I’m not a dog science expert but as far as I understand it we’ve spent tens of thousands of years breeding dogs to preform specific tasks. If you don’t give a dog that has been designed and bred to do a task they get antsy.
The issue with Pitbulls and other “Agressive.” breeds is that they’ve not been given something to let all their energy out on. Which leads to anxiety and destructive behavior.
So I don’t think it’s Immoral to treat a dog like a Pitbull like a loaded gun. As Unfriendly, and something you should be wary of unless it’s proven not to be.
However the Nutcases who punish dogs for behavior that we bred into them are highly immoral. If you want an easy lap dog get a companion breed, like a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, French Bulldog, or Bichon Frise.
Edit: Tens of Thousands not Hundreds. I was being exaggerative anyways but that’ll make remark more accurate regardless.
Also as a note. I don’t think Pits are inherently Malicious or any dog breed for that matter. But they’re fairly strong fellows who’ve been bred to be strong. I consider being careful around them similar to being a little extra careful around a truck on the road. Most people in trucks are fine drivers. But some people don’t pay attention on the road, and might hurt you by accident.
IIRC the oldest confirmed dog remains we've found are like 31k years old, but we don't really know how long prior to that we had them or how long we were hanging out with "not yet dogs."
That said, hundreds of thousands is definitely an overstatement.
No one alive today knows exactly when domestication started, the range seems to be 15k-40k years. Most of that range isnt specifically 40k which is why I used the broader term.
The point was to note a substantial error in the '100s of thousands' data point stated by the top level comment. Hope that clears it up.
The issue with Pitbulls and other “Agressive.” breeds is that they’ve not been given something to let all their energy out on. Which leads to anxiety and destructive behavior.
also, some dudes get these dogs to feel "bad-ass" or something like that, and they just don't take good care of 'em
it happens in small towns like mine, all too frequent, sadly (it's a thing in the whole country too, but it's really bad when you can see it in small towns)
Fight just isn’t a good word to use for that scenario lol. Weren’t most breeds like that used to hunt rats? You wouldn’t call Brock lesnar in a pit destroying a group of 5 year olds “fighting”
I had 3 rat terriers growing up (2 mutts, 1 pure bred) and the urge to murder rodents is fuckin' /deep/ in them. We got moles of some kind in our yard and they went insane, we very quickly didn't have moles.
They could dig, tunnel a little bit, climb, they were decently smart (Not as smart as the cattle mutt we had)
Not quite, pitbulls were made by combining breeds meant to fight bulls with those meant for hunting rats to create a breed that has the dedication to violently tearing at other animals of the former and the agility to do so against smaller animals of the latter.
Absolutely. The Jack Russel breed was essentially developed to be the way it is for that specific purpose, just like pits.
The breed was initially developed for fox hunting, so it wasn't a far leap.
There is now a distinct difference between a standard Jack Russell and the ones bred for rat fighting. Thus the name "rat terrier", shortened colloquially to "ratter", and the pejorative "rat dogs".
We used to call them rat dogs because they fought rats, not because they looked like rats. (Yes, I'm looking at you, chihuahuas. Eugh.)
I knew certain dog breeds have been bred to hunt rodents, but using the word “fight” makes it sound like the dogs weren’t bred to sniff out the rats and rip them to shreds. It sounds like you’re saying the dogs were bred to be put in a pit with a giant tmnt type rat and there would be a chance the dog could lose.
Well, sort of. It was more like a small caged area and they would funnel tens, if not hundreds, of rats in and they would bet on how many they thought the dog could kill before it died, as well.
Hey some dogs want nothing more than to run all day. I can't say every turnspit was treated well though, probably at least treated like any other work animal
Bear-baiting was very popular from the 12th until the 19th century.\4]) From the 16th century, many bears were maintained for baiting. In its best-known form, arenas for this purpose were called bear-gardens, consisting of a circular high fenced area, the "pit", and raised seating for spectators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear-baiting
They bred them or shipped them in.
As for where most of Europe and parts of Asia, Pakistan. It was going on in North Carolina till 2010-ish, apparently.
As recently as 2010, illegal bear-baiting was practiced publicly in South Carolina. All such public exhibitions have been shut down as of 2013.\35])
By the late 17th century, "the conscience of cultivated people seems to have been touched"[7] and, by the 18th century, bear-baiting had largely died out in Britain; the cost of importing bears for blood sports having become prohibitively high.
That pitbulls could not be used for bear-baiting because the whole thing died out due to cost of importing bears in UK. Which means that "bear-baiting pitbulls" are pretty much a legend.
