I think (as a former owner of a very large dog) a lot of the defensiveness one sees from dog owners in these kind of threads is that, at least in my experience, a significant majority of complaints directed to/at me about my dog cited incidents exactly as described above as evidence I WASN’T controlling my dog–after all, she started to jump and bark before I commanded her back to heel, and she was a 150# dog.
Never mind she was a rescued Mastiff/Lab mix who literally would run in sheer terror from the cat, big dog plus one bark = misbehaved menace in a significant number of people’s books. After a while, the defensive reaction gets to be ingrained.
My dog does just fine on leash. The only person he’s ever barked or growled at is me. The only animal he’s growled or barked at is porcupines. He does whine a lot when he’d like to be off leash. He will jump if he’s unsupervised by me, I’ve had him a year that’s something I’m working on.
[Moderating] crucible, I’ve edited your post to remove what appears to be the whole text of an article published elsewhere on the web. This is a violation of the SDMB policy on copyright. If you’d like to introduce the contents of a published article into the discussion, please quote a short, representative piece and link to the original, or recast the argument in your own words.
Or they are in the middle of training and are not yet perfect. Sometimes you pass a dog who is acting unruly and the owners are actually trying to implement some of the training they’ve had, but aren’t quite there yet. You can’t just not walk your dog until it is perfectly trained.
I do understand your position, but I wonder if it is a matter of form, or if you really feel that quoting with attribution a published article is somehow illegal?
The sad thing about any forum is that if you put things in your own words, there are lots of folks who summarily dismiss them as being of no value. Quoting an expert, one who obviously wants his or her message dispersed far and wide, seems a minor price to pay for showing that someone with appropriate background wants you to think about those particular matters.
BTW, I note a recent case in Ohio where two young girls, having a snowball fight, were suddenly and seriously attacked by their own pit bull, 5 years old or 6, a dog never having ever shown any aggressive of regressive behavior. Apparently he took the snowball fight as an attack on one of the girls and attacked the thrower; then, when the other little girl tried to stop the first attack, attacked the other girl as well. No maiming, just some scars. The dog is being put down.
I consider this a perfect example of inbred behavior that only required the right set of circumstances to provoke what we would call an ‘unprovoked’ attack on the girls. What I would call an example of a pit bull ‘snapping’, then being unable to stop because of the endorphins. It took extreme damage to the dog by several adults to finally get it to release the girl’s leg.
I just don’t know how pit bull supporters can continue to deny the breeding flaw in that line?
When I was a kid, a fox hound pup who chased chickens and couldn’t be broken of it with a swat was taken over the hill with a .22 and a shovel. Bad traits can be deleted from a breed over time by severe culling of the defective ones, or, if you prefer, the ones displaying behaviors that might be normal for the breed but which are no longer desired.
Pit bulls are not a ‘breed’, I guess, so that is why you can’t get the ‘papers’ on a pup, that show the ancestry going back a dozen generations, demonstrating the best traits of the breed.
I personally think it is directly related. The thread seems to center on the ‘training’ required for dogs so they will not strain at leash, nor bark or growl or threaten people they encounter while on a walk. Some say it is easy to train a dog to be non-threatening, docile, tame, safe…
I say that some breeds in particular, but, really, all dogs generally, may seem to be safe and trained and docile, but they can still ‘snap’ when you least expect it and create mortal damage.
‘Training’, then, might give a false sense of security.
But, if no one else sees the connection, I apologize for the intrusion and will leave people to argue about whether dogs can be trained and if they should be trained and how hard it is to train.
The thing is, with the above example I bet there WERE signs and signals, only the owners didn’t know enough to read them or, if they did see the dog’s distress, didn’t take it seriously.
ANY living creature will “snap” given the right provocation, including you. And don’t say 'but people are different" - there are an awful lot of incidents no crazier than THIS every year.
If training gives a “false sense of security”, then what’s your solution?
Yes, some dogs are hardwired to be more protective (of themselves or of others), and it’s up to the humans in the equation to do all they can to teach the dog how to deal with his emotions & instincts, AND to teach others around them how to safely and helpfully interact with the dog.
Belligerence in any species leads to injuries. When the species that is supposed to ‘have dominion’ over all the other life forms and have the superior intellect gets belligerent and defensive, then the whole thing is a shitshow and usually the innocents are the ones who suffer most.
I have no problem putting down a dog who cannot control his aggression and who cannot be safely managed. There are too many dogs being needlessly killed every day, and most of those have done nothing worse than be old, or have black hair, or look scary. But I think every dog deserves a chance, and sometimes that means the learning has to take place out in the real world. You can test all you want in the safe confines of a building or a yard but you’ll never know how a dog will react to the real world unless he’s out in it. And you can’t train - really train- real world situations unless you get the dog out there. It’s up to the human involved to keep the dog from being overwhelmed, even if that means telling other people to please move, just this once. It’s the human’s job to teach and protect his dog, and to teach and protect the other people around.
Unfortunately, most dogs are easier to train than most humans are.
