OTOH, one can tell the difference between a Chihuahua and a Great Dane on sight.
magellan01, I’m trying to understand your position, because you seem to be arguing at cross-purposes to yourself.
You say here that you’re not advocating breed bans. However, you’re also going to great lengths in other posts to insist that this particular breed is incredibly, outstandingly more dangerous than any other dog that does, ever has, or ever will exist. You also say something about making “prospective owners accept a higher level of responsibility”. Do you mean prospective owners of pit bulls (an idea which has all the same faults as breed bans), or just dog owners in general (an idea I can fully get behind)?
I will agree that pit bull terriers are large, physically strong dogs that can potentially cause lots of damage. I will also agree that pit bull terriers often have strong dominant personalities, making them more difficult to handle for the average person. I will agree that, due to current fads, pit bull terriers are often owned by persons who are not interested in having a well-reared, well-behaved, well-controlled dog. I will agree that all dog owners should be responsible for problems caused by their dogs*. Can you agree with all of those points?
I’m not sure how you could avoid remembering shepherds and dobies and rotties making the news as killer breeds, unless you just didn’t pay attention to those reports. Maybe it’s an age thing? Also, I think reporting of these incidents is much more prevalent in our increasingly safety-paranoid, fear-mongering media.
*Actually, I’d go a lot further than that. If I ruled the world, it would be a helluva lot more difficult to acquire and/or own a dog, puppy mills would be what was banned, and animal control laws would be much stricter and much better enforced.
So pit bulls aren’t bred for strength, ferocity and fighting spirit? Makes you wonder why anyone went to all the trouble, then.
Precisely how I’m starting to feel about this thread.
I don’t know if I’d call reports of an old lady walking down the street killed by a dog or a little kid that has to go through life with is face disfigured because of someone’s dog paranoid or fear mongering. I hope things aren’t that bad that something like this is run of the mill and common that it doesn’t get reported. What’s your suggestion, keep stuff like this out of the paper?
Magellan, I think I agree with you.
I’d never own a pit bull. I’m not interested in that kind of a dog, and if I had my way 98% of all pit bulls would be neutered and the number of pit bulls would drop to 1/50th of the current population. Of course, I’d say the same about many breeds of toy dogs. Any shivering psycho toy dog would be euthanized on the spot if I ran the world.
Pit bulls require a whole other level of commitment from the owner compared to many other breeds. They aren’t for the average dog owner, and the problem is that there are way to many people breeding these dogs for all the wrong reasons. But as you say, breed specific bans won’t work, because there’s no way to prove the breed of any dog that doesn’t have papers. You can’t just euthanize every short haired thick headed dog you see, because that’s what a breed-specific ban on “pit bulls” would have to amount to.
I’m totally in favor of euthanization of the dog and potential prison terms for the owner for dog attacks, depending on the circumstances of the attack. An owner that takes their unleashed vicious dog for a walk should face prison if the dog attacks someone. Including a fucking chihuahua, I don’t care if the chihuahua can’t kill you, those fuckers can give a nasty bite.
Well, if you qualify it with “the same size and build” that pretty much merans it’s a pit bull. Mabe a smallish Rottweiler. But to answer your question: more mayhem than almost any other dog. If you were alone in and alley and a viscious 70 pound dog was about top attack you, would you prefer that dog be a pit bull or a golden retreiver?
Given that pit bulls are impossible to identify absent pedigrees, no statistics exist to prove them dangerous, either.
So now we are talking about how dangerous pits are who are trained to be vicious? What the fuck does that do with the topic at hand?
I thought this was about dogs killing children, not dogfighting. I have absolutely no thoughts on how successful goldens would be against pit bulls or any other similar breed. Is that the sound of goalposts moving I hear?
As you wish.
You are equivocating here with your use of the phrase “bad owners.” I have defined responsible ownership for you. Anyone who fails one of the categories could be a bad owner. What do *you *mean when you say bad owner? You are also begging the question by assuming that pit bulls are “inclined to rip someone’s throat out.” You cannot prove that pit bulls are so inclined by asserting it. Logic 101. No dogs are “inclined to rip someone’s throat out.” Specifically pit bulls, who, for the third time, are bred to be non-aggressive to humans.
