Pit Bulls (continued)

The BBQ Pit
261

+1. Basically this. They see their dog, and nothing else. ‘He’s a big old softee! He’d never bite anyone! He was such a warm, friendly dog’ - how often do we read this in the paragraph right before we read about how that the ‘friendly dog’ that had ‘never shown signs of aggression’ tore the limbs of a little boy or girl? (Not that this is exclusive to Pit attacks, it should be noted. Just more frequent, since Pits cause the most deaths).

I have a golden retriever. He’s the most gentle, loving dog I’ve ever had, although the Great Dane we had growing up is a close second. He’s been trained and any behaviour suggesting he’s trying to assert dominance was most definitely NOT rewarded. And we still watch him like a hawk around our children, he’d never be left alone with a baby anywhere near him, and we sure as hell would not take pictures of him standing over, laying over & pushing down on a child. When we’re outside and children are nearby, he’s on the leash. I’d stake my life on him never biting a person in anger…I’m not staking my children’s life on it.

262

Well, I decided on my pit bull long before I developed any personal attachment to him. I did long research, spending a lot of time at dogsbite.org, as well as pro-pitbull sites (which tend to be a little crazy, as well), and, in the end, decided that, yes, while there is added risk, it’s not enough for me to worry about. I’m an order of magnitude more likely to be attacked or killed in the street by a human than I am by a dog. (Of course, I live in Chicago.)

263

How many small children in your family? I’m guessing ‘none’, since the only focus of your risk assessment was…yourself.

264

One coming soon and a wife. So, try again. And the majority of the pit bull owners I know do have children. They are not exactly unpopular dogs here, across all economic and educational backgrounds.

265

Crucible: I have had a pitbull for seven months. Prior to that I had cocker spaniels and golden retrievers and a Rottweiler\border collie. My family has had Great Danes, Bull mastiffs, more cockers , a Vizla hound/lab and a rott/lab, and the aforementioned nasty little dachshund.
I’ve been on this earth for 55 years and only a few days of those years have I been outside the company of a dog or multiple dogs. I have been bitten once, by the Rottweiler Lab that I lived on the same property with and knew well – his girlfriend was in heat and he was kind of grumpy to begin with. I have been attacked, so to speak, once, by a pit as earlier described. It wasn’t me it was my dog. That was 12 years ago.

Yet I have I been speaking out on behalf of pits and against BSL for years, because I do know a great deal about dogs, and I know it’s full of shit. As I have become more interested in the subject of BSL, and have become more aware of how horribly abused pit bulls are, I have learned more about them generally. It was through learning more about them and getting to know them I came to the decision to get one for my next dog, not the other way around.

It is also how I know that contrary to Dragon ashes delusions of knowledge about my dog, my little cuddle bunny is not trying to dominate me in the least. She is very aware that she is number three around here: first me,then Preston then her. I have been committed for many years to making certain that all of my dogs always know who’s running the show, whether they are a 90 pound golden retriever or a 40 pound pitbull; Forget aggression, I just can’t stand dogs that are out of control on any level for any reason, even “cute” reasons, and of course dogs that think they run the show are dogs that bite, whether they are pit bulls or nasty little dachshunds.

In fact, I have been trying to teach that lesson to some friends of mine for several years. They have a beautiful mix of some kind, probably cattle dog, Lab, who knows. Blonde 70 pounds, smart as hell. Because the man in the couple has always been a cat person and is new to dogs, he is making boatloads of mistakes, starting with catering to her every desire. He doesn’t want to interfere with her happiness by sqelching her joy by controlling her in any unnecessary way. As a result a lot of people don’t like her, she jumps, she crowds, she’s demanding, she gets nervous and needy when she doesn’t get what she wants. Recently she’s actually nipped a couple of people, including a child.Nothing terribly violent or aggressive, just “corrective” nips where she was letting someone know that they worth working her desire and they weren’t allowed to do that. It might be better if she was more violent and aggressive about it, then I could get her parents to listen to me when I tell them why she’s doing and how they need to crack down on her understanding of who runs the show.

The dogs that do the most biting are the dogs that are most indulged.

