I am cracking up, dropzone. The idea of the poor neighbor being convinced that he lives next to a full blooded wolf. Hahaha!
That Husky/Samoyan/GSD mix I mentioned earlier? Some people thought she was a wolf.
Well, wolves are so crossbred with domestic dogs these days that pretty much IS a wolf.
It could be worse:
My point has been banning a specific breed is stupid and when it someone tries to include breed mixes into the equation it becomes scientifically impossible because rarely would a mix have a history usable for that purpose. There are no traits that are unique to any breed of dog, despite the insistence of the anti pit crowd. I can’t dna test my dog to find out if he possesses a ‘pit bull gene’ even if I wanted to so how do proponents of breed specific legislation plan to do it?
What make you think that dog may or may not have pit bull blood in it? I say we can go ahead and ban dogs that meet The Flying Dutchman’s as I’ve never scene a dog who’s head is actually bigger than its’ body. My dog has a big head but doesn’t meet that standard.
I have a pit bull, and people, I shit you not, often think she’s a yellow Lab, because she’s fawn-colored and likes to fetch sticks from the river.
People are dumb and make things up to suit their expectations.
well - we might have to disagree here. you don’t think he looks like a pitbull and I don’t think he looks like a pitbull either. but that just goes to show - perception is everything! I’ve had this dog for seven years and many people over those years have asked me if he’s a pitbull! most of the time when I walk my dog, nobody says anything. But of the people who have asked me about my dog - it runs about 30% ‘is that a pitbull?’ and about 40% 'is that a boxer? (which always surprises me, 'cuz even though boxers are smaller than most people think- he’s still way too small to be considered a boxer) and the last 30% is ‘he’s cute - what kind of dog is that?’
I think you are being a little disingenuous here to compare my dog vs pitbull to siamese vs persian. No one would look at my dog and think ‘german shepherd’ or even ‘rottweiler’. but many apparently don’t know enough to distinguish my ‘mutt’ vs pitbull. If you don’t recognize the breed right off and if it has short hair, a blunt muzzle and it’s ‘big enough’ - yeah, a lot of people do jump to the ‘pitbull’ assumption. I’m surprised that you are surprised by this - maybe it has something to do with the neighborhood?
I’m not exaggerating this - my dog is seven years old and I’ve had him since he was a puppy. when I got him, pitbull was not even on my radar. and its not just from walking him - people who have come to the door have also asked me ‘is that a pitbull’, even though, I have always thought that he was too small for anyone to consider a pitbull (he’s about beagle sized).
so, yeah - unlike you, apparently - I find it really really easy to believe that people could mistake pretty much any random, short-haired, blunt muzzled, medium to large sized dog for a pit bull. based on what I’ve read in this thread ‘pitbull type’ is even easier.
Ok. What do I know from dog breeds. Sure. People probably come up to you with all time.
Yes, actually, I do. You have a problem with it? It holds owners responsible for their dogs’ behavior regardless of the breed. As a result, dog bite incidents have gone down 70 percent. What’s not to like about that?
It’s not??? I could have sworn that’s what this entire thread has been about. Color me mystified by this claim.
You are aware, are you not, that 70 percent /= 100 percent, right?
Not to mention … “The pit bulls’ owners were given five tickets, said Adbul Rafih, operations manager for animal and bylaw services, one for allowing an animal to be at large, two for allowing damage to another animal and two for having unlicenced dogs.”
Right, as we’ve been saying all along: OWNER NEGLIGENCE is the proximate cause of that incident. But while you’re willing to give the owners a pass and blame the dogs — no, blame the dogs’ breed — Calgary is actually holding the owners accountable.
As for the idiot whose poor dog got attacked, she said, “I have a one-year-old daughter and this could have been her.”
What responsible parent of a one-year-old just leaves their front door wide open almost inviting something bad to happen in the first place?
But no, it’s all the dogs’ fault.
Proof neither you nor he get is. Inviting random people on the Internet to self-report alleged “pit bull” attacks is supposed to provide us with valid information? You’ve got to be joking! Have you forgotten what website you’re on, dude?
As for the expert from Calgary, her name is Cathie Cino, and she’s the “director of Cat and Jack Canine Safety. She’s a dog trainer, author, and behaviour consultant with aggressive dogs,” which it said right there on the cite I provided. Her LinkedIn biography says she’s been a dog behavior specialist for 20 years.
Nor can he determine the actual breed of any dog he takes reports of bites on. I don’t know any genuine “expert” who would accept input like that and call it data.
Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner!
Why yes, yes we are. When Denver, Colo. passed BSL, this is what happened:
You should read the link that cites the death toll. Even the head of Denver Animal Care and Control, who has testified in support of the ban in the past, “in recent years, his assessment has grown more measured. ‘Has it worked? I’m not sure if we can answer that question,’ he says.”
You. Are. Too. Stupid. For. Words.
The owners may claim they were shocked by the attack, but in nearly every case there has been at least one factor that showed negligence on the part of the dog owner: they left a child unattended, they left a door open, they left a gate open, the dog was not in their control, etc. It’s clear you continue to ignore this because to acknowledge it would mean admitting you’re wrong. Suck it up dude and just say it: You’re wrong.
