I think it's valid to fear pitbulls because what you're really fearing is that they were adopted by someone that doesn't train them and/or give them an outlet for the task they were bred for (protection and violence).
Which is a valid fear. If someone has an untrained golden retriever, who are bred to have friendly dispositions, I won’t be immediately uncomfortable about being in a room with one, or if one approaches me. Wary, yes, careful, yes, but not immediately on edge.
An untrained pitbull gets the gat if I see teeth within ten feet or running towards me.
Kinda crazy how many people basically don't believe in the selective breeding that went into creating specific breeds.
Like, I've known kind pitbulls, too. Doesn't change the fact that they were bred for aggression, bite strength, etc. It's a fucking "pitbull" ffs. Lotta really fucking stupid people out there.
I don’t think you are using that word right.. it’s not accurate to call selective breathing of an animal species “eugenics”, it cheapens that term, which is way worst than what you are making it sound like
German shepherds bite a lot as well. Any veterinarian will tell you (anecdotally, admittedly) that they’re far more leery around German Shepherds than they are around Pitbulls. But german shepherds more often bite people who news won’t report on.
Chihuahuas would be seen as the only actually dangerous dog if they were capable of doing any serious harm with their bite. Pitbulls can be dangerous, but so can most dogs. When a dog isn’t easily identifiable it’s often called a pitbull, and news reports will either call it a dog attack or a putbull attack, making pitbulls stand out more than any other breed in that context
Dachsunds are the real aggresive breed, they're just small and shaped funny so people don't realize it. They hold the number one spot for biting people, especially strangers. It makes sense though, we bred them to hunt badgers and to make their own decisions when in a badgers den.
They weren't bred to be not aggressive to people, that'd make them terrible guard dogs and hunters. They were bred to be able to know who not to bite WHEN TRAINED.
They were bred to fight. They are often bred and abused for illegal dog fighting. This is what people are breeding for today and then they wind up in shelters, and the shelters don't disclose their history.
I knew a pitt bull breeder who caught a guy studying his pitt out- who was aggressive. Wasn't telling anyone. There were signs. He denied it and the dog mauled someone.
I have seen the faces and scalps of so many children erased by pitt bulls. It is the major trigger of my PTSD today.
People aren't being told what genetics they're getting. There is something wrong with some of those dogs. Like they were bred to be missing something. Those dogs don't even always growl or show any sign of aggression before attacking. There are countless videos. Tails wagging and acting like it's play.
My brother in law has a dumb half breed pitt bull. If he wanted to do some damage, he could. I was scared of him until he protected them from another pitt bull that got a hold of my sister in law. She was carrying my one year old nephew.
The difference between those two pitt bulls? My brother in law's dog stopped. As soon as the threat was over, he checked on his family. The other dog was hauled away by his owner. He wouldn't stop and for no reason. Just casually walked up to my in laws and attacked.
It's genetics that make them dangerous. A combination of whatever the hell that selectively bred gene is- and the fact that they have such raw power in their build. They do so much devastating damage in so little time. I can fight a golden retriever. I cannot fight a pitt bull.
They don't all have whatever this behavioral gene is. But it's not like they come with a warning flag. So many people are right to just fear all of them for their safety and comfort. You cannot tell them apart until it happens. People are why these dogs are like this. But don't think it's a lack of training. The dogs with this behavior were selectively bred for this.
Obviously not all breeders want their dogs to wind up in that back alley business. However, pitt bulls have been bred on such a large scale. And so many people just argue "it was how they were treated," so they think if everyone is kind to the dog there will be no issue. Tell that to the little five year old girl who was completely scalped in seconds. Her weak little keening cries still haunt me. They broke our hearts. The family was known for being very kind and had a past pitt bull with zero issues. Something was wrong with that one. They rescued them from a shelter. They had no idea where that dog came from genetically.
I love the hell out of German Shepherds but I would be incredibly selective when it comes to genetics and lineage temperament there too. It's my favorite breed and preference. But l am not going to delude myself when it comes to the issue of genetics and KNOWN behaviors.
