How about just approach all strange dogs with wariness until you know otherwise? Which is to say not petting them unless you have permission of the owner and even then, not petting if the dog is giving off warning signs that it’s not in the mood.
How do you know the dog is a pitbull? Most people I know got the wrong answer here and I’ve lost count of how many people call a dog a pitbull when it’s actually a boxer, or a bulldog, or a bull terrier, etc.
We’re always supervising closely when our 5 kids (my 2, her 3) are playing in the street in front of my friend’s house, which is in close proximity to the dogs.
When my kids (and not her 2-yr-old) are in their own backyard, I’m not constantly supervising, no.
And when my kids are playing in the street in front of our house, I supervise pretty closely but on a quiet afternoon, before people are arriving home from work, I sometimes let them play on their own or under the supervision of their 9-yr-old friend.
Our street is unusually quiet. Like, zero cars from 10 - 4, unless you count the mailman.
After looking at that, not only will I never confidently identify a dog as a pit bull again, but I now question everything I have ever known.
I feel like I have been living a lie. I don’t know if my own cat who she says she is. I’m going to force her to show me her Siamese I.D.
I’ve been around dogs enough to know that some species are more aggressive than others. I’m not going to debate this. Pit bulls fall into this category and it’s not just aggression that you have to worry about. The thing to worry about is what happens when they attack. Once that behavior is triggered the dog is NOT going to stop because of pepper spray. That would be like whacking a hornet’s nest. The only thing worse than an attack by a pit bull is an attack by 2 pit bulls. We had an incident in my city where 2 pit bulls killed a man. He tried to hide under a car while neighbors beat the dogs with baseball bats. The dogs didn’t stop.
I worked with a woman whose husband got a pit bull. She mentioned that the dog growled at her if she got near the food dish. I suggested she get rid of it, which she did after the dog mauled her. Her arm was shredded and I mean shredded. If her kids weren’t there to beat the dog down it would have been more than her arm.
Pepper spray might work for an adult who can sacrifice an arm while fumbling for it. If you don’t have the pepper spray in your pocket then it doesn’t exist. For a child playing in the yard a pit bull represents 15 stitches with each bite. By the time you hear the first scream the dog has already brought the child down and is going for the face and throat.
Muffin suggested the best course of action. Get a dog. Specifically, get a Labrador Retriever. They are great dogs with kids and will fiercely defend them. They also have the body mass and jaw structure to take on a pit bull. A dog will be a better weapon than a gun.
If a single dog attacks a child then the next best weapon is a gun, followed by a baseball bat followed by a T-handled ice pick. If it’s 2 dogs then the only weapon that will work is a gun. Like all weapons, you would need to know how to use them or they are worthless.
If you are left with no weapon then the best defense against a dog is to feed it your forearm and then grasp/tear out the dogs throat. You can’t be squeamish about this. If you don’t think you have the strength for it (you really do) then drive your thumb into the dogs throat until it is forced to release in a gag reflex. Then kick the dog in the head until dead and then kick it some more.
GodDamn, Magiver!!
If any of our one year old guide dog puppies did anything that even remotely looked like snapping and snarling, they’d have been career changed so fast your head would spin.
fessie also said that one of the dogs does not have this behavior.
Clearly the vast majority of pit bulls are just fine, but the cases of dogs killing kids around here are all due to pit bulls. The identification was after they had been taken and in observation, not from a quick glimpse from non-experts. Just anecdotal, true, but telling.
I like that ammonia suggestion even better, I can do that. One of those RealLemon lemons (or limes) would fit in my hand just fine.
I’ll watch Red’s behavior more closely next time. What happened the first time is they barked and struggled against the leash as I approached. The owner (Jennifer) stopped, spoke quietly to them and had them heel.
As I walked past, slowing a bit and saying hello to Jennifer, Red watched me warily and growled quietly but was paying attention to Jennifer’s instructions and sitting pretty still. Her other dog, Onyx, wasn’t paying close attention to me. As Red turned his head to continue watching me, he bumped Onyx and she startled and jumped and then Red went into a frenzy directed to everyone, most especially ME. Both dogs were barking at that point.
The next day I didn’t even slow down to acknowledge Jennifer, but I kept my eye on those dogs. It seemed like she had more trouble getting them to both sit this time. And again, as Red was watching me, he bumped into Onyx and then she barked and he went bananas.
She is not a large woman, if she picks up a third dog I’m sure the pack will outweigh her.
Jennifer said that Onyx was nipping Red to “keep him in line” but what I thought I saw was a dog who was fixated on ME. I didn’t get the impression that Onyx was dominant in the least.
It was the tone of the barking that worries me. Our next-door neighbor has a large goofy dog, it barks a lot but it’s friendly. There’s a big Labrador mix that gets loose occasionally and wanders through the kids’ play, he’s friendly too.
Red doesn’t seem at all friendly, his bark was gutteral with lots of teeth-baring.
And no, I don’t know exactly what breed (or mixture) it is - my girlfriend w/the kids told me it’s a pit bull (and it resembles the photos I’ve seen but WTF do I know).
No, fessie, I like Magiver’s ideas better! He mean business!
Oh, he’s an amateur. Any professional knows the ultimate trick. Melon baller. To the eyes.
When I was a letter carrier I got issued pepper spray, and I used it twice. It worked well both times. Neither were pit bulls though. I did not get attacked because of fear - one dog that attacked exactly the same as a dog who sat quietly and peacefully on the lawn as I passed, so when I saw it I had no inkling it would be a problem. I was able to react fairly quickly. I didn’t get bitten, but one of the dogs bit through my pants leg, so it was close.