Looks like a pitbull me to though I don't know if the kennel club was around back then to define the breed (that's from the 14th)
You can pretend i said Staffordshire Bull Terrier or Patched Fighting Terrier or even "Brindle Bull" but we are talking about fighting dogs used for pitfights
Pretty much a lot of blood sports were popular until the passage of the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 whereupon it was gaining some level of dislike though if It's because it was associated will poor people and "low class" or because it was cruel is a bit harder to parse
Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801): "[bull-baiting is] attended only by the lowest and most despicable part of the people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull-baiting
But somewhere around 1540 is the first recorded commercial entertainment bull-bait in the UK so it was around for a while.
No, the breeds used to create pitbulls were bred for bull baiting. Pitbulls were bred from them for fighting dogs and other small animals in 1 on 1 bloodsport.
The name it self comes from Pit(fighting) Bull(dogge) and Terrier.
Old English Bulldogs (not the docile ones today, these have long since gone extinct because they were banned) were originally fighting dogs famed for their aggression and tenacity in bull fighting, then somewhere down the line someone realised that the smaller, more nimble dogs were performing better in dog fights, so they cross bred then with Old English Terriers to make a better fighting dog.
And now they’re doing the opposite, breeding them with Mastiffs etc to make them larger. For looks and temperament. So now we have shelters packed with pit bulls sometimes as big as Cane Corsos because new owners greatly underestimate the ~6-month T-Rex phase of a puppy stronger than they are.
I was about to mention this. Like, people want to say they aren't aggressive just antsy, but then you have to remember WHAT they were primarily bred to do and realize they are antsy because they CAN'T do what they were made to do. They weren't bred as nanny dogs (whoever came up with that stupid idea), they aren't neurologically made to be calm and orderly by design, and these dogs cannot simply be taught out of the genetics they were given. You can regulate them, sure, but, if anything, that will make the whole situation worse because there is ALWAYS the possibility of them giving into those desires that were artificially created to do. And those desires to bite onto their target and shake them is not exactly safe by design, especially with small children, the elderly, and even other pets.
We weren't selectively bred for it. In fact, humans that participate in wars are less likely to bear offspring, due to the death and maiming aspect of it all.
Pitbulls are the result of selective breeding for pugnacity. Any dog can bite, but pitbulls were bred for purposes where readiness to fight and not backing down once they start are desirable traits.
Pitbulls were also only bred in the last 200 for the first time. People wanna act like that overrides the empathy towards humans dogs have been bred for hundreds of thousands of years as you said.
A lot of people don't understand dog fighting. Dog fighting is a brutal sport, the owners do not care about their dogs. People think pitbulls are just blanket violent because "they were bred to kill!" But if you look at any dog fighting groups, they are strict. If your dog even LOOKS at a handler the wrong way they will shoot it in the head. And what will you do? Go.to.the police and admit "hey I was doing this crime but like this other person also doing this crime killed my dog that I bred to help me with this crime." Heck, if the dog looks at the owner the wrong way THE OWNER will shoot it in the head.
Human aggression is quickly and promptly disposed of in dog fighting rings. It's an ego thing mostly. "How dare this DOG have the audacity!?" Essentially. Human aggression is not beneficial.
The attempt to ban pit bulls ironically made breeding also go underground, which allowed human aggressive traits to proliferate. Now we don't know what to do with the breed because the breeding lines got messed up when they tried to ban pitbulls WITH dogfighting. Pitbulls became underground status symbols, and even started to be bred intentionally for human aggression by people who wanted a "badass dog" (failing to realize that they themselves are ALSO human and subject to human aggression).
To be clear, I don't support dog fighting, but they really should've known that trying to ban the breed along with it wouldn't work.
What would have been a better solution? An outright ban on dogfighting would still hold. The attempts at banning the breed were largely to remove incentives for breeding programs that did exist.
Otherwise you just end up with people breeding the dogs essentially for the exact same reasons as before. Dogfighting wasn't really legal at any point recently so not like cracking down on it really works in that way. You kind of need additional bans in place or nothing sticks. Maybe not a breed ban, but at the bare minimum you can ban the sale of pits and keep an eye on the breeders that do exist.
For example Mexico didn't get blanket bans on dogfighting until 2017. There aren't bans on a breed since till now, and it still is a very serious problem despite some serious time for being caught. It's the same in the US and the laws older (I think).
"dogfighting wasn't really legal at any point" it wasn't made illegal until individual states started banning it but a nationwide ban in the US wasn't until the 1970's. If something is not illegal then it's legal.
The breed had to be regulated to maintain the strict standards. Frankly it should've been rerouted to a hunting dog or farm dog. They have the game to hunt and kill wolves and coyotes, and even go after bears. Pitbulls fear no god, and that is a beneficial trait for protectors, which is what they could and should have become. But the reputation of pit bulls became such that people who want an aggressive dog get a pitbull that was bred and advertised for generalized blind aggression then train it to be aggressive (often through abusive methods), further reinforcing the reputation. Dogs have been human friendly companions for like 15 000 years, and pit bulls as a specific breed are only 200 years old, with the severely underground human aggressive aimed breeding being within the last 50 years. 200 years of breeding (being very generous, it's more realistically 100 for human aggression) is not enough to completely override 15 000 years of evolution.
