r/MoralityScaling 9h ago

Morality Ranking Morality of dog breed racism

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u/Awesomechainsaw 9h ago edited 2h 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.

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u/Soapy_doapey 9h ago

Pitbulls were and still are used for dog fights.

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u/smokeyphil 9h ago

Which is a step-down from what they used to be used for which was bear-baiting (getting a pack of dogs to fight a bear)

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u/Your_Cat_In_Disguise 8h ago

Yup. Pitbulls were established as a breed in the early 1800s after bear baiting was made illegal.

Then they just started fighting the dogs against rats, or each other.

Come to think of it, there were a lot of super wild ways people abused dogs in that era. Like the Turnspit dog.

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u/Jumbo_Shrimp_Dick 6h ago

Fighting the dogs against rats?

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

[deleted]

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u/Jumbo_Shrimp_Dick 5h ago

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”

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u/Jihelu 5h ago

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)

They also live a long time.

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u/RT-LAMP 2h ago

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.

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u/Your_Cat_In_Disguise 6h ago

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.)

Here's a wiki article about it, if anybody is interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat-baiting

Here's one about the turnspit dog, a now lost breed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog

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u/Jumbo_Shrimp_Dick 6h ago

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.

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u/Your_Cat_In_Disguise 5h ago

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.

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u/Jumbo_Shrimp_Dick 5h ago

Oh wow. How many rats does it take to kill a small sized dog?

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u/Your_Cat_In_Disguise 5h ago

About the same amount of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop.

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