You mean if that breeder hadn’t bred them for psychosis? I agree, definitely: this scumbag had bred his dogs for “game,” like many other scumbags out there. Dogs that aren’t intensively inbred don’t have these problems nearly so bad.
Daniel
Reminds me:
I was four or five, and playing in a park near my house, and a big Golden Retriever came bounding up to me.
Being a rather mindless kid, I yelled and screamed and waved my arms at the poor thing, running straight at it. The dog backed away and barked, snapping its jaws at me.
Did I sue for almost getting bitten? Did I advocate a ban? Nope. I realized that day that it was probably Not The Best Idea to act that way around dogs. 
Right on. 
Why were pit bulls inbred so much so early on? Did earlier breeders know that inbreeding brought out psychotic tendencies? (Line-breeding for appearance, I can understand…)
I’m not sure if they knew that, though they may have.
What they DID know was that if you bred a mean-ass dog with another mean-ass dog, the pups would often be mean-ass pups. Just like if you bred a chasing-sheep dog with another chasing-sheep dog, you’d get sheepchaser pups.
Thing is, when you get the pups, you can take the meanest boy and the meanest girl from the litter and breed them and get even meaner pups from that. Repeat the process over and over, and you get dogs with “game”: that is, dogs that have the desire to kill other dogs as their overriding motive in life, dogs that don’t shy away from pain, dogs that are willing to fight to the death for no reason other than a bred-in bloodlust, compounded by vicious training.
In other ares, people tend to be careful about outbreeding: too much inbreeding leads to diseases and behavioral quirks that you don’t want. But with dogfighters, these aren’t quite as much of an issue, since your dogs aren’t expected to live all that long, anyway.
This is an oversimplification, mind. Dogfighters DO put dogs out to stud, and there IS outbreeding; indeed, there’s a whole underground industry, with magazines and messageboards and equipment manufacturers and drug sellers and whatnot, devoted to it. But dogfighters definitely do go for the inbreeding-for-psychosis trick.
Daniel
How? Are you suggesting that all “pit bulls” be put down? And note, as per my post above, that the term “pit bull” does not define a specific breed of dog.
Sicko dogfighters, stupid stinking pieces of… :mad: 
Yep. One of my first jobs here was labelling some medical evidence photos for that court case. Horrifying stuff.
Good news is, the guy got a 120-day jail sentence, the highest at that point for animal cruelty in North Carolina’s history. Better yet, fighting dogs was a violation of his parole for a drug offense. Bye bye, mister dogfighter.
Daniel
I was going to post that there really is no ‘pit bull’ breed, but you beat me to it.
http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html
I guess we should ban all of these dogs, too?
cheers Excellent!
It’s silly to ban a breed of dog. There’s nothing one breed can do that can’t be duplicated with another breed, and it’s guaranteed that the features of pit bulls that make them attractive to idiots will simply be bred into Rotties or Dobermans or, I shudder to think, Saint Bernards.
You are dumb
The difference here is that cars are a rather important device, and a serious attempt to ban cars would essentially destroy the economy and cause untold misery and suffering and probably insurrection and civil war. In other words, you couldn’t do it.
Banning a breed of dog would not cause any of those things.
That isn’t the point. Who cares if dogs are at fault or not? They’re property.
I’ll again play devil’s advocate; pit bulls, no matter how much people say otherwise, are more dangerous than almost any other breed. It’s not a reasonable matter of debate; they are responsibile for an astoundingly disproportionate percentage of serious dog attacks.
Now, please note what I did not say: I did not say MOST pit bulls have hurt people.
But the fact remains it’s a much more dangerous animal than a cocker spaniel or a Lab, and for all the blather about banning “Bad owners” (how do you ban people?) the facts are that
A) there’s usually no crime committed by the owner until the attack, and
B) it’s not like these attacks involve the owner siccing the dog on someone.
Whether banning a breed will work I don’t know, but it’s reasonable for a government - especially the government of a heavily populated municipality - to place restrictions on people’s ownership of dangerous animals, and in my opinion they’re generally FAR too lenient; I am sick of seeing people let their damned cats roam free to shit in other people’s property, and I’m sick of seeing little kids scared by big dogs off their leashes. Perhaps a better approach would be a muzzle law or higher licence fees for dangerous animals - I’ve never seen a study on what solution would work best - but frankly I wouldn’t cry if the pit bulls got banned.
I agree that the main problem is the bad owners out there.
