No Stupid Questions

When you look at annual statistics of dog bite fatalities, pit bulls aren't just the #1 cause of dog bite deaths, they account for more deaths than all dog breeds COMBINED.

pit bulls are just better equipped for certain things like using their uniquely powerful, clamping jaws to rip animals apart. pair this with the lowest common denominator human and you have a possible recipe for accident.

I can't speak for every dog and every dog owner, though many anti-pit bull people will tell you they can and that they're all just waiting to bite the face off a child.

What I can say is that, of the pit bulls and pit bull mixes I know, they're lovable softies with their owners, and I know one (our neighbors) that I can say with confidence could not/would not hurt anyone or anything else, as even when another dog attacked him he would not fight back. This dog is in a house with multiple small children, numerous cats, chickens, a turkey, and over multiple years being their neighbor I've never heard of him being hostile towards any of them, he's always been a Very Good Boy.

What I believe it comes down to is that pit bulls are big, strong dogs, with strong jaws, and some people are neglectful owners who fail to socialize them and train them properly. A poorly trained and poorly socialized Yorkie will bite you all the same, it's just you can punt one like a football. People who are not prepared to train their dogs to behave appropriately -- which is a part of caring for them, just as important as grooming or feeding them if not even more important -- should not own dogs, full stop, irrespective of breed.

It is, however, much easier for other people to blame the dog, have the dog put down (and let me say, if it did something bad enough to deserve being put down, rightly so), and then promptly forget about the owner who didn't bother to train them. The owner who will, then, almost certainly, get another dog to neglect.

The vast majority of pit bulls are loving, loyal and make great pets. The problem is if they do attack, they tend to not want to quit attacking. I used to schutzhund train and our club was open to training any breed, we even had a border collie do it for fun. The catchers didn't let pit bulls do it because the way they tend to bite and re-bite wasn't safe for the dog or catcher. Even with my American Bull dog at the time, they asked to see when the last breeding with a pit in her breeding line was just to be safe, and they were more cautious in the beginning with her than the shepard's, rotts, malinois and dobies.

Generally, it comes down to which statistics a "hater" believes. I'll refer to twain here about lies, damn lies and statistics, since numbers always seem so certain, but can be cooked.

It doesn't help that "pit bull" isn't a breed, it's a "type", which is vague as fuck all. There's something like a dozen breeds that get called pit bull, each with their own range of traits. What they have in common is an origin as fighting dogs, including those bred to fight bigger animals.

But if a dog just looks similar to any of those breeds, it's a pit bull, including mutts with no known ancestry in fighting breeds.

So, folks see a scary looking dog and that's that, they hate scary looking dogs.

Is the hate justified? IDGAF tbh. Assuming any of the statistics are accurate and applicable, I can understand wanting to limit breeding more, as well as the strict side of enforced euthanasia once a dog turns aggro. But with the vagueness of what gets counted as a pit bull in those stats, and the cherry picking that goes on in such debates, I can't work up any emotional response to the subject.

But that's why the hate. They're scary looking dogs, and when a dog that looks like they tend to look attacks, it'll fuck its target up worse than something like a Chihuahua or poodle. That much is fact, a big muscular dog with strong jaws can fuck shit up.

What has four legs and an arm?

A Pit Bull in a playground.

From personal experience I had a friend who raised a pit bull from a puppy and his dog was well behaved and trained well. Then when the dog was about 5 years old, it just snapped one day and attacked my friend mauling my friends arm in his bedroom. When he got the dog into the back yard it started ramming the glass door with his head and then ran and scaled a six foot wall and took off never to be seen again. I knew this dog as a puppy and how it was raised so this was a a shock to everyone. This was also in Arizona, where the vet said they have cases of pit bulls “going crazy” from the heat but ever since I have been wary of pit bulls.

The conversation is nuanced and long, but TLDR is that it is a breed which requires more training than other breeds. It's also important to note that many owners' version of training is ineffective or counter productive.

Pitbulls are highly energetic and much like great Danes, grow up physically much faster than mentally. They end up being an extremely powerful dog, chalk full of muscles, who crave constant attention and behave like a puppy. Well, puppies bite, and when a dog bites you, you tend to address it (give it attention). Compounding this, they're also not very smart and it takes a while to train them. Compounding this further, they have instincts like all dogs where pushing is met with resistance (something Cesar talks about a lot with food etiquette around dogs), and basically everything they do is exaggerated with their enormous energy.

Comparing them to a breed like a Labrador, the obliviousness, energy, strength, and attention needs are not the same.

They can be very good dogs, but effort was made to achieve that. There are dogs who have been bred to be home bodies and they much more naturally fall into a "good dog" category. Pitbulls were bred for dog fighting and blood sports. This is not a good start for family's first dog.

To put this into other terms. There are chickens who have been bred for cock fights. They can be good roosters, but watch your back and be ready to remove them if they attack your hens. That being said, predators beware. Different breeds have different specialties, if you want one for the look be very deliberate about what actions you are going to take to change the "natural outcome" of their behavior being the behavior you don't want.

The type of people who want a dog to bite are going to be getting something like the size of a pitbull. A much smaller dog and a human can easily fight it off, they can do some damage, but not as much as the people who want a dog to bite would like their dogs to give. A larger dog and the owners wouldn't be able to control if the dog would attack the owners, so they won't accept that.

That is why, in general, (understand there are exceptions). Big dogs tend to be very friendly. Because any big dog that's not friendly, the owner is going to put it down before it kills someone. Thus big dogs are bred to be friendly. A Pitbull is about the largest dog that you could breed to be unfriendly without risking harm to yourself.

Again, this does not say anything about any particular dog breed. It says something about the type of people who would have a mean dog.

They were bred to fight. They had generations of selective breeding by human being with intent toward that purpose. If you don't think they're more genetically inclined to violence than breeds who were not bred for that purpose, you need a lesson in evolution.

I dont hate putbulls, I am however weary of them, because I was bit by one at 24.. I didnt blame the dog, but its human countetpart(s).

My sisters Pug used to bite people, I do hate pugs, for many reasons, as I dont think they should exsist, the poor things.

It's not so much the animal as that I don't really trust people with that kind of animal, just as I don't want to see people walking around with a lion, or a machine gun

I imagine this may become a contentious thread, but one book I've partially read and enjoyed (and now remember I need to go back and finish) is Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon by Bronwen Dickey.

I feel like very few people actually have a problem with the dogs them selves and more with the people owning them.

Why would you buy a Pit Bull? Like what are the top 3 reasons that come to mind?

I never had any experience with Pit Bulls, they are not very common where I live. I definitely don't hate them.

That being said, there are dogs that can kill people and are so strong the owners can't stop them and there are dogs that are easy to defend against. It's a simple fact, not based on feelings towards one bread or another. The first type has no place in society. People should not own dogs like that. It serves no purpose. People insist on owning dogs like that because they are selfish assholes. That's all there is to it.

I've been around dogs my whole life. Big dogs. Mastiffs, Labradoodles, Rhodesian Ridgebacks, German Shepherds, