The pit bull problem

You do know that a large percentage of "pit bull attacks" are from other breeds that look similar to a pit?

 

Correct

 

I think I know the difference. I think the reporters have done their homework and made sure of what breed of dog is killing kids before they put out a warning to ppl.

They are bred for fighting. It's in their blood. Your Pit maybe docile now but there is a potential for them to attack other animals and small children the same goes for Rotties. These animals are used as guard dogs. Ever heard the expression : Meaner then a junkyard dog. They are reffering to Pits and Rotties. German Shepards are also potentialy dangerous.

But hey, get what you want. I'm not here to tell you what to do, only to warn you.

 

They were not actually bred for fighting originally.
They were often used as babysitters.
There is potential for any animal to attack.

No reason to keep fear mongering and spreading lies. Read something!:
This is from 7-26-11
http://www.nationalcanineresearchco...ed-breeds-no-more-aggressive-than-any-others/

 

I'm getting very tired of hearing about pit bulls getting shot in drug raids. If you sell drugs out of your house and you own a pitbull (for whatever reason) - then your basically putting your pit's life in unnecessary danger - because if your pit so much as growls or barks at a member of law enforcement, during a raid or arrest, the dog is going to get fucking shot and killed. I don't care if it's a genuine pit bull or not. If you care about your dog - and I mean really care for it - then don't do illegal shit in your house, or don't own a pit bull, or any dog for that matter, or have children for that matter. GROW THE FUCK UP.

It's fashionable where I live to own these dogs and just from my own observations, I would say that 75% of them are neglected or outright abused in my neck of the woods. It makes me so sick and mad that I fantasize about doing violence on some of these idiots who own them, who aren't fit to care for a damned cactus. I'm not a violent person, but if I ever find evidence of dog fighting in my neighborhood, I'm going to go vigilante on the people involved. You are a fucked up person if you think dog fighting is cool.

 

Dont punish the breed punish ,punish the people that make them into killers

 

some idiot left their pit bull dog outside in the heat last week. As I passed the yard, the dog come out.. It attacked me. Lucky I only received some scratches . I cant say the dog was so lucky. I didnt kill it, but sure wasnt letting it live a happy life afterward. The owners have not come forward. The dog has since been euthanized. As well it had many injuries from me, one where I ripped its eye open on a fence post..

 

yeah, i totally just lost all respect for you

 

I was attacked this past Saturday by a Pit. The pit is a family dog with a 4 yr old in the house. The dog weighs over 100 lbs. It knocked me down and I put my arm up in defence of my face or throat and the dog tore into my arm.

I did nothing to this dog. I was standing there minding my own buisness. I had been around this dog before but on this day he went visious out of the blue.

They take execelent care of the dog, it has never been trained to fight and sleeps in the same bed as the 4 yr old. Yet the dog went visious with no provacation.

My mind it pretty made up. Y'all can think whatcha want but dont ever say you werent warned.
sh

 

You obviously have never paid much attention to what kind of care a cactus can require.

The whole pit thing's simple. If a dog is aggressive, and attacks people who are not in it's yard, or who it's owner has okayed, it gets put down. Otherwise it LOOKS like a nice dog, and you breed it back into the pool, and the breed gets even worse.

Just like chihuahuas. You breed for physical and personality traits, and if it's an independable little shit, don't let it pass on it's shitty traits and hurt people.

 

The vast majority of behaviour for many beings on this planet is learned behaviour. It doesn't matter what the breed of dog is, you train it a certain way and that's how it will be, whether you mean to train it or not. It is the same with people. Many people don't realise simple things like not looking dogs in the eye, especially if you think they're a bit frisky. They communicate in different ways to people.

 

i havent read the whole thread

I suppose the people who own dogs should educate others then, to avoid accidents. i didn't know that thing about "not looking dogs in the eye", thats a good thing to know.
The thing with dogs owners is that they often seem to assume that everyone loves dogs and will know how to react if a dog comes up to them. Some people in my building have small dogs, and every time i see them (in the elevator usually) the dogs jump on me and try to lick me or whatever. I really like animals but that doesn't make me feel very comfortable, i wish the owners controlled their pet better.
Even if your dog is sweet, watch it, dont let it come up to strangers, anything could happen, for example i could kick it. jk jk

 

See, some dogs think that it's ok to jump and lick people and things. A lot of this is people not realising the way they communicate. When you walk into somebody's house and fuss the dog first, saying hello, stroking or just paying attention to it before you give a good chunk of attention to the people in the room then the dog will start to think that it is above the people, if you see what I mean. A big thing people don't realise about dog behaviour is that ignoring them is sometimes far better than trying to communicate to them. The dog understands being ignored better than words and gestures.

 

Apparently this is a rule in the animal kingdom, for the most part. Primates, bears, cats. A cat's smile is when squint at you, to show it doesn't feel the need to watch you and is relaxed, when a cat trusts you it doesn't watch you unless it's interested.

Many people think the pictures of chimpanzees and monkeys grinning are pictures of smiles. This is not so, the chimp expressions are almost opposite of the normally defined human signals of happy and sad. The chimp grits and shows its teeth and widens its eyes somewhat in the manner of a heavily stressed or fearful human being, for this is the expression it was going for. When a chimp is happy and relaxed, his face will be too. His lips gently closed and his brow hanging low, like a human in solemn contemplation. His smile is a frown and his frown is a smile. A low degree of eye contact is always a good sign that an animal will tolerate you.