I could take that Golden and raise him in such a way as to be lethally dangerous to humans.
Then why your prejudice against the breed?
More mayhem than what? Dogs who are less physicall imposing? So what? They are not as capable of mayhem as dogs who are more physically imposing. BFD. Their capacity for mayhem is a function of physicality, not temperament.
And always will, if raised properly. So why your prejudice against the breed?
Again witht the circular logic. Their baseline personality trait is “dog.”
And again I ask for you to define good owner. I also remind you that pit bulls are the dog of choice among knuckleheads who own them in order to project an air of toughness. They like it when their dogs are aggressive, and encourage the dogs to behave that way.
Well, the dog in question killed a child in the home. From the stastics cited in this thread, how many of the dogs ID’d as pit bulls actuall were pit bulls? How many of them were procured as family pets? What’s that? There is no way to tell? Exactly.
Theyb were not trained to be aggressive and vicious. They were raised in such a way as to allow natural dog behavior to become dangerous.
Big dogs are potentially more dangerous to people than small dogs. Do you think this is some kind of crushing debating point? It has fuck-all to do with pit bulls.
AANND he goes for the trifecta! Assme the premise all you want, it is no way to win a argument.
Yes, yes they were. Against dogs. Pit bulls are, in fact, very dog-aggressive.
Not against people. Pit bulls are not, in general, people-aggressive.
Bulldogs were also bred for strength, ferocity and fighting spirit. They weigh 40-50 pounds and can inflict severe damage. They were probably bred from war dogs (intended to attack people), and were used for arena contests against bears and bulls (although they even fought lions at times), as well as dogfighting. They almost died out after baiting/fighting was banned. “Hanging on” no matter what is a primary trait of bulldogs and has been for hundreds of years - it’s why they have such underbites, so they can hang on and still have their nostrils clear.
Is anyone railing about the dangers of bulldogs?
Mastiffs are huge dogs (average 160-230 pounds) that can absolutely be dangerous. They tend to be dominant personalities, yet are often shy, and must be carefully socialized or they often become unacceptably aggressive.
Is anyone screaming about the horrible mastiffs that must be eliminated?
Presa Canarios (bred from mastiffs and bulldogs) were created as guard and cattle dogs. They also must be very carefully raised and socialized, or their “protective” tendencies slide over into aggression. There’s some chance that they’ll be the next “killer breed”, because they’re evidently moving up in popularity among the “badass dog” crowd.
As has been reiterated time and again in this thread, the very same things have been said in the past about German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Rottweillers.
Are you simply going to eliminate every large breed of dog?
No. It means that a severely fat smaller dog doesn’t count. Do you really think it’s rare to have a dog that weighs between 35 and 60 pounds and is muscular?
A Golden of that weight might be fit whereas a pit bull of that size would probably be a fat marshmallow.
If you were alone in an alley and a dog was about to attack you, would you prefer that dog be a pit bull or the 200 pound Saint Bernard I used to have?
Because if you pick the pit bull, you are a stupid fucking person.
On sight, one can say that a dog looks loke Chihuahua, and another looks like a a Great Dane, but anyone who claims to be able to positively identify one or the other is talking out of his ass. Absent a pedigree, no sanctioning will register the animal. The sanctioning bodies determine whether an animal is a particular breed. Anyone who looks at a dog and presumes to know its lineage by sight alone is really talking out of his ass. At that point, it is simply guesswork.
I meant pit bulls. If other dogs start becoming the dog of choice and makiing it into the headlines with equal horror, I’d include them, as well.
Yes. Regarding your last point, which I gather is there to address my wanting to have pit bull owners held to a higher level of responsibility, I think that having all dog owners sign such a paper would 1) be overkill (no pun intended) and 2) undermine the reason I want pit bull owners held to a higher standard in the first place. If there were other breeds with a track record like pitbulls I’d gladly add them on to the list. To me it’s like a shot gun and a machine gun. We put more restrictions on the latter as the potential downside is worse.
