pitbulls have a lot of gameness. They’ll fight and fight and push themselves to please their owner. JRTs are similar but significantly smaller. If a pitbull is attacking, the owner is really the only one who’s going to be able to make the dog stop without force. Most bull or fighting dogs (terriers) are like this. Pits just happen to be a mix of old english bulls and old terriers, giving them high strength and density as well as a strong game drive. Properly understanding your dog, its prey drive, and its cues are important in preventing accidents. A lot of pits have relatively high prey drive, so they’ll often be aggressive or rough with smaller dogs. Pits are relatively calm around humans around humans, being somewhere around the 50th percentile of aggressiveness on breeds.
Also please don’t link dogsbite.org as a source on these issues. Their standard of data gathering is horrible. They rely on news reports to assess the dogs breed (which we know isn’t reliable) and have a very clear anti pitbull bias. Places like the AKC and even the CDC advise against breed laws. That’s a big deal considering the CDC is the only group who’s done any actual peer reviewed research on dog bites.
I don’t have a dog, have no intention of having a dog, have never had my own dog, and have never had a pit bull in the family. I have no skin in the game. If you could prove that pitties were dangerous, I would shrug and say okay, they are dangerous.
But we lack this proof. What we have is people presenting lots of anecdotes as hard data. (Your links are really bad for this. I’m sorry.) If we do not know the original source of the information, we don’t know if any piece of the data is good. Adding up a lot of bad data does not turn the bad data good.
There are obviously personal experiences that also color how we approach facts about dog ID. My sister had a Boxer that people called a Pit Bull. She now has a Bichon that people call a Poodle (less bizarre, but still). My other sister had a Newfie that people called a Lab. I’ll admit that I don’t remember anyone ever suggesting my family’s Saint was anything but a Saint.
So, I start out a little suspicious of claims to know something definitively that lots of people aren’t good at knowing in my experience. And I think about times when I’ve seen media reports that seem to run with a hyped up story. Summer of the sharks, anyone?
Then I started looking around. Maybe this is more scientific than I thought. But someone quoted about how hard it is to identify dog breeds. And I quoted from a wikipedia discussion of a study upthread. Here’s an important part of that again:
That should give people pause. That should cause us to say “Huh, what is going on here with these breed IDs?”
So, what could be going on with breed IDs? Well, it could be that it’s really really hard to ID a dog’s breed by looking at it. Most dogs aren’t purebreds. (I’ve heard people claim “breeds” like “Labradoodle.” That is not a breed of dog.) So we look at a mutt dog and maybe we categorize it. Maybe we think “That dog could be part Collie” or “Part Corgi.” We’re just eyeballing, and we might think well, it’s got a long back and stubby legs, so Corgi. It’s got long hair and a narrow nose, so Collie. But lots of dogs have stubby legs and long backs and lots of dogs have long hair and narrow noses. Oh well, who cares! It’s just a mutt named Fido!
The average person, hanging out with a dog, nothing pressing going on, probably can’t ID the breeds that dog represents. It’s not a skill we really prioritize in school. It’s just going to be happenstance.
And happenstance appears to have taught the American public (can’t speak for any other country) that a dog with a short coat and pushed-in face is a Pit Bull. It doesn’t seem to matter that a Pit Bull doesn’t have a pushed-in face. People have an idea about what Pit Bulls look like (vaguely like Bulldogs), and it doesn’t matter how accurate that idea is. And the thing is that it really shouldn’t matter how accurate that idea is. Oh well, who cares! It’s just a mutt named Fido!
Except then people like the OP turn around and say that suddenly those same people who can’t otherwise ID a dog’s breed are going to be right all the time. Stubby legs=Corgi! Long hair=Collie! Pushed-in face=Pit Bull!
If someone believes as the OP claims to believe, that it’s always a Pit Bull, will he always make sure it’s a Pit Bull, at least in his own head? It’s apparently incredibly important to him. He’s ignoring evidence that he’s wrong (trivially easy to find). Stubby legs=Corgi! Long hair=Collie! Attacked my mom=Pit Bull!
Media reports just take what those average people say “It was a Pit Bull!” or what the reporter thinks “It was a Pit Bull!” but not what the science shows [silence].
If you want to claim that a dog breed is dangerous (for something other than sheer size. Big dogs are more dangerous than small), I think it’s important to understand what data you have and what data you do not have. And from where I’m sitting, the data you do not have is “What breed of dog was that?”
Some people may care because they have a particular affection for Pit Bulls. I don’t, though I think pretty much all dogs are awfully cute. I just really hate arguments that essentially revolve around “Everyone knows this to be true, and everyone says this is true, therefore this is true. And if you argue, you must be deluded. Everyone knows this to be true. Pit Bull sympathizer!”
My only tiny quibble: Everybody knows my dogs are “weiner dogs” (lots of people can’t pronounce dachshund to save their lives) – even toddlers. Easily the most recognizable breed, I’d guess.
The biggest problem by far is breed identification. All dogs are canis lupus familiaris, and breeds are somewhat of a “human construct.” Meaning, humans create breeds, and then to verify a dog is a breed, we certify certain dogs as being part of said breeds. Two dogs which are certified of the same breed who produce off spring, their off spring are intrinsically considered part of the breed.