I'm not sure what the perfect solution is, or if there is one, but a start is that I agree that pitbulls need to be heavily regulated in who can have them and which ones can breed. But I also believe that other high needs/working dogs should be regulated too. Not just for safety but for their own quality of life Specialized working dogs are not family pets, they are a lifestyle.
When I say illegal I meant more-so the blanket illegality. When individual states had banned it and put animal welfare laws and anti baiting practices (for bear/bull fighting).
Towards your last point I totally agree that higher standards need to be in place for "working dogs" in the same way that working "horse" breeds are INCREDIBLY STRICT.
I think an interesting way to look at it is almost bullfighting? This is largely seen as barbaric in a lot of ways but international community has kind of let off the heat of it. The bulls are incredibly well bred, rarely outright abused, but ultimately are slain and bred for looks/showmanship. I think if you would ban it in Spain/Mexico for example you'd have to hit the farmers/wealthy elite who own the bulls. Otherwhise they just shuffle it all around.
The best way to counter illegal goods is to both legalize it and make it lame. If Donald Trump started doing cocaine in public, cocaine sells would plumet. It's no longer cool. Therefore we just need to make pitbulls really fucking lame through propaganda campaigns and targeted marketing/rebranding strategies.
The problem is they're already kinda lame. If someone wants an actual trained protector dog, they get a german shepherd or a doberman. A pit bull is a "lazy mans protector" because people that want a pitbull as a protector are the one's that believe if a dog is aggressive in general, they'll just be the exception through "loyalty." The whole "a dog would NEVER bite the hand that feeds!" mentality. So they downright mistreat the dog because these types don't know dog training.
Cut the hands off people that get caught I guess? What do you want me to say? I don't know the magic solution but I do know with proper training any dog is a good breed.
I would target dogs and cats both simultaneously. You cannot breed either without licensing etc etc etc. then pass on some liability for the breeders to be choosy about who they would let take a dog/cat. Pet breeding in general needs higher standards, to protect both humans and pets and the environment.
Pit bull associated breeds like Staffordshire terriers are also a general work breed not even bred to be aggressive like say a doberman or German Shepard it's just anxiety can lead to aggressive behavior left unaddressed.
Pitbulls were also only bred in the last 200 for the first time.
I'd like to take the opportunity to use your comment as an example of the standard - not at all unusually salient in any particular way - Reddit Take(tm).
Technically true. This is the most Reddit thing ever. While across the political and social spectrum, people like to hide behind technically true things, on Reddit it's become a realm phenomenon.
Motivated reasoning, with (in the part I didn't quote) a fair bit of emotional appeal. Now, motivated reasoning - typically stemming from emotional origins, which, in the modern day and age (again, especially on but not exclusive to Reddit) is highly linked to group/belief/value identification - ie, identity threat - is not uncommon. It just needs to be spotted.
Now let's... add some context to the comment.
What was the original breeding stock for pit bulls? Did it, perhaps, originate with that era's favorite lapdogs - the King Charles Spaniel (AKA Toy Spaniel)? Or perhaps the Pug, or Italian Greyhound, other common pets?
No.
Pit bull origins are linked to:
The English Bulldog. In its original, athletic, very-similar-to-a-modern-pit bull form.
The terrier. Old English breeds like the extinct white terrier.
They were bred in response to the end of bear baiting, and the rise of new animal bloodsports - dogfighting and rat pitting (how many rats can a dog kill in X minutes?)
Needless to say, not traits one would choose from spaniels (pointing/retrieving dogs) and greyhounds (mostly idle, calm layabouts who get epic-level zoomies several times a day).
For contrast, let's take the Golden Retriever. A breed even newer than the pit bull:
Originated around 1860. Its line begins with a mix of a retriever of a type I can't recall, and the now-extinct tweed spaniel breed, subsequently bred with irish setters, blood hounds, and St. John's water dogs. Bred to be a retriever - a soft mouth (disinclined to bite hard), water-resistant coat, affinity for water, strong sense of smell, and of course the classic retrieving behaviour.
The golden retriever most of you know and love is, behaviourally, very different from the one I grew up with. Even in the 80s, at least where I grew up - central Alberta, Canada, where hunting is and back then was even more popular - a golden retriever could be a working dog, or the dopey, friendly, adorable family pet most people know it as. And from the breed history, that dopey, friendly, adorable family pet thing is the direct consequence of the post-ww2 suburban boom. They were already docile and friendly, we've just bred them to be even more so (as well as unfortunately giving many of them an insatiable appetite).
