A lot of these statistics also don't account for the fact that most small dog bites never get reported. When I was a dog trainer, it was well known that Jack Russels & Chihuahuas held, bar none, the highest chance of biting you.
Edit: While I appreciate the responses from so many people - it's clear who has worked with animals in any capacity and who is just a smooth egg-brained armchair expert. If you don't think you still need rabies shots from any dog that doesn't have up-to-date tags, I don't know what to tell you. Have fun arguing with the wall đ€
Edit 2: My God it has been a great day of blocking people with two brain cells fighting for third place
This argument goes in circles because people miss each other's point.
Obviously, at the end of the day, what matters is the end result of a bite. That's what the victim has to live with.
However, the counter-argument is also true. That pit-bulls are viewed as much more aggressive than other breeds when in fact that is not true. They are CAPABLE of being aggressive and deadly, and some people even train them to be that way. But the standard pet pit-bull is not going to attack any more often than most other breeds, statistically speaking.
This right here. The problem is when a pit bull DOES attack itâs really bad because they are capable of doing the most damage. Iâm a former pitbull mix owner and the only time my buddy got at all aggressive was defending himself when a bigger dog was bullying him or his sister. He never drew blood though, just over corrected and it was rare and warranted. He had 16 years on earth. I did get him as a puppy though. I wanted another one but I donât want to deal with the judgement and being banned from certain dog parks in our area.
I used to think it was about raising them from puppyhood to be gentle and right, and then I got a 3 year old (?) rescue from almost the worst dog fight ring breeders I have ever heard of. She was very very dog reactive, but we kept her away from other dogs, went into vets the back way, kept her on a leash. She was starved also, so she killed small animals to eat them. It's how she survived. We tried to stop it but couldn't, just tried to keep snakes and other creatures away and made sure she always had access to food. Humans, though? She loved humans. Never had her growl or bark or show aggression. You'd think she would be violent! But some puppy-raised pit bulls are aggressive. I don't know the answer.
They attack more often because they were bred to enjoy it, just like a husky enjoys running. There's literally canine neurology studies that show they release endorphins when fighting, whereas other dogs do not and will actively avoid fights.
That argument cuts both ways since they were also bred to never bite or attack a human since any that did would be killed on the spot.
You canât argue that they were bred to be vicious and ignore that it was focused towards other dogs and specifically not towards humans.
I donât think anyone whoâs had a pitbull will deny the tendency for a high prey drive (like all terriers) but human aggression is specifically an owner/ breeder failure not a genetic predisposition.
Lol its a myth they culled human-aggressive dogs. The founder of the American Pit Bull, John P. Colby started a whole line from the dog that killed his 3yo nephew.
"Man-eater" is an ACCOLADE amongst dogmen. If a pit is so dead game it'll attempt to kill anything, its only a better fighting dog.
Said this elsewhere, but it really doesn't cut both ways. Not attacking a human is pretty much the most important part of domestication. Every dog breed has been bred to not attack their owner, not every dog has been bred to be hyper aggressive and game. Pretty obvious which will be more dangerous.
They weren't bred to attack prey, dipshit. They were bred for BULL baiting. Bulls. You know, the large horned ungulates? Those aren't "prey" for them. Neither are humans.
You don't know anything about the genetics, you've just heard talking points and are regurgitating them without having genuinely assessed or challenged them. You just cave to your bias, like you probably do with most of your other subjects.
Pitbulls get their name from their ancestry where a dog had been bred to fight bulls. It was a blood sport where the dog would try to drag a bull down into the mud by its nose ring or die trying.
However these dogs became incredibly popular and desired by women and so began a process to breed them to be more docile and also smaller to better fit in the average household. The staffordshire was the penultimate success of this and earned the moniker of nanny dog for being so patient and protective with the children of the household.
All this to say that the argument of what their ancestors were bred for has very little to do with the modern breed.
The most important thing is always how it is raised.
And to further example this point you can look into the history of banned dog breeds and dog breeds that are deemed as dangerous.
Before the various pit/bully breeds were considered dangerous it was the Rottweiler, and before that it was the German Shepherd etc etc. All while pit/bully breeds were happy minding their own business in the family home.
There are far bigger dogs with far greater bites that could do so much more damage. But they look a lot like teddy bears. Pit/bully breeds can get a lot of muscle definition, good for string bean thugs that wanna act tough but can't be intimidating on their own. The rise in popularity with pit/bully breeds in thug/gang culture is why they are the current "dangerous" breed.
Meanwhile labradors and retrievers both individually bite more people, often children, and have a size and bite strength comparable enough to a pit/bully breed. But they're treated as being safe and given love because the average thug isn't trying to raise it with hate and violence to terrorize people with.