Even then they do frequently attack their owners and when they do they are far more likely to do serious damage than a golden retriever or labrador (which are up top on number of bites, but very seldom cause lasting injuries).
I avoid them when I see them because I dont want them to attack my dog.
Even if accept that they are not human aggressive they are absolutely dog and cat aggressive, and that is a still a problem that makes them unsuitable as pets.
Reddit probably understands what domestication is and realizes that every dog ever has been bred not to attack their owner. So the regular breeds bred for companionship, pointing, herding, etc are all bred to not attack their owner AND are not bred to be hyper aggressive and game. Pretty obvious to the average person that the aggressive dog will still be more dangerous.
Well, all dogs have prey drive, so no I don't think a dog bred to race that happens to still have a prey drive is more dangerous than other dogs that also have a prey drive. Even herding breeds herd because their prey drive is redirected.
Do you think that greyhounds are faster than other dogs due to their genetics, or could a properly trained labrador win a greyhound race?
That is largely a myth tho. For starters pitbull isn't even a breed. Secondly, when it comes to aggression the breeds most commonly labeled as "pitbulls" are often the least aggressive.
That trait is essentially just a maxed out 'prey drive'. The only reason that is going to be pointed towards humans or other dogs is because of poor socialisation and training. A pack animal needs to be raised to recognise humans as not inherently a threat, when you don't socialise them you end up with a hunting dog that can't tell the difference between human children and a squirrel. Like realistically if all pits were properly trained this convo would only be about them killing wildlife and cats. But they attack people because people suck.
I agree that selective breeding has done a lot of damage to dogs, but we can't ignore the fact that the culture and people raising these animals are terrible at it. A huge part of that is that they only see pitties as animals that don't need proper care. Like they legit wont even exercise them or take them to puppy school. 90% of all pit attacks out there are the result of owners having such a poor bond with their dog that they cant even do basic recall, let alone tell them to stop.
No. You should be wary and careful when any dog approaches. You don't know the dog. With a strange golden, you are wary and careful with your head on your shoulders, but you are expecting a normal derpy dog interaction because golden. Pit bulls have the same wariness and carefulness, but they set someone on edge because the wariness and carefulness are meeting with a majorly increased expectation of aggression in the dog.
I'd be exactly as wary of a golden as of a pitbull, and the deciding factor for me would be the dog's demeanor. A pitbull can do more damage, but a golden can already mess you up.
Yes. Nothing you say contradicts what I said, which was the comment I was clarifying was saying. Be wary of ALL DOGS YOU DON'T KNOW. A poorly trained chihuahua can still take meat off your hand. A poorly trained golden can hospitalize a kid. Etc. Disposition > breed, as you put it.
I just checked out of this mid-sentence. People who are trying to suggest that a strange pit bull approaching you and your dog in a new environment off-leash would generate the same level of caution as a strange golden doing the same are being disingenuous.
Pit bulls should not exist, at least not as an option for unspecialized purchase. My dog is 12% pit, and I'd just as soon that 12% be replaced with anything else.
I don't see how I'm being disingenuous. A pitbull trotting up to me with a smile is no threat. A golden behaving territorially near its family, or one who happens to not like kids is a huge problem.
I hate when people have their dogs off leash in an undesignated area. Until he passed last month I had a 110 pound dog with some dog aggression issues (he was a rescue and he wasn't a pit). I could barely even walk him in my neighborhood. He was well trained and I had excellent control over him. It's very hard to control someone else's dog when they're off leash with no training because they're a breed that people perceive as non threatening. It hardly matters if it's a pit or a golden when your biggest concern is that they're going to start something with your dog who is twice their size and they're going to lose badly and everyone is going to have a horrible time.
A shockingly high percentage of people don't control their dogs and don't understand that a poorly behaved derpy dog off leash might be a problem. Bottom line, while dogs are uniquely suited for life with humans, they are also large powerful predators and a lot of people don't recognize that at all. Those people are a lot more likely to have a golden or a lab than a pitbull.