266

:rolleyes:

You have a baby ‘on the way’. You also said you ‘decided on my pit bull **long before **I developed any personal attachment to him. I did **long research’ **etc etc. So unless you’ve only had your pit bull for literally a month or two (or did not really decide that long before or do that much research) you did not, in fact, have any small children in the house when you made up your mind…right?

267

No. But both my wife and I had plans, so that it was the biggest part of the decision-making process, yes. You obviously do not agree with our decision.

By “long decided on my pit bull,” I mean that we had decided that, before we got a dog, we decided that pit bulls were an acceptable option. The reason pit bulls had to be considered specifically is that the vast majority of dogs available at the shelter were labeled as pit or pit mixies (or AmStaffs if you were in the suburbs). I had been volunteering at the shelter for several months and got to work closely with a lot of pits and pit mixes and, I admit, I did become fond of them. So we had to decide whether we even wanted to have pits on the table or not. I did not have a specific pit bull in mind or that I wanted a pit bull specifically. It was just an acceptable option to us based on our risk threshold keeping in mind that we want to have children in the family, and based on other families we know with pit bulls and children.

268

And, yes, it does concern me as with any medium-to-large dog in the house. The one actual mauling death I personally know comes from a family black lab that just “cracked” one day. If I wanted to minimize risk, I would not have any medium-to-large dog in the house, period. And that is a sensible option, too. Is it worth having a pit, rott, shepherd, doberman, huskie, malmute, etc., if you have children? Maybe not. You certainly are introducing a bit of extra risk by having any of those dogs. I would reduce my family’s risk of injury or death more just moving out of Chicago, to tell you the truth. (And, to be honest, I actually do feel safer with my wife walking the dog at night, versus the solo night strolls she used to take.) It’s not a level of risk that I consider significant. Your mileage obviously varies.

269

That is correct - I would recommend against Pit Bulls (among other breeds) in the house with small children. And I found it rather odd, to say the least, that you didn’t even mention you or your family (children) in your posts - *nothing *in your posts indicated you gave any thought to pits and small children:

Your posts indicated that you thought *you *had a chance against a Pit Bull. It wasn’t a big enough risk for *you *to worry about, since you were more likely to be mugged on some Chicago street.

Do you think your 6-month old baby, your 1yr old, your 2yr old etc will stand a chance against a Pit Bull? Go back and read the pro-pit ASCPA: Pits may not give a warning before becoming aggressive. They may become more aggressive than other breeds. Because of their natural tendencies, a little squabble might become a serious fight. They’re easily excited, and in an agitated state, may have little control over behaviour. They are ‘mouthy’ - they tend to bite harder in play vs other breeds. They can be stoic and insensitive to pain.

This is the dog you decided to get, knowing full well you would soon have a small child on the way.

So yeah, you’re generally correct in saying I don’t agree with your decision. shrug I could give a rat’s ass; ain’t no skin of my nose; my kids aren’t the one that have to live with your dog. We’ll be keeping our distance, so thank you for doing the same.

(I’m not saying I am in agreement with BSLs, btw).

270

Since you appear to be into psychoanalysis, my wife is a poster here, and I don’t like talking about my family life more than I need to, hence, just keeping the personal pronoun to myself. You may notice that in the pit threads, I didn’t even mention having a pit until well into the thread itself. But feel free to psychoanalyze and think whatever you want to think based on what pronouns I use.

No, my 6-month old doesn’t stand a chance against a pit. Nor a lab. Nor a shepherd. Nor pretty much any other dog. I would never advise that a pit bull is the perfect dog for someone with small children. Some pit owners do say that, with all this “nanny dog” bullshit, but I don’t agree with that. And, yes, I have read up on the ASPCA as well as reading through pretty much all the deaths listed on dogsbite.org.

I don’t have a problem with you keeping your distance, and I have no issue with keeping my distance from you. It’s not like it’s some sort of insult or anything.

271

I think one thing we can both agree on is that we don’t really need to be breeding more pit bulls.

272

That’s the money part of the quote right there.