The thing is, dogs are still dogs. They can and will mate all over the species, and there’s a ton of dogs with similar features as pit bulls. Most of them are probably not part of any “breed”, they’re simply mutts with bull-dog facial features. It’s only a pit bull (American Pit Bull Terrier) if its parents were registered to that breed.
Pit bull thus in common usage has come to mean something that isn’t a breed at all. But rather a “look.” And there are many dogs that are mixed boxers, mixed pit bulls, mixed american bulldog etc that may “look like a dog people will call a pit bull.” But since these dogs are mutts, of widely varied background, it’s impossible to generalize about their behavior like you can breeds bred for specific traits.
Some of this depends on the breed organization, the UKC calls it an American Pit Bull Terrier, the AKC calls it an American Staffordshire Terrier. They’re actually the same dog breed.
Tigers and chimpanzees are families of animal species (there’s a few tiger species and two chimpanzee species), and we can pretty well say these undomesticated, aggressive-to-humans animal species are not great pets. Both can be trained and somewhat tamed, but never trusted.
Canis lupus familiaris is a domesticated animal, a very different thing. Since we know victims of tiger maulings were mauled by tigers we can generalize, most reported “victims of pit bulls” are victims of a mixed-breed “bull breed appearance” dog. Due to its underground nature since the 19th century (when both pit bulls and boxers were major dog fighting breeds) there are no reputable breeders who breed dogs for dog fighting. For this reason most of the “bull type” dogs used in dog fights are technically mongrels, not pits, not boxers or etc.
So unlike your tiger/chimp example, most victims of “pit bull attacks” are actually victims of “mutt attacks”, or just “dog attacks.” So ascribing the problematic incidents to a breed to which those dogs do not belong is a problem.
Boxers were too. But none have been bred for fighting by accredited breeders in generations. Additionally, fighting dogs were generally expected to not be aggressive to humans, dog fighters didn’t want to get tore up training their dogs or breaking up fights.
The most dangerous breeds to humans tend to be dogs not bred to interact with humans. The big examples of this are independent livestock guardian breeds, but a lot of those aren’t really popular pets anyway. Now, most of these breeds can be fine family pets, be cause they incorporate their human family as their “flock”, but they tend to be problematic pets because they don’t recognize human strangers in a friendly fashion and may respond to them as a threat. Guard dogs have similar problems if not trained appropriately.
The fighting dogs behaviorally concern me less than these breeds. But all of them are still dogs and can be quite well socialized.
Good news, the extremely dangerous dog I just bought from an urban dog fight breeder is not an AKC registered breed of any kind, so ostensibly would skate by any of those breed bans. He’s just a “mutt.” I can’t wait to set him loose on the neighborhood.
I think most people like you have a serious problem in that you don’t really understand what a breed is.
The problem is unless studies are based on registration of the dogs, versus “vague identification” they mean nothing. I think all the dog bite statistics I’ve ever seen don’t actually have a rigorous methodology for identifying breed.
Like I already said, breed is kind of a false thing. It’s a “human construct” for lines of dogs that have been bred for certain traits. But to be honest these traits and their defects vary wildly from dog to dog in a breed. Not that all dog breeding is a lie, but it’s somewhat based on unscientific behaviors hundreds of years old.
Yeah, a Poodle in a show clip is another breed that the vast, vast majority of people will get right. And Saints.
But cross a Saint with a Dachshund and you’d get something adorable but would it be identifiable? Certain mixes go from identifiable to yellow dog really quickly!
Several breeds require a proper show clip to be identifiable. A lot of the small terriers, the schnauzer breeds and a few others tend to be had to distinguish if they are in normal “sloppy pet” clip.
Damn it I missed message I meant to quote on my phone.
Re bulldogs and bulls:
Those dogs have no real connection to the modern dogs. The Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 outlawed bull baiting and then the Victorians crossbreed them with pugs to create a brachycephalic dog.that was shorter and wider.
Many of the breed origin stories are pure myth produced by breeders trying to get their creations accepted as a breed.
The modern bulldog is useless for the original task and is purely a creation of fashion and fancy.
Yeah, that was kinda the point. People who think that the outcry over pit bulls is something new simply aren’t aware that this has happened to many other breeds over the decades.
So, you have no problem with Labs, any smooth coated hound, any smooth coated terrier, Malinois, Boxers, etc etc as well as any mix of any of these breeds were all made extinct because a few people have been irresponsible with one sub type of dog? Will that fix the problem? Of course not, since you haven’t addressed that problem at all.
Any dog breed can have that happen. That’s why I keep referring to history, when people were saying the exact some things about Dobes, Shepherds, Chows, etc.
These days, there is very little logic to insurance as a whole!
To identify Pits, try playing a game beloved by dogs and cats called Clunk Heads. Adorable? A cat or small dog. Possibly painful but still adorable? Regular dog. Totally adorable, or that’s how you remember it after regaining consciousness? Pit. Heads of granite, but still, as a rule, damn good dogs.
