Ok, I have a pitbull. She’s sweet as hell, and she licks my kids to death. She welcomes strangers into the home by throwing herself at them and wagging her tail.
I also see things in her that could have been harnessed into something bad.
She has a high prey drive. She sees a small animal and she absolutely, positively is mentally incapable of ignoring it. I have cats, and she chases them every single time she sees them. Now, she doesn’t hurt them, but I’m sure she could have been trained to. She wants to please me, but she’s also incredibly stubborn. So, she’s trainable, but she puts her own will into things as well. She’s so strong. Despite being about the smallest pit bull that exists, she is considerably stronger than my previous boxer who was twice her size and not exactly a weak breed.
They can be great family pets. They also can be weaponized.
There is a lady who lives across the street who has a pet pit bull and every time I see them together, the dog behaves in a very friendly way. This lady often tells me, “She just LOVES people!” and this dog certainly behaves that way.
But I’ve heard so many stories about how a good dog suddenly turns bad for no apparent reason. I don’t know how I would feel if I had any kids and this dog came up to my kids and started jumping up on them and licking them.
I would hate to offend this nice lady by asking her to keep her dog away from my kids. But I would hate it a lot more if her dog ever caused any harm to my kids. Hell! They don’t even have to be kids. I’m pretty sure the same goes for adults.
What do you think? Would you ask this lady to keep her dog away from any visitors you had that were walking with you?
I suppose I could always lie to her and say that my visitors were afraid of dogs.
I feel like my dog’s personality is somewhat locked in by now. I don’t think I could train her to be evil anymore. I genuinely don’t think she even knows that biting a person is even an option. Just last week I had accidentally left her on the patio and the gardeners, whom she had never met before, came in and when I got home she was happily, if intrusively and annoyingly, hanging out with them while they worked.
I really can’t imagine her “just snapping”, and I don’t think there is really any evidence of a truly good and well adjusted pit bull doing this. I just think had I honed her “skill set” early on, this same dog could be a weapon.
I was worried when she was a puppy to be honest as she was much bitier than my previous dog. But, she definitely grew out of that. She still mouths at me when we wrestle, but there is zero pressure behind it.
I have not read the thread. We had two pit bulls that did snap. These dogs were raised from puppies with my toddler son. We never knew what they were capable of and now feel so thankful they didn’t maul the boy.
One day they got out and ran off. We lived in a very rural area. They got into a pasture where there was a great many goats doing what goats do. These sweet dogs ripped the throats out of twelve goats before the farmer shot both. One was killed and the other survived. We had to pay for twelve goats and pay for a backhoe to bury the goats plus Veterinarian fees to patch up the surviving dog.
You would have never convinced me they were capable of this. To this day I believe if it were just one dog this would not have happened. We trusted those two dogs around a baby.
Baby Ava is a small Pit, about 50 pounds. She is 4 years old, very energetic and willful. She has personality by the buttload and everyone who meets her falls in love with her.
She has us all wrapped around her little paw and she knows it.
Her partner is Benny, a Lab/Pit mix. Ava picked him out at the shelter where we got her. His is very strong and very fast, loves to run and is dumb as a bag of rocks. But he is gentle and has a big heart and loves people and loves Ava.
We got the from the shelter when they were a year and half. It was obvious that both had been beaten and abused before being dumped at the shelter. It is baffling how anyone could not love these dogs. It took them a while to trust us. Benny still has to be sedated unconscious before we can clip his nails.
Predators kill prey. Properly socialized dogs don’t view people or other dogs as prey, but of course goats look like prey to most dogs. I would think most dogs large enough to physically kill goats would be likely to do this. You baby was probably safe, although dogs can be jealous, or fight for dominance, and in general shouldn’t be left alone with babies and small children.
I get that you don’t like something I said, but I have no idea what you are objecting to. That dogs are predators and are likely to attack things they perceive to be prey? That dogs shouldn’t be left alone with a baby? Something else?
Anyway, no, I don’t have a dog. I like dogs, but they are too much work, and I’m away from home too often. I enjoy dogs when I visit my brother or my sister. My sister, in particular, has beautifully trained dogs. My brother’s dogs are good-natured and reasonably well-behaved, but not to the level of my sister’s dogs.
Some people are really bad about infantilizing and anthropomorphizing animals. At the end of the day all animals are unpredictable and can’t be trusted. I’m not saying nobody can have a dog but it’s definitely smart to not have a big dog around small children. Hell even a little dog could do real damage, a tiny chihuahua just tore a chunk out of my Dad’s hand and it bled for two hours.
I would never own a dog that I thought could overpower me, I wouldn’t put myself in that situation.
I was looking for a story I read about maybe a 17 year old girl that was home alone with the family pit bull that they owned for years that for no reason anyone could ascertain just killed her but I couldn’t find it.
I did find this story though I remember from not too long ago, poor woman:
*"American bully is another non-AKC recognized breed frequently called a pit bull. This breed is currently only recognized by five breed clubs. The American bully is a short, stocky dog with a large head and wide chest. This pitbull-type breed reaches a height of 18 to 21 inches in males, 17 to 20 inches in females and a weight of 70 to 120 pounds. There are five categories of American bully according to body type and height and weigh varies greatly.
Many dogs known as pitbulls are actually crossbreeds of several bully and non-bully type breeds. Naturally, the potential sizes would depend entirely on the size of the parents and the breeds that went into the breeding.*"
That’s right. There a few non-Pit Bull dogs who can reach that weight. That they are known as Pits doesn’t matter, that’s what this whole thread covers repeatedly, any dog can be called a Pit when it frightens someone, but that doesn’t make it one.
That isn’t “snapping”; and it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with whether the dogs could be trusted either with your own toddler, or with toddlers in general (which is not the same question.)
You’re making the mistake of thinking that the dog is generalizing, as some humans might, ‘it’s wrong to kill anything at all’. That’s not what the dogs are thinking. The dogs are thinking that your child is part of their pack and to be protected; and that the goats are prey animals who it’s perfectly fine to hunt. They might, or might not, extrapolate that humans in general, or at least human children in general, are not to be attacked; but even presuming that they do, they might well still think that goats are fine to hunt.
Very few humans even assume that killing anything at all is wrong. Most humans think it’s fine to kill members of some species but not others, and/or to kill under some circumstances but not others. Would you assume that somebody who properly hunts deer has “snapped” and can’t be trusted around even their own children? How about somebody who swats mosquitos?
Dogs have to be trained, for each and every species which they might be around, that members of that particular species aren’t prey. If your neighbors have goats, you need to teach your dogs about goats. If at all possible, start while they’re young puppies; some dogs are next to impossible to convince about this once they’re grown.
And bear in mind that they may not even generalize species-wide. I’ve known a dog who was absolutely and entirely safe with her own cats – before and after – who killed a strange cat who wandered on to the property. She probably thought she was defending the place from an invader. (There are certainly human equivalents to this one, too.)