My dogs have been properly trained to be gentle (they even know that word) when taking treats or toys from someone’s hand with their mouths. The way they gingerly take whatever you’re handing them is absolutely precious.

I would never, ever have handed my dachshund a treat for him to take directly from my hand. Ever. He’d’ve bitten my fingers off.

When I was 5 years old I was bitten in the face by a small mutt of a dog. I still have a lump of scar tissue in my bottom lip and a scar just below my lip from it 47 years later. The dog was laying in its bed and I had squatted down in front of it and was petting it, and out of nowhere, BOOM!, my face is GUSHING blood.

You don’t know anything about the people who owned the dogs you’re citing in these horrific biting deaths. You don’t know why they chose pit bulls (maybe they wanted attack dogs), what the pit’s history was (maybe they were rescued fighting dogs that were originally trained to attack with little provocation), or the extent to which the people tried or didn’t try to train good behaviors into their dogs. You don’t know if any of the children were left unattended and perhaps unintentionally provoked the dogs, and you don’t know if maybe they intentionally provoked the dog. As I said in an earlier post, a neighbor’s little boy was mauled by a couple of (penned up!) Alaskan Malamutes (or Huskies, I don’t recall which) and had his penis bitten off. He damn near died. Turned out the boy had been throwing rocks at the dogs.

Statistics cannot tell you why. And the why isn’t just because they’re pit bulls.

273

I would agree with that.

And sorry - I wasn’t trying to psychoanalyze you or anything - just found it curious that someone would actively and apparently extensively research the issue, and would still specifically decide to get a Pit, even with small children in the house. I thus assumed the dog came well before the child.

274

nm

275

And actually, the money quote from the ASPCA site is:

Possibly. Possibly not. Statistics do tell me that pit-type dogs account for 60%+ of US fatal dog attacks, despite only making up 4-5% of the US dog population. What is your explanation for this? That pit owners are *several orders of magnitude *more likely to be shitty owners?

We don’t know *anything *about the other 80 million dogs in the US, either - how they were trained, why they were chosen, their history. Do you think Pits are the only dogs being provoked by children? Do you think Pits are the only dogs not being properly trained?

276

That is such crap. Absolute unmitigated crap.

Some dogs love to snuggle and leaning on you or laying on you is just a sign of affection. Our dogs think they’re lap dogs! And when they climb up on our laps as much as they can fit themselves, they’re docile and loving, not dominant. For fuck’s sake this post just pisses me off like you cannot believe.

Yeah, Lola’s really asserting her dominance over Spiny Norman here. And Duke, too. OMG NOOOOOOOOO! HE MIGHT OVERPOWER JEANNINE!

Somebody had better warn THIS mother about her dog’s dominant behavior to save the life of her poor child he’s leaning on and laying on. Shitshitshit, that child’s gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Fucktard.

277

No offense taken. I understand it’s a touchy subject, and my views on it aren’t exactly super pro-pit nor anti-pit. I’m somewhere a bit in the middle, but obviously towards the pro-pit side of things. I think the issue of pit bulls is an interesting one and the sudden marked increase in deaths attributable to dogs identified as pit bulls to be troubling and worth examining closely and dispassionately.

278

Fucktard yourself, shit-for-brains, since you apparently have the reading ability and overall intelligence of a retarded eggplant. Dogs curling up besides you or lying next to you? Not a problem. Trying to jump into your lap? Leaning on you? Laying on you? That is very likely a dog displaying DOMINANT BEHAVIOR - he is DEMANDING YOUR ATTENTION. I’m sure you think it’s ‘awww so cute’. And I’m sure you reward the dog by giving him exactly what he demanded.

279

That is pretty much me and Zusje… she can and will stay in bed with me sleeping anytime every time all the time that I’m in bed in it and Preston will too now that he’s gotten the hang of it.

280

I was tickled by someone up in the threads there referring to people as the ‘parents’ of a dog.

I always find it odd, too, that people try to defend pit bulls by claiming that other dogs bite, too. SO? Why have any dogs around? Keep the working ones that require real training, and get rid of those that just take up space and require a person to go around picking up their shit.

Who is the dominant one in that relationship? the shitter, or the one picking it up?