I was going to say, chihuahua is a close second to the numbers of pits. I think pits beat them out by a little bit overall, but that’s a lot because there is just a much larger supply of pits here. Plus it seems to me–and I may be wrong about this–that pits are experiencing an marked uptick in popularity among dog owners in general.
[aside] Saw a very tough-looking Mexican* gent holding his wee Chihuahua as he drove along. Those are perfect pets if you miss all the livestock on the rancho back home because they are as evil as all of them combined, yet you can keep them nearly anywhere. I love those little bastards.
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- Brahma bull decal on his Dodge Durango’s door, a big “Zacatecas” decal in the rear window, Norteñas music blasting on the radio–I don’t jump to conclusions regarding ethnicity, though I will tiptoe.
Interesting article today asking why only certain fatal dog on human attacks result in murder charges.
It says only 3 fatal maulings resulted in murder charges, ever. And none were fatal attacks on family members of the person who owned the dog, despite there being many of those each year.
In one of the 3 murder cases ( both husband and wife owners were convicted and jailed) the dog had 30 previous attacks on humans that Animal Uncontrol responded to, before it finally put a neighbor lady in a closed casket funeral.
So back to my question: why is the spouse, child, parent, or grand parent of the owner of a dog that kills a family member, of any lesser value than a non relative, when they are mauled to death?
Especially in Texas, whose answer to non breed specific legislation, is “Lillian’s Law” - named after the elderly woman fatally mauled by her neighbors dog as she was on her riding mower on her own property. Lillian’s Law states that any dog owner whose dog kills a person, will go to jail. Yet since it has passed, Texas has had many fatal attacks on family members, and not one resulted in any charge. No murder charges in all 50 states in DBRFs on family members. No charges of any kind, in most if not all.
I dunno. Maybe it’s like a kid who kills his parents asking for mercy because he’s an orphan.
AFAICT, it is pretty rare for any type of accidental death within a family to result in criminal charges, except sometimes parents indicted for criminal negligence towards infants.
Moreover, in the case of a family member being killed by the family dog, I’m not sure how you’d determine which of the survivors and/or the victim counted as “the owner”, to the exclusion of others.
Anyway, it’s kind of off-topic, but might be an interesting subject for a different debate.
And, sigh, apparently some weirdos visiting the shelter I volunteer(ed) at (I haven’t been in a couple months) like pit bulls more than others. (Warning: bestiality story ahead.) Sorry. Didn’t feel like starting a thread about it.
Have you been paying attention?:eek:
I had a pit bull once. It was a rescue from a junkyard and she was aggressive as hell towards other dogs and adult male humans. She was trained that way. I don’t know if they are easier to train that way or if it is in their nature but if you kept her away from other dogs and strange men, she was a total whimp.
She had puppies and they were all well behaved but pretty territorial and aggressive towards other dogs so I can see why you might pick a pit bull to be a junkyard dog if you wanted to train an aggressive dog.
pit bulls are not the pound for pound best fighting dog. Dog fighting is really popular in japan still, and the primary breed used is the tosa, which beats pit bulls so frequently that they are never matched anymore.
I got robbed by a white guy.
White guys must be criminals. They should all be shot.
Ima white guy, but overall I’d pretty much agree.
I love dogs but I just cannot grasp why anyone with children would buy a pit bull, knowing that they attack more than any other breed and too often . Check out the statistics. Everyone’s pit bull is sweet and gentle until they attack.
What breaks my heart is when you go to the pound to rescue a dog, there are often ten times the amounts of pits than any other breed. Why do you suppose that is?
The statistics actually provided upthread do not bear out this claim.
Because pits are the fashionable tough-guy dog right now, which means there are a lot of poorly trained, deliberately traumatized, and unneutered ones running around right now?
Same as Rottweilers and German Shepherds were the problem dogs when I was growing up rural in the 80s. Always a lot of rotties and shepherds at the pound, always they were the dogs biting people locally, etc.
Why do YOU think it is that up until about the 1980s the pit bull was one of the classically recommended family-friendly dogs, to the point of being the iconic dog on the Little Rascals and such?