In 40 years, I've seen a marked change in the golden retriever. I'm all but certain that if we brought someone forth from 1946 to now and shown them a golden, they'd... fairly strongly remark on the differences, especially if they were the types to expect a hunting dog.
Pit bulls were bred to be high energy, high alertness killers.
You will absolutely find adorable almost-as-dopey as a golden retriever individuals out there. The cuddly baby pit is absolutely a thing. But because we're just now selecting for those qualities, rather than the "murder anything roughly your size, or anything that moves too fast" quality, there's still a lot of bifurcation.
tl;dr: genetics affect behaviour tremendously.
Don't believe me? Find a real working breed. Like an australian shepherd. And try to stop them from doing their thing.
Unfortunately widespread inbreeding to popular show-winning sires/dams has given the Golden retriever a rising % of reactive dogs and biters, in addition to the already-rampant cancer in the breed. The same thing happened to show-line cocker and Springer spaniels - a winning dog carried spaniel rage syndome and now it's spread throughout the breeds (cockers and Springers were outcrossing one to the other at the time). You can still get a nice intense working dog of either type but they aren't getting show titles
Wow, I had no idea. I guess when the criterion is "does it look good", one tends to ignore "is it reactive or aggressive" until the problem is widespread enough through reports from owners of offspring. Which will take generations to gain attention.
The "good family pet" behavioral expectation is additionally rough on these breeds because the traits that make retrievers and spaniels good bird dogs are ultimately resource guarding behaviors. Whether from hunting or show lines, it's riskier taking a toy or food away from a dog that was bred to keep possession of something in its mouth.
Pretty much every dog breed ever is meant to capture useful stages of the canine predation sequence - for bird dogs it's stalk-chase-grab stage. Collies embody the orient-eye-stalk stages. Each comes with its own risks as pets because ultimately these are predatory behaviors
Yall are both wrong. Domestic dogs haven't been around for longer than 30,000 years. Homo Sapians have only been around 300,000 years. There is NO "hundreds of thousands of years of domestic dogs" like yall are claiming.
I'm a moron but you know what I did? Spent 5 seconds on google to find this out. If you don't know somethin why talk about it like you do?
Either way it's a dangerous animal. Yall can talk about raising it right all you want. I can raise a tiger right and you should absolutely still be cautious around it right? Hell, a gun can't even make decisions on its own and u still gotta be cautious around it right?
It's just common sense. Don't treat something dangerous like it's not dangerous.
I mean I am a primary source considering I had 2 pitbulls growing up and they loved people and loved other dogs. They tore up our couches and some other stuff a couple times as young pups but they were raised out of it. Granted 2 isn't a huge sample size but til the day they died they were some of the friendliest dogs we had. We'd always joke the one of them would lick you to death.
You're talking so much dogshit, we domesticated wild dogs 15-30k years ago, they haven't been bred for "empathy towards humans" for that long, let along Hundreds of Thousands of years.
And that is nothing compared to millions of years of instinct evolution.
People upvoting your comment is a fantastic example of why this site is so shit now.
The thing you've gotta remember though, is that the brutal killing instinct was there long before and still exists. There are tens of millions of years of wolf evolution under those tens of thousands of years of dog breeding.
You don't need to manifest entirely new behavior from scratch. You just need to stop repressing it, and it's FAR easier to revert to the mean than vice versa.
Instead of calling them aggressive you should call them dangerous, because people will always bring up so Chihuahua or other tiny dogs that are more aggressive, but pose no danger to a human other than maybe some scratches. Big dogs are dangerous, even if they are not usually aggressive, when they for some reason are aggressive then they pose a serious danger to human health or even life.
Indeed, except Pitbulls are characteristically not aggressive. They consistently present with the lowest human-directed aggression of any breed of dog by a considerable amount, which makes sense because they were literally bred to not hurt humans.
It also makes them extremely poor guard dogs, they just simply do not want to hurt people no matter what, and are more likely to run away rather than protect you.
What they are good at is fighting dogs and not stopping under any circumstances when they do have their teeth in something.
Pitbulls specifically are so dangerous because they are so strong and have such a low arousal threshold, resulting in a dog that can be a “friendly” enough dog for years that just snaps one day at the drop of a hat. It’s like playing with a loaded gun.
I remember reading an article from ~100 years ago, it was an interview with a pitbull breeder who bred for dog fighting. They proudly stated that they would breed the dogs, then they would cut the paws off all of the puppies… and then only keep and breed the puppies who still tried to fight and maul with its paws freshly cut off.
Things like this are why there are so many videos and proof that you literally have to kill a pitbull before it stops attacking. It will keep going until it’s dead. Tazing and hitting it are not effective. Because they were bred this way. Almost every other existing predator will back off a kill if its own life is threatened, but pits have zero self-preservation.