Avoid? I’ve not sought to “avoid” anything. I do remember when Rotteilers and Dobermans were viewed to be the feared dogs, but I do not recall the horror stories being as frequent. As I mentioned to Contrapuntal, if I am mistaken, show me.
As to your point regarding the media, I see no reason why they would not report those incidents 25 years ago. Or more to the point, why they would report only a few of them. Again, if the horror stories occured with similar regularity, I’m open to the evidence.
On this we are in absolute 100% agreement.
No, but attributing all the attacks to pit bulls IS dog paranoia and fear mongering. I’m not saying that these things shouldn’t be reported, just that they may be over-reported compared to the past. Fifty years ago, you probably wouldn’t have heard about the guy in San Francisco killed by his landlord’s dogs (which were NOT pits, by the way) unless you lived there. Thirty years ago, it was considered reasonable to consider it the kid’s fault if he got snapped at because he was tormenting a dog. Things have changed, making it difficult to compare “killer dog attack” reports from today and the past.
In the last thread on this subject, someone posted an article about an old lady being attacked in the street, to prove how evil pit bulls are. Problem was, if you actually read the article, there was no pit bull involved.
Most people don’t know what a pit bull is, so any time a dog attacks, they start screaming “PIT BULL”. Any stocky dog with a squarish head is labeled a “pit bull type” and deemed dangerous - despite the fact that numerous breeds will create that look, especially in mutts.
That is paranoia and fear-mongering. Calls for breed-specific banning is paranoia and fear-mongering, and won’t work to boot.
The problem with those dangerous dog statistics is that they lump several breeds of “pit bull types” together and all the other breeds are listed separately. An AmStaff is as different from an American Pit Bull Terrier in appearance as a Rottie is different from a Doberman but they don’t lump all the large German breeds together. Also, a lot of mixed breed dogs are just called pit bulls when they are not any of the recognized “pit bull type” breed but gee, they kind of have that strong jawline so they must be a pit bull, right? Many of the people (animal control workers) who are the ones responsible for putting the breed label on these dangerous dogs are not really specially trained in identifying breeds. I;ve seen videos of dogs that had attacked people that were supposed to be pit bulls and I thought they looked more like a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix or a generic hound type. A big head but not the big jaw muscles you associate with a pit bull type.
I contend that Rotties as a BREED are probably more dangerous. I have seen a hell of a lot more human-aggressive Rotties than I have pit bulls. I have also seen more aggressive Chows, German Shepherds and Miniature Pinchers than I have pit bulls and we see a lot of stray pits and pit mixes brought in, many that are suspected fighting dogs.
I have a family of four Rotts behind me that scare the crap out of me. One of them jumped my 6 foot fence and bit my pit mix on the butt, AND SHE DIDN’T DEFEND HERSELF! She ran back to me instead of turning on this behemoth and taking him down with her fierce half pit jaws. The owner got the Rott back over the fence before I got out there but the way those dogs acted I have no doubt they would have gone after me as well. The biggest one was at least over 100 pounds, it’s head was huge, I think that dog could kill a human a lot quicker than a 50 pound pit bull. For a couple days I was going out in the yard with my dog every time I let her outside and carrying a big stick. Fortunately the neighbor added an extension to my fence making it impossible for the dog to get over it.
I have seen dogs that we suspected of being fighting pits that we were able to handle and clean it’s wounds without sedation without having to muzzle the dogs because they never growled or showed aggression. The pits I have seen that show any human aggression are ones that are kept as “guard dogs” they are rarely handled and they are encouraged to be aggressive to humans. We don’t see many of these because these owners don’t bother with veterinary care, usually because they can’t handle the dog either. They are made this way by their owners. I’ve seen a lot of other large breed dogs, like Rotts and GSD’s that were aggressive just because they were not socialized or trained correctly because the owners had no idea what they were doing. Imagine the damage if they were purposely trained to be aggressive - well, some are.
People who have and love pit bull breeds and are responsible owners do everything to make sure they’re pets are not aggressive to humans, HOWEVER, they also realize the potential for danger if something set the dog off and they don’t let their dogs run loose, they don’t leave kids or other animals unsupervised with their dogs. That same danger exists with any large breed but in my experience less people take those kind of precautions with their dogs points to the neighbors in the back I shudder to think what would happen if those dogs got out or a kid climbed over their fence.
