It's always a fucking Pit Bull

The BBQ Pit
21

If you are not an able bodied person, then a dog may take that as a sign to attack. Though, it will only attack if several of the other factors are in play. So if you ARE a bad dog owner, AND you are alone with your dog, then things may get interesting.

I am at home with my dog alone all the time. I have no fear of her, she may even try to save my life if the situation comes up.

If I had neglected or mistreated her, or intentionally trained her to be vicious, then yeah, it may not be a great idea to be alone around her.

Most of the time these stories that talk about not having an able bodied person around is talking about a child, disabled, or elderly person, who are unable to fend off an attack. If a dog came at me, trying to do me harm, I am pretty sure I would get the upper hand on it, though it is quite likely that I would get severely injured in the process. If I was not able bodied, then it is quite likely that it would be able to continue the attack, and I would not be able to defend myself.

Not really that fucking dumb assed, or even stupid assed point. If you are not able to defend yourself, stay away from strange or ill-mannered dogs.

22

Look, dog attacks get reported: all serious dog attacks get reported.

It’s always a fucking Pit Bull.

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23

Are those the only ones that attack?

I seem to recall plenty of stories where it never crossed the owners/victims mind (and often other folks) that the dog was just a disaster waiting to happen.

Also, sounds like that lady would have most very likely died had help not intervened…and darn fast for that matter. Was she weak and deserving of death?

24

Woot, I got the right answer on the first try! I educated myself on this issue, so if I’d gotten the wrong answer I would have been disappointed with myself. But I did have to seriously ponder the choice between 3 of the pictures.

I’ve noticed that people who start threads like this never bother to actually, you know, educate themselves. A good first step is to read Pit Bull Placebo, easily found on Amazon.com. The title is a little bit political but it’s well researched and explains how this problem started and perpetuates.

It’s possible that German Shephards being dangerous was a USA thing, because I remember them being talked about like that when I was a kid. What surprised me was that the very first USA dangerous breed was bloodhound. Anybody here know that? When you picture one, you just see it snoozing all day with it’s jowls hanging off the porch step, right? But they were used to chase runaway slaves prior to the US civil war, and since slaves were seen as less than human, if the dogs kinda roughed them up when they caught them… eh, all in fun. (Not my attitude, just the attitude of people who train dogs for such things.)

25

I think the rule should be to never own a dog you can’t kill with your bare hands. My Little Girls are small and killable in seconds. Pit bulls and larger you’ll have a fight on your hands. Early on you need to have everybody in the house get the dog on its back for a tummy rub, then grab it by the throat and shaking it. This establishes ones dominance and they may need a reminder now and then.

26
27

It’s always the owner.

I’ve known lots of pit bulls. When raised as house dogs, they are good natured, loving and fiercely loyal. Problem is when assholes get them because they are very strong dogs. The assholes purposefully raise them to be mean either as fighters or status symbols. They are the dog of choice for young thugs and thug wannabes.

28

AND anybody who thinks they can take down an attacking dog bared handed needs to be attacked by one first lest they think they are tougher than they actually are.

29

Facts…

My dog has been bitten twice by pit bulls. I have been bitten three times by pit bulls (just going over to a friends house, their dog comes up and bites me! Same owner/person training the dogs - they also have a pug dog which NEVER bites me!).

Apartments are banning pit bulls. Cities have aggressive dog laws concerning dogs like pit bulls.

30

How does human behavior factor in to this?

Generally, the breeding, sale, training, or abuse towards pit-bulls, all involves human behavior.

If someone is to breed, sell, train, and abuse a dog for the purposes of making it aggressive, violent, and threatening, or to make it fight other dogs, what breed of dog do you start with?

Is it going to be a poodle or a pomeranian?

I’ve been bitten viciously by exactly one kind of dog during all my years of going onto people’s properties and ringing their doorbells. And it was not a Pit Bull. I didn’t report the bite because although it was a vicious little shit and it drew blood, it was only high enough to bite my hands because the animal’s owner was carrying it around at chest level and holding it toward my hands which were holding their food. It would have otherwise presented no reasonable threat to me. Probably couldn’t bite through my work pants.

People probably aren’t going to make the news with stories about little dogs that bite. Because who cares?

But, since it draws clicks, and gets the attention of people who are biased in their thinking, because they like having their biases confirmed, any news story about a dog that already looks imposing will be worth reporting and writing.