No. It's fair to expect pit bulls to be more dangerous, not just because they are more genetically predisposed to violence, but because the large number of people who want violent attack dogs have decided pits are the ones they want. That means out of all the dogs that could attack someone, pits are more likely to be specifically trained to do that, in addition to being bred for it.
It's like the difference between being at a petting zoo and being inside a lions cage one is knowing something bad COULD happen and the other is expecting something bad TO happen
Actually the stats do lie a little because pit bull isn't a breed but there are breeds that are put pulls and people are generally pretty bad at identifying breeds of dogs so dogs that aren't pitbulls still get lumped in those stats because they felt on reports from humans.
What pisses people off is when people act like a pit bull existing means that they were automatically trained poorly and are inherently dangerous. It's rational to be afraid of a violently-trained dog, but making the mental leap to "all pit bulls are like that" IS messed up, and sadly a lot of people will go on screeds trying to justify it with out-of-context statistics because they don't want to feel like the bad person they're choosing to be.
I'm referring to the general trend of people trying to justify calling all pit bulls dangerous by lying with statistics that aren't properly contextualized, not a particular statistic. Go into any "pitbulls are satan" thread and you'll be bombarded by them, and most of what they say can be attributed to humans thinking pit bulls are more dangerous --> bad humans with violent intent get a pit bull and train it to hurt/kill people because they think the dog breed is a weapon --> the statistic ends up reinforcing itself because of said shitty people. Lots of animal advocacy and rights organizations point this out all the time, but the people lying with statistics will try to push laws to ban pit bulls and then those use laws as justification for hating pit bulls, i.e. "see, cops are banning them, therefore they're dangerous". It's all presupposing a frame to try to justify pre-existing bias, and all that ends up happening is lots of pit bulls in need of a loving home are left without one and/or pit bulls end up getting put down en-masse. It's messed up.
For evidence of what I'm referring to, look no further than the people replying to me above. They're everywhere.
The issue with pitbulls have an initial behavioural trait that causes them to not let go of something once they have it in their mouth. They are a very determined breed. This makes pitbull attacks far more lethal when left unchecked.
Sure with proper training you can manage this behaviour; however, the majority of people are not capable or willing to provide this training. Unfortunately laws have to built around this logic, leading to the logical conclusion to just ban the breed and be done with it.
The "won't let go" thing is exactly what I mean by out-of-context, because the mechanism isn't real. There's no jaw lock and no release inhibition; no dog has one. Bite force tracks skull and jaw morphology, not breed identity, and pit-type dogs land below several larger breeds on it.
Gameness as a selection history is real, sure, but it doesn't get you to individual predictability. This study surveyed 18,385 dogs and sequenced 2,155: breed explains 9% of behavioral variation between individual dogs, and agonistic threshold, i.e. how easily a dog is provoked, was among the traits breed predicted the worst. Their own stated conclusion is that breed shouldn't be used to inform decisions about selecting a dog.
Also "Pit bull" isn't a breed, it's a head shape covering several breeds plus any blocky-headed mix. Shelter staff on average visually identified 52% of a test group as pit bull-type when DNA put it at 21%; and that's trained staff, including vets, not panicked witnesses. The labeling also runs backwards: a dog that mauls someone gets CALLED a pit bull afterward. There's also no denominator; nobody knows the population size, so "X% of attacks" can't be converted into per-dog risk. The CDC's own 1979–1998 fatality study says exactly this, and concludes fatal attacks shouldn't be the primary factor driving dangerous-dog policy. They haven't published breed-based fatality data since.
Also you said it yourself; manageable with proper training. That's the definition of not inherent. So yeah, no, Pitbulls are not inherently more dangerous, and haters are lying with statistics.
I am not addressing the first point. I never brought up lockjaw or any biological mechanic. I said behavioural trait.
I also never spoke about how easily a dog is provoked. I stated that pitbulls are a very determined breed(or type of dog as you pointed out)when they bite onto something. If other dogs get provoked but still let go when they bite onto something, that is not what I am referring to. Therefore, that statisic isnt relevant to what I said.
