i am going to make a few observations that i find extremely troubling, and to say the least, hypocritical. some of you breed-ban supporters out there are operating under this faulty reasoning, and it is not only destructive to human-animal relations, it is actually directly responsible for dog attacks.
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With almost every breed of dog, if they are vicious, you can blame the owners or attribute it to a "fluke" in the dog's nature. However, with Pit Bulls, that is not the case. Pit Bulls are unpredictable and are genetically inclined to be aggressive. You can have a Pit Bull for years who is seemigly docile and even-tempered, and then one day, for no reason, it will "snap".
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every dog is inclined to be aggressive. i am going to repeat that now to make sure that people are understanding it.
every dog is inclined to be aggressive. there is not a breed out there that is not a pack-hunting, prey-killing, blood-spilling, alpha-dominant subspecies. every single breed of dog out there.
those of you that try to treat your dog as a human being, assigning it human emotions, and worse, human desires, are not only screwing up your own pack dynamic, but you are creating an inherently dangerous situation where the dog becomes confused, emotionally distressed, and potentially hostile.
when you say things like, "most dogs are nice, but pits are aggressive," it leads me to believe that you don't know the first thing about animal (dog in particular) psychology, and that you really do think of and act as if your dog were a furry human.
i hope you can understand that by doing this you are undercutting your own position about how dangerous a certain breed of dog is. if you don't understand that even your little ****zu or your doe-eyed retriever are killers, then please keep your dogs away from other people so you don't get anyone hurt.
some dogs are more aggressive than others. some dogs are also larger than others. some dogs are more energetic than others. some are more dominant than others. some are worriers, some are restless, some become neurotic if they don't have a job to work at.
these kinds of dogs are high-maintenance and should not be owned by just anyone. pits are included in this category, but so are border collies, chows, poodles, and huskies.
in fact, most dog breeds could be argued to be high maintenance in one way or another. people should be very cautious before deciding on getting a dog at all, and they should make absolutely certain that they can sacrifice the time, space, and energy required to keep that dog mentally and emotionally healthy.
most dog owners don't do that though; most dog owners buy a dog, let it sit in the house all day, neglect it, treat it as either an ornament or an irritating child, and then expect it to act appropriately when surrounded by toddlers and neighbor dogs.
is it really any wonder to you that these dogs end up biting kids?
here is a really good website if you want to learn more about human-dog interaction:
Dog Breed Info Center®, DBI
specifics on being a good pack leader:
Establishing and Keeping Alpha Position, Letting your dog know you are the boss
specifics on dog socialization:
Socializing your new puppy, Socialization
specifics on "human dog" syndrome (and the consequences):
The Human Dog - Treating a Dog like a Human
specifics on dog psychology:
Why did my dog do that when he knows it's bad? But does your dog really know it's bad?
now, i have discussed dogs in general. we have clarified that *all* dogs are aggressive, and that many dog breeds are among a "high maintenance" group. if you didn't follow me up to this point, i probably can't help you.
pits are actually much the same as any other dog. they have their specialties, and they have their weaknesses. their specialty is not rending foes limb from limb as many of you seem to believe. their specialty is actually in being a good family member. that seems a little broad, but that is their role. they have been bred to be loyal to a fault, to obey, to adore their human alphas, and to protect their human pack with their lives.
originally, the progenitors of what we now call pit bulls (note that even now, 'pit bull' refers to more than one subspecies of dog) were farm dogs. eventually they were bred for bull baiting, which at the time was an acceptable practice. this was a job, not a sport, and the dogs were bred and trained to be able to control a large bull. this required that the dogs be bred for physical power as well as aggressiveness.
sadly, that practice ended up becoming a "sport," though i use the term loosely, and people began to breed and train the dogs for fighting–hence the name.
note that even though they were bred for fighting, and earlier for bull baiting, they were also bred for complete submission to humans, because the masters needed utter control of their farmhand or their pit dog.
in this, they were largely successful; pits remain loyal to a fault to humans.
nowadays, pit fighting is not as widely accepted, and most pit bulls have never participated in the sport, nor been trained for it. despite popular rumor, pit bulls cannot lock their jaws in any sense of the word. they are stronger than many animals of their size and weight, however, and that should be taken into consideration with this breed as it should for any other of approximate physical capability.