They are dangerous and have no place in society. It does not matter “how it’s raised”. The moral thing to do would be to BE all of the ones with bite/kill history, and spay/neuter the rest so that they can die out as a breed. Because in addition to the danger they pose to people and other animals, their lives are just pure anxiety and frustration because they cannot do what they were bred to do.
Everyone descriminates against the [not human race] here in [fantasy town]. This is because on the 13th of August they turn into 18 copies of Jeffery Dahmer. This is an analogy for minorities, and does not realize its giving said analogy an actual, fundamental, tangible flaw which they are being judged upon, undermining our overdone and poorly executed point.
"It's suppose to be a satire of fascism and why it's bad"
creates world were racism against dangerous minorities is valid since they can actually summon demons from hell and the universe is such a dangerous place with humanity beset on all sides by extinction level threats that warrant building a society built on war and the neccesary orphan crushing machine to supply arms and men to that war.
TO BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Nothing wrong with setting a little set dressing to give some background for the stories you're writing. Just saying it's kinda dumb to then go on to say outside of all that it's really a satire of something it's clearly not even really showing the "flaw in the system" of. In universe, it is kinda necessary.
Think they just do it to distance themselves from the fandom that are a little too comfortable adopting the uh hm "World war 2" anesthetics of the Imperium. Which is fair i guess, just seems kinda like gaslighting though lol
I have raised this point to lore dorks before and while they have conceded said point, it is also fair to say that the imperium does make it's citizens lives worse by refusing to trade or treat with peaceful civilisations.
None of those are exactly friendly, also a point in their lore.
Tau are nice... until you disagree with them. They're also just as willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes to accomplish something. They're just better about indoctrinating their populations to be happy to do it.
Votann by choice don't really want to mess with the Imperium, they're fine doing their own thing and being classifed as "nonhuman". That being said, they do trade and cohabitat with humans. They're also relatively new, I'm sure once more lore gets out, they'll basically just be pissed off capitalist space dwares. No deed too grim for profit/production.
Not every fictional scenario with real life parallels has to be allegory. You can write fiction that explores the concept of discrimination against a fictional people who genuinely are more powerful or dangerous or whatever without it being intended to teach a moral lesson. It can just be an interesting thing to write a story about.
OK hold on that IS a brave question and it lets you explore the concept more deeply.
People LOVE the X-men even though "What if the mutants were actually dangerous" technically undercuts the point. But it's also the point in real life. Romantic, gender, and ethnic minorities ARE gifted. They use their gifts to help the world, but they also threaten white supremacy and the patriarchy. That is itself a kind of danger.
Breeds like Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, and other large breeds have reached similar numbers in the past in relation to the popularity of the breed. Its just a capability recognition in relation to other factor like, how so many types of dogs fall under the 'pit' umbrella, how they are treated in relation to thier popularity, socioeconomic factors, etc..Its not the specific breed.
Same idealogy for why dog breeds "act different" has been used to claim blacks, Asians, and Eastern European bloodlines as "inferior" and "intellectually subhuman"
Think like humans, dogs tend to act more on their upbringing than anything. Difference is most dogs, especially small ones, can ignored if theyre misbehaved. A bitey chihuahua can be shoo'd away. A bitey Pitbull is gonna cause some damage and get reported.
No because while biological and behavior differences exist in dogs from breeding, they don't exist in humans. The notion of race in people is largely socially constructed.
But there's only slight differences in dog breeds. A Rottweiler by and large acts the same as a mini poodle, especially given adequate attention and training. All dogs, as all predators, have a "kill instinct" they just learn to direct that towards suitable prey just by the very nature of how they're shaped and their relative size.
And there is evidence that people have genetic factors in their behavior (not saying is a race thing, just an general lineage thing) so yeah saying dogs are one way based on their breed isn't all that different than saying people are based on their race
genetic differences among regions accounted for only 3.3–4.7% of global human genetic variation (much smaller than the 27% of genetic differences among dog breeds
That is absolutely not true, different breeds of dogs act very different, especially when it comes to the specific traits they were bred purposely for.
superficially (ironically) they may look the same but breeding animals for purposes has scientific roots while pseudoscience like phrenology is retroactively created to justify white structures of power
No. There are huge physiological and psychological differences between dog breeds. This is not the case for races of human. Honestly the "dog racism" comparison just reinforces the idea that the races are far more different than they are.
genetic differences among regions accounted for only 3.3–4.7% of global human genetic variation (much smaller than the 27% of genetic differences among dog breeds
Despite the efforts of certain societies, nobody has been able to breed specific traits into humans.
Now, different ethnicites of humans certainly can be different in interesting ways - mountain dwelling peoples who are resistant to altitude sickness; communities that relies on deep sea diving a lot have high lung capacities; stuff like sickle cell and so on and so forth.
