Wait, how is breeding cruel?
Well, speaking as a mother …
Oh, for dogs? Beats me.
That’s a pretty cute pup. Good on you from saving him from his former fate.
How sweet! My friend’s pit bull likes to hump the couch. She hasn’t been a consistent alpha dog AT ALL so she’ll shout “No humping the couch!” but it doesn’t have any effect.
The kind of breeding they do in puppy mills, where a female dog is bred over and over again with no regard for her health, certainly is.
Breeding a dog and then giving away or selling the puppies to anyone who wants one, without ensuring that they won’t use the puppies for fighting or puppy-mill-style breeding, is cruel, and should be a major concern for any would-be pit bull breeder. If you’re not willing or able to do that kind of checking up on prospective homes for the puppies, you shouldn’t breed them- dogs are better off not being born than they are being in a puppy mill or used for fighting.
Yes, what everyone else said!
- Walter is adorable.
- You are a terrific person for taking him on.
- It must be extremely difficult to teach these dogs to fight because I’ve read what low-lifes have to do to them to make them mad (put staples in their ears, sew bottle caps under their skin, etc.) so it can’t be THAT natural for them to be mean.
- It’s actually kind of nice to have a dog that other people might be wary of. This could come in handy.
Walter is adorable!
Whooooooo’s a gooood puppy!!!
I have read that supplementing their diet with occasional small amounts of yogurt with active cultures can help with this. My partner and I are in the process of adopting a retired racing greyhound, and they also have a “reputation” for room-clearing farts. The books I’ve been reading all recommend yogurt and, at least for greyhounds, elevated food dishes. (I’ve also read that for most breeds, elevated food dishes are a very bad idea as they are suspected of being a cause for bloating, a rapidly deadly condition.)
Ooooo, he is too cute!
Our lab Otto is a licker, too. Every time we take him for a walk, he tries to discretely taste the hand of everyone he passes. So far, it hasn’t caused any problems.
Congrats on your beautious new baby!
Thank you Anne, you said it extremely well. (bolding mine!)
I don’t even want to start on backyard breeders. GRRRRRRRR :mad:
This just in. Walter is still cute but no longer farting!
“Oh, happy day!”
Awwwh, man, seeing those pictures makes me realize how much I love puppies and how much I cannot have one right now. 
Great job getting yourself a real cutey! 
Like everything, it’s part nature, part nurture.
One of my uncle’s dogs, Gos, was a Catalan Shepherd. Too big for a handbag, it was a pompon of grey hair whose ends could be told apart by which one was trying to hump your leg.
One day they were walking on the mountains and they met a shepherd who was there with, surprise, sheep and his shepherd dog. And Gos went NUTS. He’d discovered his calling in life! After that, whenever there were sheep on TV he’d try to shepherd the telly…
The shepherd tried to get my uncle to let him train Gos for championships; in his view (which I agree with) having a dog who was “such a natural” as a mere pet was a darn sin.
Thing is, yes, Gos “recognized” sheep as “something I run circles around” but he still would have needed training before he knew how to run the circles properly. A dog is always part hunter, part fighter, part herder; he can be trained into being a sod, or a yappy monster (Chihuahuas are snake hunters)… or a well-behaved, happy member of his multispecies pack.
Is that true? I have to look it up. I’ve recently acquired a Chihuahua who is quite big for his breed (about 9 pounds). After seeing him point on numerous occasions, I assumed he had been mixed with some kind of hunting dog. Don’t care if he’s a pure bred animal or not, but now I’m curious whether pointing is natural to them.
We got a dachshund mix before looking looking up the breed’s background (I know, I know…), and was surprised at the natural aggressiveness we had to train him to control. Turns out they were bred to hunt badgers underground. You need to be brave to tackle a badger in its natural habitat - I’m not sure that I would!