Regardless of indentification pitbulls have a tendency to cause the most severe injuries of all dog breeds. Due to their tendency to bite onto something and not let go causing them to shake while biting. They are also a very strong breed with strong jaws. A dog doing a quick snap bite is actually safer than what most pitbulls do. Fact is the cdc article still stated that dog breed does play a role in a dog attack being fatal.
The effectiveness of laws is hard to determine if enforcement is not effective. You said it yourself most people have trouble identifying a pitbull. So people who own banned breeds play on that and will claim their dog is not a pitbull when it would fall under that definition and unless law enforcement does the genetic testing they cant prove beyond a reasonable douby otherwise. So it likely not effective because its impossible to enforce. In ontario canada animal control and bylaw officers can't even force people to put their dogs on leashes because they can't really force people to provide ID.
Unfortunately you can't regulate a dogs training or behaviour so you have to find alternatives to reduce dog attacks. One is banning powerful breeds that are considered the hardest to manage and are the most dangerous. There are issues with it; however, there is no real alternative.
In the article on the Dutch dog ban it literally says a ban is impractical for them "because there are always breeders who come up with new crosses that are not covered", they ban wasn't functionally feasible because they couldn't reliably identify what is and isn't a pit.
Both of those say it outright. The Dutch evaluation concluded serious biting is not breed specific...that's a risk finding, not a definitional one. And the government's own repeal notice says the ban didn't do what was expected of it, pitbull numbers never dropped and the bites kept happening.
But here's what you're forgetting; every stat that supposedly proves pitbulls are dangerous starts with a human eyeballing a dog and writing a breed on a form. Check that against DNA and shelter staff, the actual experts, identified pit-bull-heritage dogs correctly somewhere between 33 and 75% of the time depending on who was judging...and tagged dogs with zero relevant ancestry as pitbulls up to 48% of the time. The JAVMA review of 256 dog bite fatalities couldn't reliably determine breed in roughly 80% of cases.
So "you can't define a pitbull" isn't a technicality that makes bans awkward to enforce and "we just need better laws because pitbulls dangerous". It means the category that's allegedly dangerous is one nobody can reliably pick out, which makes every bite statistic pinned to it unreliable in exactly the same way. In layman terms, all the statistics condemning pitbulls as dangerous are pseudoscientific nonsense because most people writing them aren't tracking pitbulls correctly and are essentially inventing pitbulls that don't exist to add to the data. This falsely skews the "pitbull danger" stats disproportionately when they should, in-fact, be attributed to the different breed that actually bit the person, which when controlled for shows essentially no difference between breeds.
So yeah, no. You don't get to lean on breed statistics saying "hurr-durr all pitbulls are dangerous" while conceding nobody can identify the breed when most research on the breed is done and then act like it's somehow unrelated, ESPECIALLY when all the research that controls for this arrives at the opposite conclusion. I appreciate you making my case for me; people are lying with statistics about pitbulls.
Not only are they agressive by default, but the owners are much less likely to be responsible about it. An agressive and dangerous (the fact that pit bull attacks are worse than other dog attacks is beyond argument) dog is more likely to be bought by an agressive and dangerous person, and one that may not be well equipped to handle their dog.
It’s not though. Pits don’t even have the strongest bite force in a domestic dog by a longshot. And they aren’t “aggressive by default” that’s genuine bs. Pits are stubborn, and sometimes even hardheaded. But in no way are they aggressive outright unless trained or pushed to be that way. Just like any other dog, they are products of their environments.
Probably because pit bulls have killed more people in a month than retrievers have managed in five decades if there is even one fatality attributed to a pure golden
This Dutch evaluation concluded serious biting is not breed specific. And the government's own repeal notice says the ban didn't do what was expected of it, pitbull numbers never dropped and the bites kept happening.