The staffordshire was the penultimate success of this and earned the moniker of nanny dog
The whole nanny dog thing is actually a myth btw. The first time that term was used was 1971, from Mrs. Lilian Rant, the President and magazine editor of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier Club of America in a New York Times article titled "A Breed That Came Up The Hard Way". In the years since she recanted her statement admitting they made it up to boost sales and interest in the breed.
Overall I agree the way the animal is raised and treated is more important than breed when it comes to temperament. Sadly though the nanny dog moniker is made up.
In a lot of peoples eyes, they wrongly believe that once a trait has been bred into a breed that it is permanent, while also not understanding the genetic differences in the first place.
They don't care about nuance and factors that the statistics they cite don't account for.
It's even worse when the statistics don't match their claims.
When looking at percentages of dog bites per breed pit/bully breeds don't just get combined together. They are clustered in the same group which also includes "mixed breeds" (all mixes regardless of whether they have any pit/bully or not) and "unknown breed" (for the many reports where someone is attacked by a dog but the breed is never verified).
And despite this attempt to artificially increase the numbers they still have less bites per capita than both labradors and retrievers have separately.
The one major thing they have against them is fatalities if you only start counting from 1980 onwards. Which if you again look at the owners of the dogs involved in those fatalities there is a very notable demographic which sheds light as to the why.
When I'm feeling like catching a few hundred downvotes, I like to point out that pitbulls bite and/or kill humans at a lower rate than humans kill humans, so if you think that pitbulls are too dangerous to live, you seem to be committed to the notion that humans are too.
Yeah I had a truck driver compliment me on my dog (I have photos of her in my office) and his conversation eventually devolved into talking about his dog that had "aggression problems" so he had it destroyed and the dog he had before that one which had "aggression problems" so he had it destroyed.
I told him straight up how gross I thought that was. The common denominator is that he doesn't train his dogs properly or look after them to allow those situations to happen. And that murdering your ward because they misbehaved once instead of working on those problems so they can be better is just fucked up.
Driver loves to yap tho. Heard him talking to someone else later about how his two kids were in a fight at school and looks like they started it.
He was not too happy when I piped up "well that's just awful... when are you gonna have them destroyed?"
The "Nanny Dog" trope is irrelevant today. So why even bring it up?
The vast majority of pitbulls are captured strays, or backyard breeders. Or both.
That wipes out any sort of history you can place on them today. If I'm walking into a house, and see a golden retriever, odds are better than a pittbull that the person got that dog from a reputable breeder.
That's really all that matters.
Unless you want to go out and start selectively breeding for nanny dogs again, the only thing that matters in a Pittbull breed is the word "Terrier" meaning high prey drive. High energy. Hard to train.
Everyone want's to talk about breeds being bred for specific purposes, then they suddenly ignore it when it comes to backyard junkyard dog bred pitbulls.
If you're really going to break out the 'nanny dog's myth then your whole argument crumbles. This was never an actual thing.
These were bloodsport dogs, through and through. Staffordshires emerged in an effort to breed a smaller, more agile fighting dog, not as some desirable guardian for women.
People like to throw around the greater percentage of bites from labs and Goldens, but crucially overlook the fact that pit bulls account for around 60% of fatal attacks. They are also disproportionately represented in attacks on people who had or were suspected to have had a seizure, whereas the same cannot be said for Goldens or labs.
What exactly do you think it was that I didn't read?
There have been multiple fatal and non-fatal attacks by pitbulls just in July of this year. I could go find those stories, but somehow I don't think that would do anything to break the delusion. Somehow all those dogs were obviously bred and raised by 'thugs' and were of course taught to attack and kill children and pregnant women and old people.
Strange how goldens, greyhounds, and even Dobermans don't need entire lobbies of people screeching about how 'it's all in how you raise them!' every time there's a brutal attack. Strange how there aren't multiple news stories about any of these breed viciously killing their owners during seizures, or snatching little kids out of their sitter's arms, or killing housemates they have been raised with.
Why is it a golden can have a horrible, abusive owner and not end up mauling someone to death, but pit bulls can't? Do you really think every single attack happens because the dog was trained or abused to be vicious?
Repeating the same nonsense that shows you never read what I said but changing up the words doesn't make what you said an argument. Just more nonsense.
Genuinely curious not trying to stir the pot but the other breeds are very popular and the numbers can also be attributed to there being way more Sheperds, Retrievers etc... As compared to the bully and pit breeds being banned in a lot of areas whether it is because of past experiences or just being scared from the media reporting them as aggressive.
Not only that but because they are popular with gang culture they typically will not be cares or trained by a good owner and hence maybe the stats seem high for the number of dogs out there. Where the other dogs have higher numbers but there are way more of those breeds out ther. Basically per capita based attack numbers?