Little dogs are also probably not trained to fight other dogs or to attack humans, and if they’re mistreated and prone to violence, they might end up abandoned on the street or at an animal rescue or euthanized with less incident.

It strikes me that it’s probably not the breed of dog that’s to blame here, but the breed of human that’s attracted to breeding, training, and owning a dangerous-looking animal that wouldn’t be particularly dangerous otherwise, and fucking with that dog until it becomes dangerous.

You also have to wonder, if it’s the breed, then how come a dog that was abused or trained to fight other dogs or humans isn’t always necessarily destroyed? Why are some formerly abused pit bulls owned by people without incident?

If it was the breed that was the problem, then every one of those stories should have the same ending. But since it doesn’t, and since that doesn’t make headlines, here we are.

31

When I was a kid, we had a 200 lb. Saint Bernard. I’m guessing she could have taken out the vast majority of people.

32

Those are the vast majority of dogs that attack. Dogs don’t attack for no reason. There are sometimes when a dog will just go crazy, I’ve seen dogs with dementia that will just suddenly go into a frenzy at no provocation, but those are always small dogs in their late teens.

I have seen stories where the owner was surprised by the dog attacking, but when I read up on the owner’s treatment of the dog, I am not. If you keep you dog chained up, if you never interact with it except to yell at it when it’s barking, that’s not proper training. If you are then surprised that the dog bites you, well that’s on you. (You in this paragraph referring to neglectful dog owners, not you, a poster.)

The surprising thing is, with as much neglect and abuse as I see heaped upon dogs, that there are not more attacks. Dogs are ridiculously tolerant of vile behavior directed at them. Not infinitely tolerant though, and sometimes they snap.

The lady in the story, yes, she was in fact weak. Weak enough that a poorly socialized dog took advantage of his dominance over her.

“Deserving of death?” I am not sure where you feel that weakness equals deserving of death. My grandmother couldn’t fight off a chihuahua, that certainly doesn’t make her deserving of death.

33

My job, I interact with dozens of dogs a day. I have given baths to 200+ lb. mastiffs that did not want to get a bath. I do nail trims on dogs that do not like getting their nails trimmed. They get upset about this. They flail, scream, try to bite and claw. I get to do my best to control and calm them. Usually calming methods work better than fighting, but to some extent, both are necessary. You have to dominate a dog before you can calm it.

I’d point out that I also give pitbulls baths and nail trims, but they are rarely the ones that are fighting it in the first place. The biggest problem I have with them is that they won’t sit still and ty to lick my face while I am trying to work on them.
I do have experience, training, and weigh nearly 250 lbs myself, so most dog owners and the public probably are at more of a disadvantage if it comes to a fight, but people can still learn to interact with dogs more appropriately (including avoiding dogs that do not seem “friendly”), to lessen the chances of attacks in the first place.

34

In one of the most well known dog-attack cases, the death of Diane Whipple, the dog that killed her was a Presa Canario. In fact, it sounds like Presas are far more aggressive than Pit Bulls are supposed to be.

Prove it. :dubious:

35

So do tigers and chimpanzees also get a totally unfair rap as pets just because of a few highly publicized incidents probably caused by bad apple owners?

36

More like rolled them down…

37

The analogy would be if someone claimed Bengal tigers are dangerous but Siberian tigers are not.

38

If there were hundreds of millions of tigers and chimps in people’s homes, and you heard of a few cases a year of them attacking their owners, then yes, that would be the case.

Your analogy breaks down, because dogs have been domesticated over thousands of years, and have lived in close proximity to us all that time. Chimps and tigers, not so much.

Now, I do think that they get a bit of a bad rap, because I don’t think that chimps or tigers are bad animals, they just make terrible pets, and judging them on that standard is a bit unfair.

39

The selective breeding argument goes both ways - pit bulls were (and still are) bred for use in blood sports, which largely sets them apart from other big tough breeds such as Shepherds, Saint Bernards etc.

40

That makes actual Pits very strong tough dogs, but it doesn’t mean they are any more dangerous than other dogs. Assholes buy Pits and other similar dogs and train them to be dangerous, they want to use them as guard dogs, they’ll be rewarded for aggression, and rarely trained for obedience. Dogs need licenses, unfortunately their owners don’t.