No, you’re just having a hard time sticking to one issue.
Issue one - lots of attacks are misattributed to pits (raised by, among others, Todderbob). I asked for a cite to support the claim that “an abundance of dog attacks were misattributed to pit bulls (American Staff, American Pit, or Staff).” You gave me an article with 20 accounts. I called that weak sauce. You made an imcomprehensible statement that I took as a claim that there had yet to be a cite to attacks by pits. I gave you a cite.
Issue two - Merrit Clifton’s research turns up much fewer attacks than would correspond with CDC data (raised by you). I point out that because the list excludes dogs of an unidentifiable breed that would likely exclude a lot of mutts - this exclusion works to prevent misidentification as it removes mutts that might bear a resemblence to but not be pits.
My husband is partial to pits. He had one when I met him. After she died we got our Rosie, now 14. She’s been fantastic. I’m sure there’s gonna be another one in our future soon. Personally I’d rather have a rescue mutt next.
Pure garbage. I got a list of anectodotes from an pit-apologist web site. Your cite is more intriguing, in that one could argue that based on this study’s results, it’s not a stretch to conclude that attacks are misattributed to pits. If that’s what the study says. It doesn’t.
Maybye pits don’t exist at all, they’re all just other breeds mistaken for this mythical cerberus.
Good luck (sincerely). A good responsible owner with a well bread dog is no problem. I just think that there is little lattitude and stakes can be high.
I believe a standard male APBT can weigh in the 70lb range, but no matter, tell of these other aggressive large breed dogs whose progency clog our shelters in the manner the ubiquitous pit-mix does.
My sister has a couple dogs on her farm, one is a happy, freindly, well adjusted dog that loves people indiscriminately…
The other is a neurotic, barking, agressive terror, completely schitzo, he’s fine if you’re not looking at him, the instant you do, he becomes a passive-agressive neurotic mess
the Pit I met last night was far more well adjusted than Schitzodog…
My sister’s well adjusted dog is a mini Dachsund
Schitzodog is a longhair Chihuaua…
The Pit was far more stable than that sodding Chihuaua, which embodies every negative stereotype the breed is known for
There are clearly many people in this thread who are well-informed about dog breeds. Let me ask you this:
Recently two ponies in a corral near my home were attacked and killed by loose dogs. Apart from dogs commonly identified as “pit bulls”, what other breeds are physically and temperamentally capable of killing a small horse?
Rhodesian Ridgebacks are not uncommon, IME. I know two families that own Ridgebacks. They were used to hunt lions, but the ones I’ve knwon have been sweet, if somewhat aloof
The article was one of many (hoepfully unsuccesful) renaming efforts. The study cited, thoguh, is as follows:
We’re not told how often a breed assigned by an adoption agency was present but not “predominant” - assuming only one breed can be predominant. That can leave out a lot of dogs with a breed present, even at a high percentage of a DNA breed make-up, but not “predominant.”
And so what if 87% of dogs had at least 12.5 % of some breed makeup thrown in that was not included in their mixed breed description? That’s pretty meaningless without more qualification. After all an 87.5% lab might not look like much else.
This study suggests to me that the genetically predominant breed might not be the most physicially manifest. That doesn’t mean all those pit mixes don’t still have pit in them.
No, but what the study does say is that even people whose job it is to identify mixed breed dogs by phenotype have an abysmally poor success rate at it. What, then, makes you think the average Joe Schmoe dog bite victim who may only have been in contact with the dog for a few minutes is any better?
You failed to answer my question. Let’s take your previous example of the pit/rott cross, what makes you attribute the hypothetical “carnage” to the pit dog (bred to bite other dogs) blood and not the rott (bred to bite human beings) blood?
Of course they exist. The problem is, a whole lot of other breeds and mixes look very much like pit dogs, kinda like a whole lot of human races look “Caucasian”. That the word “Caucasian” is now applied to anyone with pinky-white skin regardless of whether or not they have any blood from the Caucasian Mountain region is a whole lot like how the word “pit mix” is now applied to any medium-sized dog with stocky build, short coat, and square head, regardless of whether they have any pit-dog blood in their background.
That is not true–or rather, is only true insofar as any number of “standard male APBT type dogs and mixes” may weigh in the 70lb range, but the true game-type APBT (the ones who might ostensibly be most prone to this mythical psychosis) is a much smaller dog. If you want to expand the definition to include “any dog between 30-100lbs with a short coat, stocky build, square head, and blunt muzzle”, well then, congrats–you’ve just proved my point wholesale.
The snarky second half of your comment shows exactly how little you know about dogs in general, and in particular about shelter dogs. The point is that any number of common, mishandled, undersocialized breeds, types, and mixes may resemble a “pit-mix”, and may be large and aggressive.