As a dog trainer, I’ve seen my share of problem pets over the years. To be honest, the most dog-bites I’ve heard of were from little yapdogs under 20 pounds who, due to their size, weren’t big enough to cause death, but certainly big enough to cause quite a lot of damage to a child’s face. But it’s just little muffy, the cute white and fluffy cockapoo, so no one reports THAT on the news…
Anyway - all this said - I’d be willing to meet the province/county/whatever half way. If I want to own a dog listed in the “dangerous breeds”, I would be willing to:
a) socialise the puppy intensively in a controlled setting (like an obedience school)
b) put the dog through basic AND advanced obedience lessons
c) have the dog evaluated through the CGN (canada) or CGC test, a test which seeks to show an animal is a “Canine Good Citizen”
d) keep the animal under supervision - that means no “chaining” outside, no “alone in the yard” business.
e) have the animal evaluated by my vet yearly for signs of any trouble
f) do a yearly CGC/CGN test and keep a certification “up to date”
Maybe that’s one way to compromise… the people who wouldn’t be willing to conform to those rules probably shouldn’t own a dog like a pit bull (whatever they are). Pits require committment - training, socialisation, and being watchful.
Just my two cents… I’d hate to see some of the sweetest therapy dogs (TDI certified, no less!) that walk through local hospitals banned because of their breed or type. I’d also like to see irresponsible owners have to own up to their share of the problem…
E.
Fwah?
Dogs are not property. Dogs are living, sentient beings. They don’t have the intelligence of humans, but they are certainly not objects.
Pit bulls are high-strung, yes. Pit bulls have aggressive tendencies, yes. They have these because they have been **selectively bred, trained, and reared ** for these characteristics. Left alone, a pit bull will not attack a child on its own. Treated well and with kindness, a pit bull can be the friendliest, sweetest creature on earth.
You want a crime before a dog attacks? Try animal abuse. Yes, most attacks don’t involve the person siccing a dog on someone. But I repeat, a normal pit bull won’t attack someone. A badly treated, badly tended pit bull will.
Look at the statistics. How many pit bulls are there in Ontario, for starters–and how many have you heard about in the news?
Perfect example here…
one of my freinds had a huge Rottie, Max, 170 pounds of raw muscle, classic Rottie stance and such, he looked extremely scary…
…Max thought he was a 170 pound lap dog, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, my freind would grab his legs and spin him around on the carpet, he loved it…
on the other hand
one of my college freind’s mother had a white toy poodle, the classic fru-fru looking dog, the thing was mean and neurotic, it would try to bite strangers, and wnenever it got mad at the mother, it’d grab the TV remote and hide it under the bed, the dog was a complete nervous wreck…
it’s not the dog, it’s the owner and upbringing
As another Ontarian I’ve been hashing this out a bit and to some degree holding RickJay’s Devil’s Advocate position in arguments. The banning of a particular breed is problematic but surely within their scope. We don’t say “It’s not the bobcat, it’s the bad bobcat owners” I’ve met up with quite a few pit bulls on my dog walks and a very common trait seems to be never knowing when to quit. Even the friendly ones. We can argue about the breed owner relationship but from AnimalAdvocates.com
and
And here’s a link to CDC report on dog attacks. Scroll down 2/3 to see a chart of dog attack fatalities by breed. So we can agree it’s not media bias covering up the chihuahua attacks. Report was a little surprising to me, for instance:
So what’s the solution to “bad owners”? Mandatory dog rearing classes(before or after a police report)? I’d like it- but I don’t think there’s that kind of political will for it. I was thinking a muzzle law but:
Do you think people will muzzle at home?
If the mean toy poodle tries to attack me, I can punt it across the street.
If the 170 pound rottweiler decides to attack me, I’m dead.
My 135 pound well-bred, very well trained Rottie would never have attacked you unless you threatened her or her “family”. And even then, the two times someone did threaten her or myself for real (and not in a training situation), she backed them into a corner, didn’t attack, didn’t bite, and didn’t even snap at them, but held them there, growling viciously, hackles raised till she was told she could release them.
She had absolutely no animal-animal (one of her very best “friends” at the dog park was a JRT, hehe) aggression and loved children, right down to tiny babies, and was amazingly gentle with children and animals far, far smaller than her.
My aunt’s 2 highly-bred, highly-strung toy poodles I grew up with bit whenever they got nervous, which was always.
Yes, and when the 200 pound Saint I had as a child decided to attack you, you could kiss your ass goodbye. So, do you want to ban the other big dogs?
Hey, look! Saints are on the list of dogs who bite, too. Along with other popular dogs. Ban?
I’ve heard dog owners say this so many times … usually right after they’ve attacked and maimed/killed someone … :rolleyes: