Well the new year is barely underway and thepress reports another child violently and horribly ripped to shreds. No need to guess. Once again by the means of the powerful jaws of a pit bull.
If you own one of these dangerous animals (whose unfortunate murderous latent nature is no fault of their own) than I reserve for you the largest portion of anger that I can muster from my generally genial nature. Anyone who feels okay to put other people at risk by either owning or supportiing the ownership of pit bulls must take responsibility every time one of these incidents occur. Its going to happen again and again. There are all kinds of dog breeds with much more reliable natures. Why the hell can’t you pit bull owners excercise some responsibility by choosing one of these breeds for your companion ?
My best friend owns two pitbulls. The biggest danger posed to me by the biggest one is when I lay on the couch and the pitbull climbs up on me to snuggle. My friend’s 4 year old daughter used to ride the dog.
Any dog can get spooked by fireworks. I had a German Shepard who freaked every 4th of July.
Overall, I agree with you, but this is not going to go well.
Pit Bull owners will defend their dogs and the breed. They will explain it is only a small percentage that causes harm. They will argue it is the training of the animal and not the nature of the animal. Etc.
BTW: From what I do know is that Pit Bulls are not more prone to attack than several other breeds. The problem is they are far deadlier due to the structure of their jaw and the way it locks. Then there are the criminal asses that train them to fight and attack. If I am wrong about this, please cite it.
I would argue there are plenty of other great breeds and better yet mutts and that the pit bull breed should end. Please stop breeding Pit Bulls and when they die of natural causes, find another nice dog. Look into rescuing a dog from a shelter. Most of the Dog Breeding industry is out of control anyway. Please stop encouraging puppy mills.
However… there’s more to it than just “pit bulls are killers”.
The type of people who keep fighting dogs often do so as a status symbol.
The fact they think this is a worthy status symbol suggests they are lacking in social / intellectual capacity.
Someone lacking in social / intellectual capacity is unlikely to raise their dog safely.
The recent cases have tended to involve families at the lower end of the social scale - it’s therefore not suprising that the dangerous dogs they keep are not controlled properly.
Pit Bulls raised in good homes tend not to be killers.
Having said that, the risks associated with a beserk Scottie are less than for Pit Bulls - “Psycho Jack Russell Savages Slipper” doesn’t make the headlines.
Thanks Who_me? & Uvula Donor, consider another urban myth busted. I had heard that one so often and unchallenged that I accepted it. I even heard Pit Owners repeat it.
So this reduces it down to Pit Bulls are a popular Breed, a breed that is especially popular with the dumb and ignorant that would train their dogs into dangerous weapons and that pit bulls are strong enough to kill or maim a child.
If what I said was correct and Bull Mastiff’s were commonly badly trained, they would be considered far more dangerous than Pit Bulls.
Is there another component to the Pit Bull frequency of dangerous attacks? Is it just heightened media awareness? Alternatively, are the dogs actually more prone to attack even without being trained to?
This is possible as border collies without training still take to herding behaviors and many breeds are well documented to be better with kids.
But not all dogs, when spooked, are physically capable of killing a five-year-old child in minutes and despite intervention. The type that are physically incapable probably make better family pets.
I call bullshit on “it’s not the dog, it’s the owner.” Pitbulls have been expressly bred to fight and kill other dogs, and any dog owner knows those instincts are extremely hard to train out. I have a dachshund, and his greatest joys in life are following scents and diggings. Scent hounds track, sight hounds chase, herding breeds herd, and guard dogs guard. There’s no reason to have a fighting breed as a pet, imo, and I would be perfectly happy to see them outlawed.
Pit bulls bred to fight other dogs are routinely killed for showing any type of human aggression at all. Dogfighters need to be able to reach in and physically separate fighting dogs, and therefore dogs that show agression to humans are put down.
I also agree with the fact that a well raised pit bull can be quite a gentle pet, but c’mon, there is definitely a lower bar to incite a pit bull to attack than there is for most other breeds. There is more potential to raise a pit bull as a fighter than say, a boxer, which is physically quite similar (if anything larger than a pit bull).
I think what many fail to realize is that if we ban pits and eradicate them from the face of the earth, the moronic dog fighters will just find something else. And then people will come after whatever breed that is.
I had a great dane and people would regularly freak the fuck out and literally rip their children alway, all while screeching, “DON’T TOUCH THAT DOG, HE’LL KILL L YOU!!.” Yes, he was a big dog. Yup, he could have knocked that little snot nosed brat to the ground and done some damage, but he never would. Should I not be able to have a big dog because someone somewhere uses that dog do to dangerous things? If they aren’t using pits, they are going to use dobermans or german shepards or labs.
So when the hysteria continues to grow, what are you going to say when they come take your dog? And I don’t think this is an unreasonable argument, as it is my understanding that many places have also considered banning dogs other than pits. It would only be a matter of time before the hysterical moms and dads found another animal to strike fear in their hearts.
One of the huge components is that people call any damn dog they want to a “pit bull.” So any short-haired mutt gets called a “pit bull.” People don’t know what a pit bull is but they know they’re eeeeevil so if they don’t know the breed, it gets called a pit bull. I do not trust the press to identify a dog correctly by its breed.
As you’ve already shown, the amount of simple misinformation regarding pits is astronomical.
Well, pretty much all dogs are capable of killing a child, even toys. A tiny Yorkie killed a child. Yorkies weigh under 10 pounds.
I agree with your first point - that good owners will tend to suppress a Pit Bull’s killer instinct, rather than poor owners developing it (although clealy some owners will train specifically for fighting skills).
And yes, the risk of that trained supression giving way can be catastrophic.
Exactly. My 200 lb, 6 feet high on his hind legs great dane was called a pit bull almost daily. Mothers would snatch their kids away from the "ferocious pit bull’-- even though my big, stupid dog was asleep on the ground.
We also had several douches ask to buy our dog for fighting. So it takes all kinds, I suppose.
And another slight difference is that if I happened on a Yorkie attacking a child, I can pretty much guarantee it would take longer, and I can give more than “pretty much” to the proposition that I’d stop the critter in less time than it took me to compose this post.
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet. If I have to choose between a purpose-bred lapdog that has a strain of ratter in its ancestry, and a big bastard that was bred to kill bulls or other fucking big dogs, I’ll take the toy eleven times out of ten.
Sure. An adult could generally get a Yorkie off a child. But if you tried to stop the 200 lb. Saint my family used to have, you’d lose an arm.
My point was that you cannot tell how dangerous a dog is by its breed. You cannot say that a dog that will hurt another dog will hurt a person. That Saint we had tried to eat a neighbor’s yappy Cocker. She was a loving, goofy dog with people, but wanted to kill other dogs. She didn’t get the chance, but she wanted to.
My sister had a Newfoundland and had someone ask if it was a pit bull. My other sister had a Boxer, and people always assumed it was a pit bull. That’s how completely ignorant people are about dog breeds.
It doesn’t help that there is no one breed that is the “pit bull breed.” It definitely doesn’t help that the hysteria makes idiots want to get a “pit bull” so they can be badass. If pits are banned, those idiots will have Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, Boxers, German Shepherds, or heaven forbid Saints or Mastiffs, etc. All of which are bigger dogs than pit bulls.