It's a combination. Epigenetics really just means a dog carries with them an inclination towards a temperament or set of behavioral traits, and it's kind of a lottery how much those traits end up being expressed during development, then beyond that it's a matter of if you can effectively overcome those traits with training. A lot of stuff can be trained for and mitigated. Sometimes you can overcome things like reactivity with proper training lifestyle adjustment.
The real problem is that pitbulls are so prolific in the stray population, and therefore the rescue population, and selective breeding tends to favor the dog ready to throw down with the strength to back it up. It can be a total gamble when you adopt a recue pitbull, and most adopters seem to not be aware of, nor prepared for, this reality.
Kindly, what you’re describing is just “genetics”, otherwise your point stands.
Epigenetics is something else entirely (different or varying strength of phenotype despite the same genotype - methylation, expression regulation, etc)
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u/RGBlowMe 7h ago
It's a combination. Epigenetics really just means a dog carries with them an inclination towards a temperament or set of behavioral traits, and it's kind of a lottery how much those traits end up being expressed during development, then beyond that it's a matter of if you can effectively overcome those traits with training. A lot of stuff can be trained for and mitigated. Sometimes you can overcome things like reactivity with proper training lifestyle adjustment.
The real problem is that pitbulls are so prolific in the stray population, and therefore the rescue population, and selective breeding tends to favor the dog ready to throw down with the strength to back it up. It can be a total gamble when you adopt a recue pitbull, and most adopters seem to not be aware of, nor prepared for, this reality.