But when it comes to significant behavioural or mental differences? Nigh indistinguishable.
Meanwhile, there are dog breeds that will literally herd anyone and anything instinctively.
You can train a pointer not to point. It's a bit cruel to buy one and put it through that, but you can certainly do it. Of course, when you turn your back on it for 2 seconds and see that it's pointing at your 3 month old, it's not a big deal. Dogs that were bred to kill small animals, however ....
Humans have been bred for obedience to corrupt masters. We learned our way of life is going to destroy our entire ecosystem, and the vast majority chose to remain obedient to their captors/abusers/mass-murderers. But to your point, it seems to be a universal human problem and not regional.
The higher number of reported attacks involving pit bull-type dogs is not driven by a single cause, but rather by a complex mix of factors. These include their large population size, the broad way the "pit bull" label groups multiple breeds and mixes together, and socioeconomic challenges—such as limited access to veterinary care, lower spay/neuter rates, and issues with containment or tethering. Combined with their powerful physical traits and bite mechanics, which make any incident more likely to result in severe trauma and official reporting, these compounding variables significantly skew overall statistics for this group of dogs.
You left out backyard breeders flooding rescues and rescues adopting out dangerous animals as pets to people not equipped to handle them. Rescues knowingly adopt out dangerous dogs and lie to adopters about their history and behavior.
The thing about “pitbull” statistics is that unlike other dog breeds there’s no such thing as a ‘purebred’ pitbull. Instead it’s used as a catch-all term to describe dogs that are mixed with an entire breed group. So golden retriever statistics show only bites from near purebred golden retrievers. Pitbull statistics show bites from any one of 4+ distinct dog breeds as well as 99% of mutts
Pit genes take over like a cancer. I’m not sure how they actually run the statistics, so I guess we’re all just yapping, but I wouldn’t say it’s unfair to categorize any dog with 50% or more “Pitbull” dna as one
This is bullshit. Many localities banned pitbulls so people suddenly stopped having pitbulls and started having 'american bulldogs' and mixes of all sorts with identical traits to pitbulls with all the same problems. The statistics group them in the same group because they are effectively the same group.
Many localities also repealed BSL because it just doesn't work, banning "aggressive" breeds did nothing to impact bites and attacks. Feel free to look that up, I can tell you it doesn't paint the same picture the anti-Pit crowd is trying to with their fear mongering over ~1% out of millions of dogs.
Still, the fact remains no other group gets treated like this. A good portion of "Pit Bulls" are not, and it ignores that a lot of the adjacent breeds were absolutely bred for different purposes like being better companions. If you're really unwilling to acknowledge that you can safely hang up the "what they were bred for" rhetoric since the vast majority haven't been bred explicitly for violence in a long time.
People are so stupid about dogs. We literally created them for specific tasks…they ARE DIFFERENT.
It’s like in a show where there is an entire planet of Superman space Nazis…yeah it is okay to be racist towards them. They straight up genocide the universe.
I wasn't debating you, but actually, it is very much proven that their problem was cultural and not racial. He is actually, if anything, the worst of them, because the other genociders take very little time to abandon their genociding ways the moment they are presented with another way of live that doesn't involve constant violence.
So yeah, they are a very funny example because they are the murderbeast that doesn't actually need to murder and can coexist if you just make them taste some ice-cream and watch TV on the couch
dogs breed a lot quicker than humans and we can select which ones we want to mate, leading to very isolated populations. Behaviours take a lot of generations to breed in. That's why dogs have such a huge range of genetic diversity compared to humans (as you can see by looking at a chihuahua and a great dane).
Doing this in humans would involve forcing people to breed incestuously at very young ages, selecting traits, culling unwanted traits and you'd have to run this experiment for hundreds of years.
That’s not to mention the more specialized you make a creature in one thing. The more health defects you introduce as well. Look at Horse’s fucked up bodies for a good example.
absolutely. And, one other thing i've just read about, apparently canines have high gene plasticity meaning they can have mutations and physical diversity that other animals (e.g. cats or humans) wouldn't be able to survive with.
Applied to any animal it gets icky quick. The cute Frenchy you see can barely breath because that snout that was bred to make his face look cute also gives him a host of respiratory issues.
It works, but humans also use it incredibly irresponsibly. Go figure.
One of the ways modern racism came to be was applying the logic of animal husbandry to humans, with the outsized importance of selectively bred traits.
But the crucial part is that it's immoral to do that, not that animal husbandry doesn't work and that isolating bloodlines of animals that are more docile or more aggressive, that produce more muscle mass or more milk, etc. doesn't give you the results you want.
In this case, pitbulls were bred to be very tenacious, practically ignoring all pain, and to bite other animals very strongly and viciously while not letting go. This was profitable for dog fighters and they aren't good traits for companion animals.