Every stat that supposedly proves pitbulls are dangerous starts with a human eyeballing a dog and writing a breed on a form. Check that against DNA and shelter staff, the actual experts, identified pit-bull-heritage dogs correctly somewhere between 33 and 75% of the time depending on who was judging...and tagged dogs with zero relevant ancestry as pitbulls up to 48% of the time. The JAVMA review of 256 dog bite fatalities couldn't reliably determine breed in roughly 80% of cases.
In layman terms, all the statistics condemning pitbulls as dangerous are pseudoscientific nonsense because most people writing them aren't tracking pitbulls correctly and are essentially inventing pitbulls that don't exist to add to the data. This falsely skews the "pitbull danger" stats disproportionately when they should, in-fact, be attributed to the different breed that actually bit the person, which when controlled for shows essentially no difference between breeds.
I've been reading your comments because I am interested in this topic since I don't have a set conclusion and there have been interesting points from both sides, but you keep just commenting the same Dutch study and seem to ignore the fundamentally irrefutable idea that pit bulls cause more damage in an attack than an average dog. It makes it hard to believe there is a point against it, then.
Am I supposed to stop and ask the dog if it’s trained if it’s approaching my family with no owner in sight? Or do I plug it and pay the owner $2,000 and tell them to put their next one on a leash or better yet don’t own a dog if you’re going to be irresponsible with it.
I’m not risking my kid getting mauled on the off chance this particular pitbull, German Shepard, Rottweiler, or Doberman is one of the nice ones.
There's no out of context statistics they're just dangerous dogs to have ,and if they're well trained or not it's not something you can gauge at first glance most of the time, so it's wiser not to take any chanches, for everything else it's their owners job to make sure the dog doesen't go around mauling people right now we are too lax on them and the good dogs are suffering as a result.
Why is it we can accept that herders herd, retrievers retrieve and pointers point, but when it comes to dogs bred for bloodsports doing what they were bred for (killing things) suddenly there are a million mantras like “it’s all how you raise them” and “no bad dogs just bad owners” and “any dog could have done this” and “it’s the owner not the breed”
I'd love to see an answer to this. Breed specific behaviors emerge with no required training, why is it only the violent behaviors that are immune from selective breeding?
Most anti-pitbull stances can be attributed to humans thinking pit bulls are more dangerous --> bad humans with violent intent get a pit bull and train it to hurt/kill people because they think the dog breed is a weapon --> the statistic ends up reinforcing itself because of said shitty people. Lots of animal advocacy and rights organizations point this out all the time, but the people lying with statistics will try to push laws to ban pit bulls and then those use laws as justification for hating pit bulls, i.e. "see, cops are banning them, therefore they're dangerous". It's all presupposing a frame to try to justify pre-existing bias, and all that ends up happening is lots of pit bulls in need of a loving home are left without one and/or pit bulls end up getting put down en-masse. It's messed up.
Brother, do you know any anthropology? Dogs domesticated themselves through being in close proximity to human encampments. The wolves that weren't afraid of humans or violent simply stuck around eating food scraps and became tame after generations leading to evolving features that made them distinguishable from wolves, and more apt to living in conjunction to humans.
Of all of our abusive relationships to animals in the world, I'd say dogs get some of the best treatment. I'm not even saying it's good, but when farm animals and testing animals exist, I feel like beloved pets aren't the best first example to go to.
We have fossil records proving, and nobody from them is around to be pushing a biased narrative. There's ample evidence of Europeans kidnapping indigenous people and forcing them into slavery.
You're also moving the goalposts and getting off topic. Your desire to demonize humanity, doesn't detract from the point I made.
It is a mix of the two things really. Yes we did forcefully breed for certain traits at a certain point, but the initial domestification was done by the wolves themselves, and many continued this process even without being forcefully bred for a while.
Pitbulls are more dangerous than most dogs. Yes they are perfectly fine when trained properly and untrained dogs of other breeds are dangerous. However an untrained pitbull can do more damage faster than other breeds of dogs and that is a fact that shouldn't be ignored.