Yes, to these fools, seriously. You’re late to this party. Have fun! 
Almost no one can — a fact we’ve shown numerous times in the nearly 550 posts in this thread. They don’t care. Facts? We don’t need no stinkin’ facts!
No he doesn’t understand. He’s really that stupid.
SQUEEEEEE!!!
Now you’re getting it! 
So last night, shortly after 1:00 a.m., my husband and I responded to a horrific accident that took place right outside our front door. A motorcycle — according to witnesses — flew through a red light, swerved to avoid a left-turning car that was still in the intersection mid-turn, ricocheted off another car so fucking hard that it blew out her windshield, set off her air bag, blew out her tire, and ripped his leg off in pieces, strewing the bits all over the road, and caused his daughter to suffer a compound fracture of her femur to the point it was protruding sideways out of her leg.
Since motorcycles cause so many gruesome deaths and injuries, turning their victims into mangled road pizza, I suggest we institute city-wide bans on them. Surely you can’t object to that, given your grave concern for the safety of people’s children and all that.
I can see where the pit bull comments are coming from. Doesn’t look like a pit bull to me, but it really doesn’t look like a Boston terrier mix to me, either. I’d say it looks more pit-like than Boston terrier-like to be honest. But definitely a mutt of some sort. I’m actually surprised that it’s got a Boston terrier lineage. I would not have guessed that at all.
I’m actually also a little confused about the “large head” comments. Their heads definitely have a boxiness and particular shape to them, but I never thought of them as being particularly large. I mean, this, to me, is a quintessential pit bull terrier.
Or this.
For me the giveaway is the shape of the head, and the musculature of the chest and front part of the body. That said, volunteering at the city animal shelter, there is a surprisingly (at least to me) wide range of phenotypes that get classified simply as “pit bull mix.”
I *am *calling bullshit.
Cite? As near as I can make out, dog bite incidents in Calgary have gone up since the Responsible Pet Ownership Bylaws were passed in 2006.
So, basically Caeser Milan without the TV show. And we know how much credibility Milan has with the dog crowd. Know what her educational background is in terms of animal training, behaviour, aggressive dog behaviour etc? Exactly *one *‘certificate’ awarded 20 years ago in animal behaviour from a diploma mill school that uses its ‘students’ as a source of free labor while training other dogs. That’s it.
‘Expert’ my ass.
Golden retriever/lab/shih tzu owners do these things all the time as well. Surprisingly, we don’t hear stores of golden retrievers chewing up and killing dozens of kids a year. Wonder why.
In news reports, if that dog ever bit a human, it probably would be reported as being a pitbull. It has some similar features and pitbull sells better than anything else.
When I was desperate to have a dog I browsed the placing ads on a US shelter site, just for the looking, and I was astounded by how many dogs that were not pitbull were labelled as pitbull. It seems to be a very broad classification in some contexts.
I was also asked numerous times if the dog I used to look after was a staffie - pitbulls are banned in the UK - despite her being obviously mostly chocolate labrador. People are weird.
In the US, if you’re curious, staffies (I assume you’re talking about Staffordshire Bull Terriers here, as opposed to AmStaffs) are often filed under “pit bull.” It’s always seemed a bit weird to me as English Staffies seem distinct enough from American Pit Bull Terriers (or American Staffordshire Terriers which, depending on your point of view, may be the same thing as the APBT). The localities with breed-specific legislation on pit bulls usually include a prohibition against Staffordshire bull terriers in the US. It is usually written to specifically exclude APBT, AmStaff, and Staffordshire bull terriers, plus a vague wording of any dog that exhibits significant characteristics of any of those three breeds.
I know. I only specified staffies because pitbulls have been banned for long enough that we don’t really have any, so people talk about staffies instead. They are very similar and the breed-specific legislation doesn’t stop that.
I mention it because recently I remember reading some positive online article on a pit bull, complete with photo, from somewhere in the US, and some of the UK comments were weird, insisting that the dog in question was not a pit bull, but rather a staffie, with an underlying subtext that if the dog did something good, it could not have been a pit bull. I wish I could remember the source. Anyhow, the dog in the picture was what I’d call a by-the-book pit bull, taller and proportionally bigger than a staffie. I truly found the comments bizarre, given that the photo was consistent with a pit bull and the owner identified it as such in the article, but a few UK commentators had to insist that “it’s a staffie, mate.”
Nah. Medium size + short muzzle + generic dog coloring = pitbull to an awful lot of people. I will remind you that I figured that there are people too stupid or ignorant to accurately identify any but the most obvious dog breeds (usually limited to a Rough Collie like Lassie and a Poodle if it has a poofy haircut) when I was four years old, for fuck’s sake. I believe that every day a moron or two thinks that dog is a pitbull and likely to eat their children.
You think people are insane how about a reputable organization that has identified each of these dog as pit bull mixes. Some of them I see almost no resemblance to Staffordshire Bull Terrier’s but that’s just me. Let me know what you think.