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if you are worried about how OTHER PEOPLE will look at/treat you for having a pitbull...
DONT GET ONE...
this breed needs people who are ready and willing to smile at every naysayer and prove them wrong...not worry about what they'll be thought of...
First question is are you a home owner? A pitbull is a very poor choice for a tenant.
My overall experience with pitbulls is that most pitbull owners allow their dog to have very poor manners. It's one thing to have a miniature poodle run up to your child and jump on him. It is entirely different to receive the same behavior from a loose pitbull. If you are going to get a pitbull, please train him to have perfect manners and don't allow him to run loose.
Personally, I think a pitbull is a poor choice for a business, especially one that involves dogs interacting. Since you have not yet obtained a dog, I suggest that you decide on a different breed
If you rent, I don't think there are any places(other then maybe independent landlords) who will rent to someone with a pit bull.
As for the stigma. Depends where you live. When we lived in WA, I only saw a handful of pits and all were well behaved. Back home, here in Houston. Totally different story. They are over breed, and most people who own them don't bother to train them, they come to dog parks and cause mayhem. Tons of stray ones here too.
Being a pit bull owner takes a strong, confident hand. And there will always be people who are learly of them(I am one of those people, seen 5 pit bull attacks, two against my own dog, I don't trust them) if you can't handle people distrusting you from the get go. Don't do it.
1) I'm planning on doing dog daycare (through Rover.com and DogVacay, not an official licensed business) and I'd be afraid the stigma of them would scare people off from leaving their dog at my place. Does anyone here who has a pit bull and also does dog daycare have any input on this?
2) I plan on taking it to dog beaches, should I expect any issues there in terms of people freaking out?
3) Since I am planning on adopting from a shelter, should I be concerned with not knowing the dog's history or is it fairly easy to tell by its temperament whether it was raised to be aggressive or not? I am concerned about it just snapping and killing something out of the blue. I know this can happen with all dogs but from my understanding it's more likely with pit bulls - that info coming from people who have owned them.
4) How are they with shedding? I've heard from a few people it's not much of an issue.
5) I noticed that Petfinder shows if a dog does not get along well with cats. Is that a good sign they might not be sociable with smaller dogs as well?
Edit: also important to mention - if the general consensus is that a pit bull is not suited for what I am looking for, my alternative dog would be the standard schnauzer. Thoughts?
I think most Pits are great dogs but I would not leave my dog at your place. It only takes one bite and shake from that massively strong jaw...or any Mastiff jaw; or any large dog jaw with inherent strength...to do serious damage.
But then I would not leave my dog with any dog daycare unless I knew the owner of the facility well and knew each of the dogs in the specific play group. I view dog daycare as only slightly less prone to creating bad experiences for dogs than dog parks. So much depends on the business owner's ability to read dogs and most don't have that.
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