Dogs are dogs after all and some people forget that certain wild behaviors have never been totally domesticated out of them, like the pack behavior or the predator/prey behavior. A dog of any breed is potentially dangerous, but it really is more about the owners than the breed. This is why I believe that any breed specific legislation is ridiculous. If you ban a breed, those that misuse the breed or just can’t train and socialize dogs responsibly will just find another breed to make the new “dangerous dog”.
Guns are dangerous, too. The responsible gun owners who know how to use their guns and would keep their guns locked up are not the problem. We could ban all guns but then only the criminals have guns. The same thing goes with dangerous dogs. Perhaps requiring licensing, training, sterilization and responsible pet ownership of any dog breed would be a monumental task but it would be a hell of a lot more effective in controlling dog attacks than any breed specific legislation because again, those that don’t care about the breed or being a responsible pet owner are the ones that would still have the breeds even if it was against the law.
Can anyone play along?
4 year old in critical condition after being attacked by the family golden retriever.
3rd grader needed 68 stiches after being attacked by the school crossing guard’s golden retriever.
14 month old hospitalized after mauling from family golden retriever.
2 year old boy hospitalized after mauling from neighbor’s golden retriever. Dog put down by owner.
Golden retriever put down after second attack - one on the family’s 12 year old boy and the second on a 7 year old boy.
3 year old girl hospitalized after being mauled by her grandparent’s golden retriever.
Boy needs 65 stiches after being attacked by a golden retriever.
There are hundreds more links to news stories of dog attacks of various breeds, including dachshunds and chihuahuas and labs and great danes and mutts at this site. Admittedly, not an unbiased site, however their information seems valid.
So, WhyNot, how *you *doin’?
I think you said you understood the problems with breed-specific bans (e.g., identifying which dogs “belong” to that breed). How would these same problems not apply to this?
What’s wrong with having all dog owners sign a paper saying that they are responsible for their dog? It could be done when the dog was licensed (as should be required and enforced). If you wanted to toss in some wording about owners being responsible to be aware of the problems inherent in having large and/or aggressive dogs, I’d be OK with that. Why the need to attempt the impossible and water down the effect by limiting it to a certain breed?
Tricky to do, since most online newspaper archives don’t go back twenty-five or forty or fifty years. Also, please see my reply to Caridwen regarding changes in standards of behavior and availability of information. Fifty years ago, would you have ever heard of the attack in England (I wouldn’t, being in the USA), or heard of the attacks in the US (I seem to recall you may be a Brit)?
I’ve known several people that were attacked by dogs twenty and thirty years ago - none of those attacks made it to the papers (much less the TV). Even those stories that did get reported didn’t receive the type of attention such things do today.
My mother was mauled by a chow in the early 80s. We had trouble even getting animal control out to pick up the body (we lived outside of town and had to shoot the dog because he just wouldn’t stop). There certainly weren’t any TV or newspaper reporters flocking to our doorstep, or even to the ER.
There was a Golden Retriever cross in my neighborhood in the late 80s. Its owners turned it loose every night when they came home. I beat him off our porch with a two-by-four on several occasions, because he was going after the pizza delivery guy. Animal control refused to come out until after he’d bitten a girl riding down the street on a bicycle. (Actually, they refused to come out then until I’d brought her to the phone to report the attack herself.) Again, no news story.
That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
See, we can all get along. 
Most dog bites or attacks still don’t make the paper. I’d say a small percentage do and only the most horrible ones. I’m in the park daily and witness them all the time.
Take a look at the link I posted
“There is a dog bite epidemic in the United States. There are almost 5 million victims annually – about 2% of the entire population. 800,000 need medical attention. 1,000 per day need treatment in hospital emergency rooms. Between 15 and 20 die per year. Most of the victims who receive medical attention are children, half of whom are bitten in the face. Dog bite losses exceed $1 billion per year, with over $300 million paid by insurance”
Hey, I got your back, babe! 