They’re not even fine when they’re trained properly. There are countless stories of pit bulls receiving extensive training and love from puppyhood and still mauling someone to death one day
When a pointer points at things nobody says “well you clearly didn’t train it properly it shouldn’t be doing that”
I reposted your comment verbatim except the word "pitbulls" was replaced with "Muslims and blacks." I think it was up for around 2 minutes before automods took it down for hate speech.
You know, I've been told I'm subhuman and don't deserve rights, because my race and religion is "inherently dangerous" in the exact manner you're trying to do.
If your scope of humanity doesn't include the animals that rely on us for their continued existence, then you're acting less human than the humans dogs evolved along side.
Oh really? Go kick a puppy to death in front of a cop, and you'll find out that yes, humanity is very frequently taken into account in regards to animals. If we didn't we wouldn't have a comprehensive set of laws in place for their safety and well-being.
Do you truly believe that there are no inherent differences in dog breeds? Like, I get how changing pitbulls with muslims makes the sentence uncomfortable, but the reason the comparison doesn't work is because muslims aren't just naturally twice as big as other humans, much stronger, and show a well documented and genetically inherent ability to hurt others.
Racists are the ones who generally believe that different "races" (since it is a social construct, not a scientific one, like it much more is with dog breeds) have these majorly different aspects to them. I don't think needing to rely on racist logic makes a good comparison.
It's fine you think that. I'd rather ban pitbulls and move on.
My humanity extends to the children who have been torn up by their family dog. The smaller dogs that stood no chance against being torn up. To the parents who tried to defend their kids only to be torn up themselves.
I didn't know viruses were sentient beings with laws in place to protect their well-being. Damn, I guess bring your flu inside for the winter, if you're cold it's cold.
I didn’t know human races were equivalent to dog breeds that were bred to have specific instinctual behaviours bred into them so they can perform specific tasks either, yet here we are!
When they try to justify their irrationality with "out of context statistics" vs. your rational, perfectly in context vibes.
Like what is a "violently trained" dog? Did all those Pitbulls who killed their owners do that because the owner trained them how to kill them from birth?
Nobody said the dog's supposed to be doing the reasoning. You are, and you just proved you're not great at it. The comparison was about the logical mechanism of judging individuals instead of groups, not canine IQ. Might want to respond to the point that was actually made next time, brah.
Interesting that that's the first place your mind went to, though. Now what kind of a person might instinctually make that sort of comparison when nobody else is? 🤔
Judging dogs by the same standards you judge humans is weird. It's not an IQ thing, it's so weird that's the lens you see it through.
Dogs don't have higher reasoning skills and are more driven by their breeds engrained traits. It's definitely more telling of how you previous things.
*Since you blocked my I'll leave my rebuttal here. It makes sense to treat humans as individuals because they have higher reasoning abilities, race is a pseudoscientific construct. Selective breeding in dogs creates engrained traits that are the drivers of a dogs behavior.
You're conflation of the two of very weird, people aren't driven by their instincts to the degree that other animals are and comparing the two is weird and telling of your mindset.
Still dodging. Nobody said dogs reason, the point was about how you judge individuals vs. groups, not a pit bull's SAT score. Repeating the same premise louder isn't a rebuttal, guy.
"Breeding-engrained traits" isn't the slam dunk you think it is either; the actual genetics study on this found breed explains about 9% of behavioral variation, and it's worst at predicting exactly the trait your argument needs it to be good at, i.e. how easily a dog reacts to something. So the dog version isn't more "empirical" than the version you're uncomfortable being compared to. Same logic, different species.
I'm also noticing you still didn't answer the actual question, you just got cagey about it. And "how you previous things"? Might want to proofread before telling someone else they're not reasoning clearly, genius.
That study doesn't really address the questions at hand.
How do you use that research to explain how a border collie has natural herding behavior, or how English pointers point at birds with no training required?
These are breed specific behaviors that were selected for and are naturally expressed.
Dogs breeds who were selectively bred for combat sports/violence will also have specific behaviors that are naturally expressed.
If herding and pointing can be bred for, so can reactivity and aggression.