Do you want a list of breeds that are commonly mistaken for pits or pit mixes? Here’s 25 of them, for a start. Your assertion that these breeds are “rare” is absolutely meaningless, one because there’s no central registry or national census to determine a breed’s population and (again) because mixed breed dogs cannot be accurately identified by phenotype anyway. Cite from the American Veterinary Medical Association:
Simply because you don’t happen to know any Catahoula Leopard Dogs or Boerboels or American Bulldogs isn’t any kind of evidence for your case… if for no other reason than because you aren’t much likely to have noticed or recognized them for what they are. The vast majority of the general public looks at any one of those dogs and sees “pit” or “pit mix”, and much of the time owners are perfectly happy to let people go on thinking that’s exactly what their dog is. Of my own breed, there are probably ten thousand in the US flying under the radar, most of which are purebred and papered but not counted in any US registry. Most of us tell people they’re pit-dane mixes.
The point is, a boxer/bulldog/lab mix who shows up at a shelter with no testament to breeding history is more likely to be slapped with the “pit mix” label than anything else, and for the exact reason mentioned above. Everyone thinks the ubiquitous shelter dog is a pit mix, so when they see one, that’s what they call it.
This actually made me laugh out loud. So you really do believe in a “one drop” rule? And you’re simultaneously arguing that “any dog that looks like a pit is necessarily a pit” along with “any dog that doesn’t look like a pit might still have pit blood somewhere in them, which makes them inherently aggressive”? So does this one drop of blood carry a magic psychosis or what? What is it that you believe pits carry in their genetic background that makes them so indisputably evil?
uh… I don’t know, let’s say any dog over about fifty pounds, any dog with a breeding background for hunting large game, any dog in the working group, any number of pastoral livestock guardian breeds, any dog with significant prey drive which is unrestrained and unsupervised, any molossoid-type dog, any cattle drover, any cur breed, any hound…?
I had a German Shephard that could (and did) take down full-grown cattle by himself. He couldn’t manage to kill them without help, but he could put them on the ground easily. If he’d had a pal to help, we would have had a whole bunch of dead cows.
A couple of large dogs of any breed could kill ponies. A pack of medium-size could kill ponies (that’s why they pack up in the wild).
Temperamentally? Any kind of dog that runs loose regularly and learns to hunt, or is dumped and hungry. When I lived in an area where dogs were routinely dumped, they were a constant menace to livestock and children. Much worse than wolves or coyotes, because they’re more aggressive and less afraid of people.
Who says we have to. Attribute it to Pit-Rottweiller mixes. Let them get a shitty reputation as well.
Breed standard". Read for yourself. “Desirable” is up to 60 pounds for a male. Fit dogs in excess of this weight aren’t penalized.
Pit folks are all over the board on this. When it comes to puffing, they’re on forever about how the breed is the all-American breed, common for generations. Bring up incidence of aggression and it turns to talk of the coutnless bands of Catahoula Leopard Dogs roaming the cities.
Ever met a middle you didn’t exclude. A presence of something less than 50% in no way equates to a one-drop rule. Laugh yourself silly.
Okay, let’s try this one more time.
What makes you think a dog with a genetic background for dog aggression is inherently likely to exhibit human-aggressive tendencies?
What makes you think this is true for pit dogs (bred to fight other dogs) over and above many dozens of breeds bred for human aggressive traits?
Why are you here frothing and hysterical about pit bulls, and not, say, boxers, rottweilers, German shepherd dogs or mastiffs, all bred for civil (human) aggression?
Again… a pit-fighting dog is about half that size. You made the claim that a “standard” male can be 70 pounds, when according to your own cite that’s a weight ten pounds above the desired window.
To repeat myself yet again: many… many breeds are much larger, much more physically powerful, and carry breeding backgrounds for traits much more likely to translate to or result in human-aggressive tendencies with mishandling or under-socialization.
So you’re ignoring everything I said in favor of a strawman argument? Nice.
How’zabout you start by explaining to me why you’re right and the AVMA is wrong?
Are you high?
If any percentage of blood, no matter how insignificant is enough for you to imagine that the dog carries some sort of nebulous, yet-to-be-described mythical psychosis… even if the dog does not display physical characteristics commonly ascribed to “pit type dogs”… how is that not a one-drop rule?
That would argue that 60 pounds is the top of the breed standard as a goal, but it’s not impossible to find one over that, although anything much over that moves outside the breed standard.
Note that this would be the extreme upper range – the bell curve of a normal distribution is going to put most APBTs at 35-45 pounds.
Incidentally, the median range for a female APBT (using the NKC standard) is about 37.5 pounds. Our Simone is 34.6, consistently.
Huh? So experts recommend, due to DNA testing which demonstrates that mixed breed dogs cannot be accurately identified by phenotype, that we stop mislabelling shelter dogs… and that’s a “renaming effort”?
Your Wiki link goes a long way toward proving my point. The roster of “pit type dogs” has now expanded to include a handful of breeds with no pit history whatsoever. So now we’ve moved the goalposts, and we are no longer talking about a genetic background which leads to heightened aggresssion… but some bizarro world where phenotype makes a dog dangerous. What was once an argument that “bred for dog fighting” = dangerous is now an argument that “generic bulldog phenotype” = dangerous, regardless of breeding background.
Which is it? Is it the pit blood that make them dangerous or is it their short fur and square head? If a dog has no pit blood but fits the “racial profile”, what do you suppose lurks in their genotype which causes this mythical propensity toward aggression?