Jesus fucking christ. Read the craigslist pet ads. Almost every other one is some fuckhead breeding “pits” in his backyard. Where do you think those puppies end up? That’s right- the pound. That’s why there’s so many pits in the pound; morons breed the shit out of them. It isn’t because they’re all child killers. :rolleyes:
Every dog on the whole fucking planet is sweet till they attack. I have a goddamn maltese poodle mix who adores kids, until one day she decided she didn’t like one specific kid and bit him. Now, granted, she’s all of 10 pounds and the kid was fine, but she’s a perfect example of a dog who was fine for YEARS before she “decided to attack”. Every single dog bite story you ever read* starts off with, “Rover was so sweet, I never thought he’d bite anyone!”
Pit bulls are just dogs. They’re barely even a breed anymore. Sometimes dogs bite. Neuter your dogs. Train your dogs. Never leave a dog and a child unsupervised. That’s how you prevent dog bites.
*hyperbole alert!
Your premise is without basis
[quote=“miss_elizabeth, post:313, topic:657969”]
Jesus fucking christ. Read the craigslist pet ads. Almost every other one is some fuckhead breeding “pits” in his backyard. Where do you think those puppies end up? That’s right- the pound. That’s why there’s so many pits in the pound; morons breed the shit out of them. It isn’t because they’re all child killers. :rolleyes:
Every dog on the whole fucking planet is sweet till they attack. I have a goddamn maltese poodle mix who adores kids, until one day she decided she didn’t like one specific kid and bit him. Now, granted, she’s all of 10 pounds and the kid was fine, but she’s a perfect example of a dog who was fine for YEARS before she “decided to attack”. Every single dog bite story you ever read* starts off with, “Rover was so sweet, I never thought he’d bite anyone!”
Pit bulls are just dogs. They’re barely even a breed anymore. Sometimes dogs bite. Neuter your dogs. Train your dogs. Never leave a dog and a child unsupervised. That’s how you prevent dog
Pit bulls make up over 50% of attacks …your Maltese poodle is probably .000001%. Out bulls are notorious for attacking people…so back to my question, why would anyone with children buy one!
Because their notoriety is a function of recent idiocy with backyard breeders and their image as the current “tough guy” dog, rather than any particular feature of the breed. In fact, as has been made clear many times, a properly bred and trained pit bull is almost completely uninterested in attacking humans, BY DESIGN.
People with children would therefore buy a reputably bred and trained pit bull because they are an excellent family pet with a long-standing (much longer than the current fear of them) reputation of being extremely good with children.
Do you not understand that breed reputations change with their popularity and who’s using them for what? Hell, Standard Poodles used to be considered vicious guard and Army dogs along with German Shepherds.
Pit bulls are no more particularly dangerous as a breed than any other medium-sized dog.
Nice attempt at ignoring factual information, but the point stands.
- Pit bulls may or may not actually be involved in more biting incidents than the average dog, and the number of those incidents is modified both by their popularity and by their current status as the popular dog to mistreat and mistrain.
- Pit bulls, along with Rottweilers, enjoyed a long (in the case of Rotts, centuries) reputation as great-with-kids family dogs.
Neither of those statements has been successfully disputed, or even mildly called into question, by any statistical data provided in this thread.
Even if so, makes no difference. NOW, TODAY, Pit Bulls are more dangerous as more assholes are “training” them to be more dangerous. True, 90% of the problem is with the human asshole, but that still means that any loose PB met on the street is thus more likely to be dangerous.
And, altho I agree that a properly raised Pit Bull is *no more likely to attack another human *than any other medium sized breed, the PB has a more dangerous bite than most.
Right, but it’s no justification at all for claiming the breed is inherently dangerous, and likewise no justification for breed-specific legislation–the asshole set will just move on to a new breed, and start pumping THOSE out as they get fashionable. Regulating breeders and spay/neutering more closely is IMHO the correct approach to the country’s current (minimal) problem with dog attacks/bites.
I’ve seen statistics that debunked that, but I don’t have PubMed access these days. Dog Bite Force: Myths, Misinterpretations and Realities | Psychology Today seems to indicate that bite force is mostly proportional to dog size, with some benefits from muzzle shape–in any case, Mastiffs topped the list by a fair margin. I’m not aware of any particular physiology or psychology a pit would have that would be appreciably different from other dogs in that general size and muzzle shape class (such as rottweilers, dobermans, etc.)
That is not true. Pit bulls were never recommended as family friendly. Just making up facts doesn’t make it truth
Read the thread, and the links provided. Just denying documented facts doesn’t make your case.