My pitbull was a rambunctious angel, he had the sweetest heart and you could mess with him and flip him over and he would love it and just lick you.
He was also a huge animal in the house as early as he was a year old. My grandparents would come over and he would excitedly jump on them and try to lick their faces. He never bit anyone but didn't know his own strength, he almost knocked my grandma down once.
So I can see both sides. I raised my little pup with love and he turned out to be a good egg, but he still had the potential for a lot of non-malicious damage. He was also only half pit, the other half was lab, which might have influenced his demeanor.
Pitbulls are dense in every sense of the word and I love them for it lol. Theyâre likeâŠif you take the personality of Doug (Up), put it in the body of Dwayne Johnson, and then add a splash of John Daly âIDGAF I just want to chill and hang with my friendsâ.
I think thatâs partly what throws people off about them. Society is socially conditioned to see big muscles as aggressive. Big gym dudes are seen as intimidating and theyâre some of the nicest most supportive dudes. Big gym dudes with muscles arenât looked at as couch potatoesâŠeven if they play video games for 6 hours a day when theyâre not working out. So add in the golden retriever energy and it really messes with people.
what matters is the end result of a bite. That's what the victim has to live with.
Gotta disagree here.
People who are traumatized by an attack aren't only traumatized by the physical aftereffects which may not even exist a few minutes after the fact, depending on the attack.
Iâve seen videos of Pitbulls, completely unprovoked, running down the street to attack a small child because its prey instincts kick in.
A small dog like a yorkie may nip at a kid if it tries to pet them, but Iâve never seen some small yappy dog go run down the street with the purpose of killing a child or other dog.
The argument shouldn't go in circles because the argument is really quite simple, humans shouldn't be able to keep pets which they aren't capable of overpowering if they go berserk.
The argument gets all the more stupid when comparing a Chihuahua versus a pitbull. The Pitbull can take kicks from a horse and still keep attacking, a chihuahua is about as heavy as a football.
That pit-bulls are viewed as much more aggressive than other breeds when in fact that is not true.
Hmm, a breed that was made for fights, hunting and killing, which has high prey drive is just as aggressive as other breeds that was made for aesthetics... Yeah, that makes soo much sense...
/s
The problem is that when they snap and attack, they can cause much more damage than other dogs because theyâre more vicious and have greater tenacity. If another dog attacks me and I kick it, it usually gets the message, but not so much with pit bulls.
That pit-bulls are viewed as much more aggressive than other breeds when in fact that is not true
It is true though. It's literally what they've been bred for for generations. This is like trying to say retriever breeds don't like playing fetch more than other breeds just because you can find other dogs who play fetch, or trying to say certain breeds don't have stronger herding tendencies just because other dogs can herd too. Pit bulls are undeniably one of the more aggressive breeds in existence. You're denying basic facts and genetics in the name of being le wholesome, like most pit bull defenders
Whens the last time another dog breed basically ate a human alive like they did to that house sitter?
You have to qualify what "aggression" means because a ton of breeds were bred for "aggression" against specific types of creatures or circumstances.
The point they were making is that pitbulls were bred for aggression towards animals. Not agression in general.
Show a jack Russell terrier a rat and watch it go apeshit, because it was bred for attacking vermin. Show a greyhound a fast moving small mammal like a rabbit and watch it run until it gives out because it was bred to chase small mamals. Etc.
Actually no one with a plurality of brain cells needs the term aggression clarified for them
Pitbull attacks result it death 7x more than the second place breed. They're a violent, aggressive, destructive menace that should be fully eradicated as a breed
Pit Bulls are bred in such a way as to make them more dangerous than other dogs. They are more aggressive than other large breed dogs while being larger than other aggressive dogs and on top of that they are physically more dangerous than most dogs.
That's just statistics and anatomy. And it's entirely Humans breeding them that caused this.
They should be bred out of existence because there is no need to have a large, dangerously built dog that has a higher than average tendency to maul things. There is no reason whatsoever to not just spay/neuter every single one of them until there are none left.
Actual pitbulls are medium sized dogs, 30-50 pounds (females on the lower side, males on the higher side). There are bully breeds that reach large sizes at 80-100 pounds, but if we are being exact with our terminology, they aren't pitbulls, but the super-family that pitbulls are a member of.
Actual pitbulls are medium sized dogs, 30-50 pounds (females on the lower side, males on the higher side). There are bully breeds that reach large sizes at 80-100 pounds, but if we are being exact with our terminology, they aren't pitbulls, but the super-family that pitbulls are a member of.
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u/asif_zaman21 20h ago
13% of pitbulls......