further, pits do not inherently want to destroy anything and everything around them–i am sorry if this debunks your sole reason for hating them. they are dogs, not monsters, not machines, and not movie plot devices. they have the same needs and desires that other dogs have, and this does include hunting other animals.
despite this desire to hunt, even pits can be trained to be sociable with other animals (other dogs included). this requires a competent trainer though, and competent owners.
notice that throughout, we keep coming back to the idea that the owner, the trainer, the alpha, the handler, etc, is the direct correlating factor that determines whether a pit or any other dog remains a sociable animal (not a human), or whether it reverts to an overly aggressive, assert-by-violence menace.
in most cases, it is the owner, not the dog. exceptions are rare, just as they are in people.
in most cases, pits grow old and die without ever hurting anyone.
in most cases, owning a pit is indistinguishable from owning any other high maintenance dog–because they are dogs.
those of you that fear pit bulls, and don't bat an eyelash at poodles, pomeranians, and schnauzers do not understand dog psychology of your role as a pack alpha. and for crying out loud, if you have the delusion that you and the dog are somehow buddies and that you don't need to be a pack alpha, then you shouldn't own a dog.
what the majority of you are saying is that because you don't personally have a use for pit bulls, no one else should either. that is logically fallacious reasoning that shows in inability or refusal to critically analyze reality and separate it from your own desires.
those of you that still argue against pit bulls because you are not convinced that they aren't mindless killers, well honestly, i am not going to be able to convince you, so i won't try. i will address this for those that might still be sitting on the fence.
most dog-breed-attack statistics are taken from eye witness accounts, either by the victim or someone that saw what happened. it kind of has to be this way, as there are usually few cameras or expert witnesses around at the time of a dog attack.
most of these witnesses cannot tell a pit from another dog breed. there are multiple reasons for this (and if i miss any obvious ones, please add your insight). one of the foremost is that a pit bull is not a single subspecies, but a group of similar dogs that display similar traits and have been bred for similar jobs. that alone makes an eye witness testimony suspect. further, most normal humans don't have the canine education necessary to be able to distinguish between breeds at all. they might know a retriever or a lab when they see one, but they wouldn't be able to label a catahoula leopard hound from a dogo argentina if it (excuse the pun) bit the person in the ass.
further, with the amount of mixed breeds out there, positive identification becomes even more of a gamble. in short, statistics about dog attacks are highly subjective, and are not logically or scientifically obtained.
but that is one of the biggest proponents toward breed-banning legislation that is out there. sounds willfully ignorant to me.
however, even if we go by those numbers, things still don't add up to make pit bulls the terrorizing killers that our society has scapegoated them into being.
here is an interesting article posted on the louisiana society for cruelty to animals website.
Pit bull attack stats may surprise you (http://www.la-spca.org/dedication/talk/t_judge.htm - broken link)
eye-opening? i hope so.
from personal experience, pit bulls are normal dogs. they are high maintenance, energetic, easily bored dogs that can be loyal, intelligent pack members, or they can be shoe-chewing, dog-aggressive, human-suspicious, property-destructive animals. either way, they are still animals, and should be treated as such, not as humans, and not as humanity's four-legged enemy.
my dog loves other dogs (but wait, somewhere back in her lineage, her ancestors fought other dogs!), and loves other humans, including children (but wait, the nightly news said that pit bulls are crazed, baby-eating maniacs).
in fact, we chose matsi from the shelter specifically because she exhibited more of what we wanted in a house-living family dog than any of the others present over the period of almost a month when we would visit.
she has her faults (she wants to hunt down every bird and cat that she sees or thinks she sees; and she sneaks onto our bed when she thinks that we're not looking), but she also has her merits, and we have been happy to have her quirky, sometimes exuberant insanity in our house since then.
by the way, the most violently aggressive dog at the shelter was consistently a yellow lab that was much larger than matsi, and could have done much more physical damage to a human should it have attacked.
further, it was a golden retriever that tore the right side of my face up when i was a child (i still have scars on my cheek), and it was my parents' border collie that bit the newspaper boy last year because the dog didn't think the kid had the right to be in the yard that early in the morning.
if you have a dog–no matter what the breed–make sure you are a responsible owner. don't treat it like a human, don't forget that it is a pack-hunting predator, and don't wuss out on your job as its alpha. you bought it, now it is looking to you for the lead. if you hesitate, the dog will think that it needs to step up, and that is when all sorts of problems (including violent behavior) begin.
aaron out.
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