 

Yep, can't deny it. I'm clueless when it comes to succulents - guilty as charged.

 

Yes, of course environment is important, but so is heredity, mustlivelife.

Your environment can only do so much if your brain is already wired in certain ways, with more pathways connecting whatever areas, etc.

In humans, this is usually negligible, and environment is almost always enough to very accurately predict what someone will be like. But our brains are very much more complex, and as such, can adapt more, or have more emphasis on some things, to greater effect.

Not saying that training isn't highly important-but a well trained dog won't maul people who look it in the eyes.

I mentioned chihuahuas because they're reasonably well known to have very genetic related temperance. They CAN be pretty smart little things, but they keep what they start with, and if you breed mean parents you'll get a mean pup. But a mean chihuahua is kind of sad and funny, unlike a mean pit, which is sad and terrifying.

Also, that's totally true about cats. If you squint your eyes and shift your pupils off to the side, and turn your head slightly, you'll be able to approach flighty or aggressive cats you never otherwise could. YOu'll notice scared cats doing the same to you. Predators fix their gaze, to avert it shows you're not preying on them.

 

I refuse to believe that attitude is hereditary. The puppies of a mean attack/guard dog will only become a mean attack/guard dog if it is trained to be so or if it learns to be so from its environment. These puppies could easily be raised as loving, sociable dogs, such that could look after children. Somebody in this thread has already pointed out the use of "mean" breeds as babysitters. Saying that dogs receive personality through genetics is like saying that if you chop a mouse's tail off then its offspring will have no tails, or teaching a mother dog to sit means all its puppies will know how to sit with no training. The only true hereditary behaviour would be similar to behaviour built in to humans: We all lash out with our hands, they with their mouths; we will rub a sore area and they will lick it; we smile to say hello and they offer their bums for a sniffing. Their hereditary attributes may make them more predisposed towards certain behaviour (such as a Golden Retriever playing fetch) but the chosen response to the environment will always be as a result of the environment, not some magic personality trait handed down through the generations.

 

I am going to have to say I disagree and that you mgiht be slightly contradicting yourself. I don't think that breeding personality is the same as cutting off a mothers tail and having her offspring have no tails. If you bred a tailless rat genetically then yes its offspring or a proportion thereof will have no tails. Teaching a dog to sit is not a genetic predisposition either. When you teach an animal to sit it is making new neural connections on top of congential ones. At some point in history people bred dogs and noticed certain ones having different wirings in their brain and haveing a predisposition to certain tasks and temperaments and these have been selected for. Dog breeding has often been centered around temperaments. Certain breeds do show certain personality traits and behaviors that do not seem to have anything to do with the environment or a stimulus or training. There are always exceptions but take for example any sort of retrieving dog. They have been bred with an instinct to fetch. You can literally throw a stick and with no training the dog will go and get it. My dog though had to be trained to fetch. I had to physically reward him for chasing a ball and it is behaviour that he forgets if I don't remind him constantly. A retriever doesn't forget how to do this task.

I don't think anyone has done a test of this because it would be extremely cruel but I'd bet money that if you kept a retriever from ever chasing a ball, that when it was 6 years old that it would still instinctually do it.

Other dogs have been bred to chase, and others to point, and others have an inhereted calm (take for example greyhounds when they are not in the chase). Most breeders breed specifically for temperament as well. I think this would have been debunked long ago if it weren't true as people wouldn't be paying big dollars for dogs displaying non-breed characteristic temperaments.

Anyways, that's my two cents. I am still out on whether pitbulls are actually the problem or not as there are far too many variables and not enough proper studies. All i do know is that they are the leader in dog attacks and although I have spent tons of time with many pitbulls and most have been great, I am still going to remain extra careful when I see one and handle one. They were bred to be a powerful dog and I don't take that for granted.

 

It's not the dogs...It's the people who own the dogs...

 

My ex had an American Red Nose Pit. Sweet little boy. The very first pit I ever liked. Ever. Then one day when i had our son over to visit him, a friend of his brings his pair of pits over and the two males started fighting. We were all on the front porch, with railings and gates all around. We had nowhere to run and had to keep jumping out of their path. They nearly knocked my then 11 year old son over the railing to the concrete six feet below. Not to mention some near misses with those teeth.
As sweet as he was, that one thing flipped that switch to kill mode and we were in his way. I still think fondly of him, but I could never have an animal around my kids that has such a hair trigger.
We've had two pits get loose from their owners' truck bed at the business down the road and "hunt" the livestock and other dogs. One of them tried to attack us when we told it to shoo when it marched into our driveway.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if they are raised right they can be great and quite loving, but if something triggers them they are like a ticking bomb. Own your pits, just please don't put me down because I won't.
If I didn't have kids and livestock, maybe I'd feel differently. I won't act all freaked out just because I see a pit in public, but I'm going to be a little extra cautious.
I've met a few pit or pit-mixs since and I'm not as skiddish as I once was, but I just can't feel the same as I would with say a Saint Bernard.