don’t live in Canada, not too many sled dogs in my area. Don’t care.
What you’ve stated is simply not true. I’ve seen many dogs of different breeds bite and retreat. Some more aggressive than others. They are not full on attacks. This is a wholly different scenario than the behavior I’ve witnessed from pit bulls. They don’t bite and retreat. They go berserk and shred whatever they get a hold of.
Different breeds have different dispositions and pit bulls are on the high side of aggressive and their physical characteristics make that a deadly combination.
And what are your creds for being an expert? Vet, trainer, involved in competitive dog sports, rescue, fancier, etc?
Besides just another anonymous dime-a-dozen person on the intenet with an opinion, that is.
Since you “don’t care” about anything other than your own anecdotal observations, why are you bothering to post in GQ? Sorry to be snarky, but shouldn’t you restrict yourself to IMHO?
None other than what I’ve observed over 50 years. It’s no skin off my arm if you go down to the animal shelter and take a dozen pit bulls home with you.
I’m citing me. It’s not my opinion that the pit bulls I’ve come across are dangerous, it’s my observation that they acted in the manner I described.
These dogs were originally bred to be powerful and fearless in their behavior. they’ve since been bred for dog fighting. That can’t be hand waved away.
Topic of thread: “Are pit bulls more dangerous than other dogs?”
Funny thing is that comparing, with a cite, how dangerous other dogs are, relative to Pit Bulls, is actually on topic for a GQ thread asking about how dangerous Pit Bulls are compared to other dogs. Your personal experience? Less so. No more valuable than my personal experience with goofy love happy Pit Bulls. Together both demonstrate that dogs of the breeds that get labelled “Pit Bull” can vary in behavior based on the individual dog and how they were bred, raised, and trained.
Yes, the classic “my post is my cite” bit. The Aldebaran gambit I believe, but he is long gone by now …
There is no question that there are dogs that get called “Pit Bulls” that have been bred, raised, and trained to fight. In your neck of the woods, in your crowd of people, there seem to be many of them. And certainly a certain crowd of people are attracted to so called “Pit Bulls” as extensions of their hoped for bad ass image. I don’t come across those people in my experience; I come across owners whose dogs have been raised and trained to be people lovers. Some bred that way, some rescued animals and still socialized and trained that way by skillful owners. Neither of our sets of experiences or personal observations however constitute a GQ response. Neither is as on point as Martin Hyde’s posts, that you do not care about.
That’s fine if you’re entire life experience has been goof love happy pit bulls. Are you making this statement or just posing it for the sake of argument?
After you’ve answered that do you acknowledge that pit bulls were bred for a specific purpose (baiting bears) which focused on aggressive behavior and then later bred for dog fighting?
Do you think all dogs have the same disposition if you treat them the same?
Do you think all dogs pose the same wound hazard when they bite?
When you add up the history of the dog and it’s physical ability to cause damage the result is a dog that poses a greater danger than many other breeds of dogs.
You can discount my observations because the statistical numbers will be low but you can’t ignore the history of the breeding and training of this breed as if it never happened.
Yes, my experience has been with family pet Pit Bulls who have all been like that.
Obviously my thinking about the subject is not a GQ response either. I offered the CDC cite for some stats and an older article as well. Offered up the expert take on those stats. I do not think all dogs are alike. I do wonder about how much the Pit Bull bite numbers reflect the dangerous owners versus characteristics of the breed. I suspect more the dangerous owners than the dangerous dog. But not exclusively.
It is clearly established that dogs called Pit Bulls are generally powerful animals. It is established that dog breeds have different temperaments. Some sorts dogs become dangerous dogs more easily than other dogs. It is also established that the official Pit Bull breeds are bred for being friendly to people. Many dogs were historically bred for bear baiting, fighting lions, and for hunting game. Rhodesian Ridgebacks were bred to hunt lions. Shar Peis were bred to fight. Kelly Blues were also fighting dogs. How do Pit Bull breeds compare to those, and many other dogs, in ease of socializing/training as a family pet? For all *I’ve *only seen any of them as family pets, well trained.
Your observations as definitive on the subject in GQ? No.
Magiver-
I have no doubt you have met dogs that posed threats to persons. I also do not doubt that you identify these dogs as being “pit bulls.”
I am curious though, how many of these encounters have you had over the past fifty years, and where (which city) these had happened in? A rough number is fine, just to have an idea of the baseline for your observations.
One thing to think of is that breeding traits does count for something.
Look at a Lab pup. At 10 weeks old, roll a ball away from the pup. He will go after the ball, and chances are he will bring it back to you. He will be inexplicably happy at having done this. You don’t need to explain to them what to do. At 10 weeks old, a lab knows that they live to retrieve.
If you breed a dog for aggression, there will be aggression. You can train them not to be aggressive to humans, maybe they weren’t bred to be aggressive to humans, they only become aggressive if you train them, you keep them under control, they have different personalities, people are stupid, some people provoke dogs etc etc. That’s all important, and none of it is the dog’s fault. But they were actually bred to be aggressive. Some other breeds were too, so there’s no need to be silly about pitt bull breeds, but you also don’t need to deny the breeding.
IOW if you wanted to train my Lab to fight you’d have to give her a brain transplant. And probably a stronger jaw, because she has the typical soft mouth of a retriever. You would barely have to teach a dog bred for aggression what to do, they already know.
For the stats, I will say they are unreliable.
