Huh. Somehow when you said
I understood you to mean that you would shoot loose dogs that you believed to be threatening, as you stated. I assumed you used that word with intent. Silly me.
If one is actually being attacked one has every right to defend oneself and at that point there is not any doubt to give the benefit of.
To clarify: Two pit bulls walking across the field are not threatening me at all. I have no quarrel with them just because they are seen to be a threatening type of dog. When they move close enough to threaten and attack me or my family, the situation changes.
It’s not ‘logic’, which implies a deterministic relationship I specifically said was not the case. I said correlation, which doesn’t mean 100% correlation, but I believe a significant correlation to be obvious when it comes to owner behaviors which create dangerous dogs. That’s partly just economic, dogs more likely to be seen as protection against crime where crime rates are higher. But it’s also cultural.
As to the correlation of so called ‘pit bulls’ being more more popular down the economic scale, which is a different observation, it’s also pretty obvious IME and not refuted by stating one exception. I’m perhaps an exception as well. But my dog is often a conversation starter with people in my diverse area I might not end up conversing with otherwise. Because, she’s of a type and style found more attractive in general in their sub cultures. And that’s nice. Although, at the same time the class/race distinction in who owns ‘pit bulls’ is fading I believe (or re-fading, didn’t used to be so decades ago either). If you want to help a local shelter dog around here, that’s what the shelters have, basically. More people of diverse backgrounds are getting past the hysteria and doing so.
Still I’d stick by the statement of a correlation of class (and race to a degree) with bad dog ownership practices being more common, and ‘pit bulls’ being more common. Which explains a lot of the mindless hate toward ‘pit bulls’ IMO. So I think it unwise to dismiss this point because it somehow sounds politically incorrect. I also specifically said it would be a relatively weak inference faced with a particular dog, so the joke about asking the dog is off point.
We bred cows for 25 gallons of milk per day.
We bred turkeys for breastmeat so large that they are unable to walk.
We bred bloodhounds to have incredible powers of smell.
We bred thoroughbred horses to run faster and faster.
We bred marijuanna for increased potency
We bred corn for fast growth and pesticide resistance.
And we bred pit bulls to be aggressive and fight to the death.
NOW–who here doesn’t understand the effects of selective breeding?
It’s been covered in this thread, and pretty much every discussion of this topic, but the people making this point must explain why it applies to dogs originally bred to fight other dogs*, but doesn’t apply to all the dog breeds bred to fight other animal besides dogs. When the issue is dog aggression toward humans, not other animals. AFAIK they never have an explanation, except falling back on some form of ‘well but everybody knows…’
*leaving aside for the moment the huge issue that ‘pit bull’ as commonly used is not a breed but a vague appearance category including dogs to which the statement doesn’t even apply.
Because pit pulls were also bred to be guard dogs. (Rottweilers more so than Pitt bulls but no difference between the two breeds behaviors imo)
I’ve never heard this. I’ve always been told pit bulls were bred to be non-aggressive towards humans, and were commonly used around children as “nanny dogs.” Do you have a cite I could look at for pit breeds being used as guard dogs?
They were not. The discussion of breed tendencies that follows should be read with the understanding that “breed tendencies” are generalizations at best and do not dictate a particular dog’s behavior:
“Pit bulls” that were bred as fighting dogs (and it’s not clear what percent of them were ever purpose-bred as fighters) were very much NOT bred to be guard dogs. They were bred to fight other dogs, not people, and in fact allegedly pits who bit their handlers were put down – not even a dogfighter wants to be maimed while practicing his specialty.
The dogmen of old allegedly chose to keep OTHER breeds (guarding breeds like Rottweilers, Dobermans and German Shepherds) specifically to keep people from walking off with their pit bulls, because the pit bulls were friendly to humans and would go with anyone.
Pit bulls (note that this doesn’t necessarily account for mixes) are not particularly territorial. The old saying was “a pit bull will defend only the ground under his own four feet,” a reference to their alleged willingness to defend themselves and not back down.
We (as individuals, as a society, and in the court system) believe that dogs can determine the presence of drugs or contraband or months-buried corpses of people lost in the wilderness or even dropping blood sugar levels in a diabetic human despite only minute quantities of those things being present. Trust me, a pit bull is exquisitely aware of the difference between a human and a dog. And they have a reputation among dog-knowledgeable people for being human-friendly.
You are conflating measurable physiological characteristics and temperament.
Certain breeds of dogs were bred for more powerful jaw muscle, and one should be cautious around those dogs, because they can do to your arm what a lab does to a tennis ball. These breeds might be preferred by people who want a guard dog, and therefore reward aggressive behaviors.