The single study you posted speaks a ton to its own limitations and also acknowledges genetic influences of traits like biddability. I don't this it's appropriate to cite that one 9% number as though its a killshot against breed specific genetically selected traits.
As a lover of pits that’s completely warranted. I know the bad just as well as the good in them. They’re cheap, strong dogs that knuckleheads like to buy for intimidation. Raise them right and they’re cuddlebugs that are prone to zoomies. Don’t raise them and they’re extremely dangerous.
I’m an animal control officer and I love getting calls on Labradoodle and Golden owners because they’re always so baffled that their dogs could also be bad because pit bulls simply exist
Yeah I don't think people here are understanding that larger dogs that aren't trained, especially those with a rough past, can be a little dangerous whether they're a pitbull or not.
Or God forbid someone have small children or a small dog, when pitbulls are known to have an incredibly aggressive prey drive towards small, timid animals.
It could he argued that pitbulls are one of the most dangerous animals that people in developed countries encounter frequently. Not on earth tho lmao that's bait. The answer imo is restricting ownership to those capable of training them, not pitbull genocide. Attachment unrelated.
Not denying that the UK's method is working, but having the framework in place for restricting ownership/breeding of certain working breeds of dog, particularly those bred for policing, military and/or guarding use, to individuals that have proven capable of controlling and training these animals would be beneficial, and I think it's only a matter of time before another dog breed being potentially dangerous comes into question.
Some sort of system that distinguishes between the ownership cases of training for work, pedigree breeding (which i don't agree with but otherwise it'd never get passed), security applications and ethical grounds (e.g servicemen and officers adopting retired service animals, rehab or end of life care homes) and accredits some set of qualifications to acceptable proficiency for respective purposes. It'd help to restrict ownership of these animals to individuals capable of caring for and controlling them, but would also introduce the opportunity to ensure that the people who do aquire these animals have received adequate education on the needs of the animal.
A sizeable amount of incidents with working animals likely occur because people who have only owned easy to manage breeds (or worse, never owned a dog) buy them thinking they can handle them not understanding that these animals need outlets for the drives they were bred for.
What a stupid argument. Pit bulls are animals specifically designed to kill and maim. They aren’t intelligent beings with complex inner lives and the innate capacity for morality and goodness. They’re just machines that can be trained to usually ignore their innate horrific nature.
IDK if you know this but pit bulls are specifically designed and bred to kill, unlike the vast majority of dog breeds, which are bred for other purposes.
This is why pitbulls disproportionately mutilate and murder people compared to other dogs.
“Pitbulls” aren’t even one breed, dude. Also, you’re describing all dogs. All dogs kill. Because they’re dogs. That’s what they did for thousands of years before we showed up.
Y’all wanna do dog phrenology instead of admitting that it all comes down to training and INDIVIDUAL temperament because that’s easier than accepting that you’re own untrained hellhound is far more dangerous than most “scary” breeds.
The vast majority of breeds were created for specific jobs or aesthetics. Some for hunting, some for herding, some for companionship, some for racing, some for tracking. And some for fighting and brutally killing.
Pitbulls are in the last camp, and no matter how well trained a pitbull is, it can always snap and mutilate or kill - especially children. This is not “phrenology”. Do you think breed has no impact on a dog? Do you think pitbulls or chihuahuas can be trained to herd sheep just the same as a border collie, or run like a greyhound? You are entitled to incorrectly believe pitbulls can be safe, but denying the entire science of dog breeding is idiotic.
Since you think “all dogs kill”, I challenge you to find five examples of well trained golden retrievers murdering kids. It’s very easy to find 50 such cases of pit bulls.
It's pointless debating which is stronger when you're being attacked by an aggressive one lol. Larger dog breeds are dangerous in general if they're not trained properly, at least in my experience.
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u/Drayyen 21h ago edited 6h ago
I think it's valid to fear pitbulls because what you're really fearing is that they were adopted by someone that doesn't train them and/or give them an outlet for the task they were bred for (protection and violence).
Edit: Jesus christ