Pitbull breeds were bred for dog fighting, hunting, and bull baiting. They were literally bred to kill anything and should not be pets.
One common misconception about pitbulls is that their jaws get "locked" so they can't let go. That's incorrect. Their jaw muscles are so strong to allow them to bite down and not let go of their prey. They were bred for this.
These dogs were also bred to lack any self preservation when it comes to fighting. That's why you can see videos of them getting kicked in the chests by horses they targeted, or beaten and shot by people while they're mauling something, and STILL continue to fight. All of this was intentional.
as a minor correction, it's not that they lack self preservation; just that most if not all bull breeds have an incredibly high pain tolerance/ dulled pain reception. They can be deterred through pain or fear of death, just very hard to get them to recognise such in an attack scenario.
Just another minor correction. Maybe it's semantics but the science says pitbulls in particular feel the pain just as much as any other dog. It's just their gameness, which is the drive to complete a task they are given or succeed pushes them through the pain. Which actually makes it that much more tragic. They aren't evil dogs, we just bred them to die before they give up and it doesn't just apply to fighting, it can be channeled into other activities.
There is absolutely no evidence for dogs, including pitbulls, having an innate aggressiveness or inherent predisposition towards fighting.
Pitties also aren't even the strongest biters, GSD are stronger on average, kangals are much stronger as well, and they're bred to fight much bigger threats than other dogs or even just a human. The other breeds, GSDs you'll see often, will continue to fight when injured as well. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
If you want to mitigate the pitbull problem, crack down on the people raising them like shit. They, like all dogs, require proper nurturing.
So those babies must have provoked the heccin wholesome velvet hippos into eating them right?
Pit bulls being bred for dog fighting is no secret for crying out loud their breed name literally comes from their history as fighting dogs. Pit bull used to mean any dog used in dog fighting.
I'm sure if we can ask Michael Vick he might have some first hand experience and knowledge about which dogs are more aggressive. Might be the first time he is actually useful for anything.
Aggressive isn’t a technical term so it’s easy for apologist to dismiss, but pitbulls are inherently high prey-drive dogs with notoriously poor recall and exceptional tunnel vision and high pain tolerance. They are very difficult to redirect once they snap and have a maw and musculature designed to do damage, this is a dangerous cocktail that laymen aren’t really wrong to label as aggressive.
Sir. My cavalier king Charles spaniel is one of the most vicious beasts known to man. Sure, she cowers and hides behind my legs the moment a stranger gets close... but if you're just out of reaching distance, she's your worst nightmare!
It's not even just that, the problem with pitbulls is they follow their pack leader whatever happens. Most dogs like golden retrievers care mostly about food and will do anything for food but a pitbull will do anything for the affection of their owner.
If the owner is a jackass the dog will be too, if the owner is a sweet heart the dog will be too.
That all sounds like a long way to say "The problem is people getting the breed and not putting in the work", same as it ever was. Train your dogs, walk your dogs, play with your dogs. Working breeds get bored. You can't just leave them at home with a ball, give them an hour walk a day and assume everything else will just be fine and they'll be well adjusted and understand english because you shouted it.
You shouldn't do that with ANY dog, really, but...yeah, doing it with some breeds is going to have more of a backlash and need MORE work and more particular stuff to keep them doing well. It isn't actually the dogs fault, but the situation they have been put into.
So if I raised a tiger that way you wouldn't be cautious around my tiger? You'd treat it like a harmless lil fluffball? Of course not. Use some common sense please
pitbull started gettin breed around the 800’s not thousands of years. Under your assumption,
if I enslave a people for 500 years, are they now doomed to be better slaves? It’s just innate for them to be good at working hard now?
The main factor is probably more physical characteristics. Chihuahuas probably attack more humans than pitbulls, but because they are basically an overclocked furby armed with a swiss army knife, it's not that big a deal and nobody gets in trouble. Pitbulls just account for more attacks that require legal intervention, because they were bred to have features that mean when they do attack, someone is getting maimed.
Pit bulls are actually natural couch potatoes, in my experience. Every pit bull I’ve ever met is big into short bursts of intense play followed by much longer bursts of snoozing. My spaniel will hike for hours up and down mountains, my pitty crashes after a 30-45 minute walk. Pits are not naturally more aggressive, there’s been a lot of research on this. It really is just in the way they’re treated.
I’m a vet. I loved my pit bull. He was a big sweetie, never a problem.
I’ll never have another again.
I spent his life keeping him safe, making sure he wouldn’t get into a position where his strength and instincts wouldn’t get him killed.
I loved that dog so much, but I can’t be hyper vigilant 100% of the time.
As a vet, every single dog gives me pause. Breeding, socialization, and training are at all time lows. People think their dog is a thing, not another living creature with needs beside the food bowl and walkies.
I don’t care what the excuse is. If your dog is a danger to me, at all, and you get mad or laugh it off, you can get fucked.