Maybe broad heads are actually linked genetically to aggressive behavior, but I am not aware to studies that have established this.
Thank you!! For some reason the experts on dogs here just don't seem to comprehend this. Dogs almost more than any other species have had traits bred into them that are very specific. Bird dog trainers, sheep herders, guard dog trainers etc go specifically to breeds with these traits and will reject the ones that don't have the strongest of these traits. Most of the breeds that were bred to fight and kill other animals do have a larger than average capacity to be dangerous. Pit bulls have a sort of tunnel vision once they start an attack. They are not that sensitive to pain either.
My wag is that the court will take the word of a live human over a dead dog.
That’s because most experts in the world “don’t seem to understand this.”
Don’t get me wrong, I understand perfectly what you are claiming, and the arguments that you are using to claim them, I 'm just saying that they are wrong. Temperament and aggressiveness is much more a nurture trait than a nature. Add to that that pitbulls were bred in such a way that if any temperament was bred in, then they would be genetically disinclined to attack humans, as lack of human aggressiveness is an important trait in a dog meant to fight with other dogs.
You know what dogs were bred to hunt and kill other animals? Dachshunds and Jack Russels, little dogs like that.
You know what dogs were not bred to hunt and kill other animals? Pitt Bulls and their related breeds.
Where did you hear any of that?
Still haven’t established who owns the field in question. The court may take the liying of a live human over the dogs that they killed, but if the owner of the dogs happened to be a witness to the act of unnecessary violence against their property, the court may have someone else to listen to.
Why is it that when someone posts on this board info about flying an airliner, or cooking, or auto repair, or nuclear deterrence, or hummingbirds, everyone takes it at face value, and we even have some folks admitting “ignorance fought.” Even when citations are not given.
But when the subject of pit bulls comes up NOT ONLY do people cling to their ignorance in the face of references to expert opinions and citations, and NOT ONLY do they express the strange, perverse position that “you are only taking that side because you have experience with [the subject]” (imagine saying that in the other topics I listed!), BUT ALSO some people seem to feel free to make snide remarks about the other side coming in to correct misconceptions.
This is not, perhaps, the most fact-based subforum on the SDMB, but the board as a whole is supposed to be fact-based, and we’ve had this discussion repeatedly in several of the other subforums.
And a neighbor might witness two viscous dogs attacking a person. What’s your point? People come before dogs and that’s not going to change.
Your response was to this
If a neighbor sees you shooting dogs that are not attacking, that’s not putting people above dogs, that’s just killing someone’s dogs for no reason.
You were saying in your original post, that if there were no witnesses, then it didn’t matter if you killed the dogs without them attacking, that the court would believe you over a dead dog.
K-9bfriender, we agree on some points. One point is that pit bulls are not generally bred to be human aggressive and the great majority are fine with humans. The point where I think we disagree s that pit bulls have been bred to have a very specific mindset when they go into fight or attack mode which is unique to several of the fighting breeds. Once they go into this mode it doesn’t really matter what species it is directed at. There attacks are generally more intense and they are much harder to stop. This along with being very strong dogs makes a vicious one or even an enraged on particularly dangerous. I am not even sure if enraged fits the description, as they seem to be more machine like in an attack than vicious or enraged. You will see this when trying to separate them, they will have a deep bit an their opponent that they will not release even when held, no growing, no shaking, they just won’t release. They don’t even appear to be in the red zone, they just seem to be in kill mode the same way an auto mechanic might approach a car he wants to fix. I have quite a few years working with dogs myself and have spent more than my share of time with pit bulls, I can’t say I have ever had a bad experience with one but I have witnessed some.
Question in court, “Did you feel threatened”, answer “yes”.
That’s pretty much then end of the case. The dogs can’t testify and your what-if witness is incapable of assessing the shooter’s state of mind.
Gotta tell ya. Viscous dogs move slow enough that you should be able to get away. Just don’t touch one cause then they’ll stick with you.
I did and do question the likely legal ruling of a witness killing of dogs who were loose and not attacking based on the merely that by virtue that the person “felt threatened.” I doubt that a statement of “I felt threatened” would be enough if a reasonable person would not have felt that they were under significant threat of imminent harm.
Dogs are faster than people where I live. Your mileage may vary.
Doubt all you want. Police shoot dogs all the time. Here’s an article talking about a court case.
the judge found, the killings were considered justifiable under the circumstances as officers testified to feeling imminently threatened by the animals, after one of the dogs lunged and the other barked during a drug sweep. That doesn’t mean cops are allowed to shoot any dog that makes a sound or moves—only if the officers feel threatened.
This is a sticky situation, for sure. It’d be a drag, perhaps even tacky, to go against the flow here.