The owner came running up and said the dog was perfectly safe after this, of course. :rolleyes:
I didn’t own any dogs at the time, so I possibly did something wrong. But your kids might also.
Does Red’s owner correct him when he snarls at you? If he doesn’t, there is a serious training problem here. The dog needs to know that this behavior is unacceptable. It doesn’t matter if the dog is playing - if it concerns other people, it should be stopped.
The idea of getting a dog isn’t a bad one, if it works for you.
BTW, if the dogs ever get out, raise a gigantic stink, even if nothing happens. If they get out twice, call animal control. The cases of dogs killing kids happened after the dogs had gotten out (and scared people) several times, and the owners ignored the problem.
yeaah, I was writing as he was posting. ::shudder::
Ammonia will not work. You’ll just piss the dog off more. I had squirrel problems in my chimney and attic. I filled a balloon with ammonia and ran it up my chimney (attached to a compressor) and exploded it. At most, they were annoyed. I sprayed it directly on a squirrel in the attic and the squirrel became aggressive. Turns out there were baby squirrels in the picture. Mamma squirrel was going to do what she was programmed to do and that was to defend the nest. I had to giver her the attic until the younger ones were old enough to be chased out.
I can’t emphasize enough the difference between a regular dog and those that have been specifically bread by man to fight. When such a dog goes off they go OFF. It’s like someone flips a light switch. I’ve seen pit pull pups tear into older Dobermans. It’s really amazing to watch the transition from playful puppy to robot killer in seconds. There’s little or no warning. This isn’t a semantic discussion on what constitutes a pure breed pit bull. If it looks like a pit bull, and it’s aggressive like a pit bull then you’re looking at a very dangerous animal.
That would be “bred” not “bread” unless we’re talking hot-dogs in which case mustard would be the best way to attack the problem.
The dog can’t be trusted; it’s dangerous and should not be in the presence of humans. You’ve described a dog that should be destroyed as soon as it can be arranged, and it’s about 99.999% likely the owner’s blind to it.
Pepper spray would be the very least of my defenses with an animal like that around.
Sorry.
This is the behavior I described. Unless you noticed that the dog was tracking your movement you would not have known the dog was spooling up. In this case the instant reaction to bumping into the other dog is a demonstration of the instincts bred into the dog. A child doesn’t know and wouldn’t recognize the dog’s behavior prior to an attack. The dog’s reaction to you was in the presence and control of the owner. If the dog leaps the fence there will be no constraints.
Maybe you’re right and the dog isn’t a pit bull. Maybe it is an alano espanol like one of the pictures on that site, which is a dog that was bred by the spanish for bull baiting/fighting. Or maybe it is a presa canario which is also bred for dog fighting and, because of that, nearly went extinct after dog fighting was outlawed. Or maybe it is an american bulldog, a decendent of the olde english bulldogs that were also used to fight bulls for sport. Or maybe it is a ca de bou, another breed used for bull baiting. Or perhaps it is the dogue de bordeaux, which was bred to bait bulls, jaguars and bears.
Some of the dogs on that site (labs, jack russel terriers, swiss mountain dogs, etc) have little to no negative connotation to their breeds but most of the others have the short, stocky build, square head, powerful jaw, and other traits that make them superb fight/guard/attack dogs. Most of the dogs with those traits make wonderful pets and when you research them online almost every one of them is described as great with children and family but wary of strangers, but when you get one that hasn’t been trained properly and thinks of your children and family as strangers you are in incredible danger. Being bitten by a dog bred for hundreds and thousands of years to kill the shit out of anything it considers to be an enemy leaves you seriously damaged or dead. I would highly recommend that the OP install a fenced section in their yard where their kids can play and not have to worry about being mistaken as an enemy by this neighbors dog, no matter what the breed may be. The fact that the dog is not in fact a pit bull but instead an american bulldog is hardly a comfort when you are at the hospital having your child’s face stitched up.
Ahh, another lovely thread destroying the Pit Bull.
My dog is a bullboxer - half Staffordshire bull terrier or pit bull terrier (vet’s not sure which) and half boxer.
He walks around with a plain collar, running with other dogs and people think he’s terrifying. He walks around with a wide, fancy striped collar, and does his tricks perfectly and he’s a saint, approached by people who otherwise have feared him.
Just watch your kids like you’re supposed to. As for a fence - a willing dog will jump over nothing less than a 6’ fence. Train your children on how to treat dogs, and not to fear or be nervous. Otherwise you’re setting them up for failure.
I would suggest talking to the police and perhaps someone in your city’s animal control department. I’m thinking that if the dog is snarling, baring its teeth and lunging at you while being held back only by its leash, it presents a significant enough danger that it shouldn’t be allowed out and exposed to people in public places. All it would take is for your neighbor to lose her grip on the leash and you or anyone else who happened to be near at the time would be in deep trouble. I don’t think a dog like that has any business being out in public where the only thing standing between it and your throat is a leash.
That “find the pit bull” site also has a bunch of other misleading things in the pictures. For one, many of them (including the genuine pit bull) appear to be puppies, which will certainly affect proper identification. For another, there’s no indication of size in most of the pictures: Nobody ever mistook a Jack Russel for a pit bull, or for anything else that’s a serious threat to a human. And many of the pictures were face-only shots: A Rhodesian ridgeback is instantly identifiable by its back (hence the name), but not by face.
All of which is irrelevant to the OP. The OP isn’t worried about the dog because she thinks it’s a pit bull; she’s worried about it because it snarls and growls, and is big enough to be dangerous.