (some of each of the breeds mentioned by Martin). I do not however conclude that such means all Pit Bulls are goofy and love happy. I have a bit of a selection bias as I do not hang out around dangerous owners.
Maybe the problem is the crowd you hang with?
Yes, and I said that Pit Bulls are very sweet dogs if raised right, and it’s not hard to do so. OTOH, it’s not hard to train them to be vicious.
Sure, but you know I have never seen a Komondor and Chows are fairly rare. OTOH, the pound is full of mutts, Pits & Chihuahuas. Most of the Pits were rescued from fighting dog breeders.
And those fighting dog breeders are the real problem (not to mention gansta types that want to raise a mean looking dog). They raise LOTS of Pits for the fighting ring. They train them to be vicious. Thus, there are lots of vicious Pits out there. Thereby, if you run into a dangerous dog, it’s more likely to be a Pit Bull (and by Pit Bull I mean any of a number of breeds and half-breeds) than any other breed. They are common, they have a nasty bite, and too many are raised to be vicious.
Other than the “nasty bite” part (and I agree, many other breeds have a nasty bite too) this is not the fault of the breed so much as it’s the fault of criminals and idiots.
And your personal observations and opinions are relevant to a GQ discussion how, exactly?