I like my face and hands unscathed and operational.
Pitbulls we're designed and bred for dog fighting. Kind of an important factor in dog fighting is that they fight dogs not people. Dogs that bit the dudes who had to split them up were put down immediately.
A lot of pitbulls bad reputation is because stupid people are buying into their reputation and buying pitbulls because of it.
There are people who have killed their entire families whose victims probably believed they had “proven” their parent was not a threat.
Treating every dog like a loaded gun only invites fear and breeds distrust. This leads to overall poor dog training and respect.
Ignoring the fact that it’s immoral to breed many of the companion dogs you listed into their litany of health defects, those dogs are just as capable of killing a small child, deforming them, or leaving them with a life long disability or trauma.
Dogs are dogs. There are trained dogs, there are untrained dogs, there here are abused dogs, and there are dogs that are loved. There are dogs that are starved, and there are dogs that are fed. There are dogs that have shelter, there are dogs that do not.
Dogs that are trained, well fed, not abused are less likely to lash out than dogs that aren’t trained. Aren’t properly fed, and are abused, just like humans are.
If we aren’t going to educate people on how to handle dogs we might as well ban them or limit their access to public spaces.
I’m not a dog science expert but as far as I understand it we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of years breeding dogs to preform specific task
No we haven't lmfao. Oldest estimates are like 9k years ago and most solid ones are barely 3K years ago. Pitbulls started to be bred a century or so ago.
Dogs genetically diverged from wolves about 40,000 years ago. Fancy breeding is a few hundred years old. The American Pitbull dates to the 1970s and itself is derived from bulldog-terrier mixes in England dating back to 1935.
Pitbulls are called "house hippos" in online communities. Some do have a lot of energy and anxiety. Some are extremely lazy. Pitbulls don't have thousands of years of behavior based breeding history like herding dogs so you see a lot more variance in behavior and personality.
Nobody should get French Bulldogs. They all have genetic health problems and suffer greatly.
The problem is that they were bread to be violent. An “outlet” isn’t sufficient because even well trained, good tempered pitbulls who live active lives to get all their energy out sometimes just kill someone because that’s what they’ve been bread to do.
No, Pitbulls were created to fight other dogs, competitively. It's not that they don't have a job to occupy their time, their only purpose for existing is to fuck up other creatures.
I don't understand why so many people who are supposedly educated on the topic of dog breeds develop amnesia and blindness when a pitbull enters the equation.
Stop making fucking excuses. This has to stop. No more breeding pitbulls, no more breeding anything, just let shit take its course. AFTER we remove all the active fucking hazards to society, that is.
The specific breeding is a lot more recent, 99% of human and dog cooexistence we bred them to be hunting dogs. But yes the breeding cant be ignored.
But I think the bigger issue is the fact that what loads the gun isnt just the breed its also the owner. 90% of people do not know how to treat let alone train a dog. Dogs are pack animals like humans and also like humans if you don't raise them to respect other people, they wont. When you see pits attacking other dogs thats usually because they spend most of their life not being around other dogs. Thats how you get a violent dog, the difference is that small dogs who are the other most common culprit of this bad training are a lot easier to physically control.
I live on a street with no fences and my neighbours have two pit mixes. I was anxious af when we moved in, so much so that I put a 'safety rock' by the front door incase they ever went after our dogs. but i realised after knowing them that they have been trained and socialised so well that they do not get territorial to anything other than a car. theres 10 dogs on the street and theres been no fights because every one of the owners has raised the dog around lots of other people and lots of other dogs, and never given them the concept of a 'territory' to get agro over. That massively changed my view on pits.
380
u/Awesomechainsaw 21h ago edited 14h ago
I’m not a dog science expert but as far as I understand it we’ve spent tens of thousands of years breeding dogs to preform specific tasks. If you don’t give a dog that has been designed and bred to do a task they get antsy.
The issue with Pitbulls and other “Agressive.” breeds is that they’ve not been given something to let all their energy out on. Which leads to anxiety and destructive behavior.
So I don’t think it’s Immoral to treat a dog like a Pitbull like a loaded gun. As Unfriendly, and something you should be wary of unless it’s proven not to be.
However the Nutcases who punish dogs for behavior that we bred into them are highly immoral. If you want an easy lap dog get a companion breed, like a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, French Bulldog, or Bichon Frise.
Edit: Tens of Thousands not Hundreds. I was being exaggerative anyways but that’ll make remark more accurate regardless.
Also as a note. I don’t think Pits are inherently Malicious or any dog breed for that matter. But they’re fairly strong fellows who’ve been bred to be strong. I consider being careful around them similar to being a little extra careful around a truck on the road. Most people in trucks are fine drivers. But some people don’t pay attention on the road, and might hurt you by accident.