My vet told me this story that happened to his friend, makes me tear up every time: a family rushed their Lab in to the vet. He had to be put down because he had bitten their toddler. The vet gave him the injection, and petted him as he died. As he was petting him, he found 32 staples in his ear. This was a dog who, through 31 staples, had thought “must not bite kid”. Where is that in the stats? He should be a plus sign on the other side.
Wait. You don’t care about anyone else’s opinion here, yet expect your opinion to be taken seriously in GQ? And you’ve never heard of a mauling/death that didn’t involve a pit bull, really? Then you’ve never heard of the French face transplant lady, the highly publicised Diane Whipple case; you’ve never heard of Rottweilers or any other breed mauling and killing people? Every single pit bull owner you’ve ever known has either been mauled by their dog, or had to have it “destroyed”?
Really?
I’m certainly not disputing that bully-type dogs are currently leading the pack, as it were, in serious bites and deaths. But it really stretches credulity to assert that in 50 years, you’ve never heard of anything other than a pit bull harm a human and that every person you know with a pit bull has had to have it pts for aggression.
Anyway, in this thread you expand on your opinion of dogs in general, which may explain your vitriol towards pit bulls in particular.
When I was more active with a rescue in Flint, I saw cruelty and neglect and many things that I really, really wish I could unsee. That rescue got called out to all sorts of horrors, including dog fight busts (thankfully I never went to one of those although I saw some of the aftermath.) Pit bulls, in this city at least, are throw-away dogs. Honestly, it’s a wonder they don’t bite more people.
No disagreement here; many dogs, including pit bulls were bred to have a higher level of aggression/lower bite inhibition/higher prey drive than, say a Lab or Golden. It’s my belief that owning a pit bull or any similar breed requires a much higher level of owner responsibility and any reputable breed club or rescue or fancier will tell you that.
One of my three dogs is a black Lab and he’s a goofy, gentle, d’oh de 'd’oh goober of a dog.
FYI - in addition to fighting bulls and other dogs, Pit Bulls also have a long history of being especially child friendly beasts. They were called “the Nanny Dog” because they were so good with little kids. And I mean little kids - the kind who can’t be trusted not to pull or poke them.
A google image search shows all sorts of wonderful photos from a hundred years ago. Here’s a bunch of them collected here
May I ask where you’re finding these dogs? Do you work in law enforcement or something like that?
I live in a working class neighborhood around the corner from a large, fenced-in dog park. I’ve taken my dog (a 25-pound pug/beagle) there for three years. The place gets its share of pit bulls. We do have some altercations calling for owner intervention once in a while, but I have never had a problem with pits. Not one. The closest two instances were when:
*Three or four dogs were having a scrum (mine wasn’t one of them) and a pit came running in from the side to join. The dog looked ferocious, and I braced for some real violence. Then I realized I knew the dog; her name was Miley. I grabbed the back of her collar and pulled her off. She turned, jumped at my face, and kissed the ever-loving hell out of me. Vicious beast, she was.
*A lab barked at a pit on the other side of an eight-foot fence. (The dog park is partitioned to rotate turf wear, but both sides were open that day.) The pit barked, snarled, then took two steps back, jumped, and scrambled over that ever-loving fence. As three or four owners collectively breathed “oh, shit,” she then rushed right at the lab, stopped in a play-bow, and took off running, entreating the lab to some high-energy play. The lab obliged.
I’m a little surprised that this thread hasn’t been moved to IMHO, but since **Magiver **has been given free rein to cut loose with the anecdotage, I thought it best to counter with a bit of my own.
The problem with the earlier cite regarding “dangerous owners” was the conclusion that pit bulls attacks were the result of poor training. That occurs all the time in all breeds. We would see the numbers of serious injuries across the board.
How many of those breed were then bred to fight each other in the following centuries?
Of course they’re not definitive. It’s simple common sense to consider the nature of the dog when choosing them as pets. It’s nice the “official Pit Bull breeders” are cranking out cuddly versions of them but we’ve all heard the term “puppy mill” before. Unless you have the gene responsible for this behavior identified and documented with each dog then there is a genetic history of aggressive behavior built into this breed. Many breeds have aggressive traits to them. This one has the trait AND the ability to do a lot of damage.
I was trying to add them up myself. I’d guess about 30 tops. I live in Ohio. And yes, it’s not a statistically relevant number on it’s own.
I may not be stating my position clearly enough. When I say aggressive/dangerous I’m not referring to a dog that barks and bites. I’m talking about full blown bat-shit-crazy behavior that ends in something getting shredded. Whether it’s an arm or another dog’s ear.
I have no doubt that proper training of a dog with this trait makes a big difference. Geneticists have been studying genes that contribute to aggressive behavior for years. Having such a gene is not a guarantee that such behavior is manifest on a daily basis. What should be considered though is the existence of such genes and what it does to the animal that carries it. This is important because even if you have a dog that was raised properly and is generally a good pet that it will respond the same way when stressed. This is the point where the phrase “well he/she never acted like that before” is uttered after a mauling.
I’m not a statistician. I’ve taken enough statistics to know I’ve posted a low number for consideration. I also know that I’ve never seen the behavior I’ve described in all the other dogs I’ve come across in the same time period.
These dogs were bred to be aggressive and that trait comes out in times of stress in the best treated and trained pit bulls I’ve come across. Even though these dogs aren’t particularly large they have the capacity to do a lot of damage.
That’s what it’s there for - unbridled opinions, no cites necessary, go for it.
Where is that in the stats? He should be a plus sign on the other side.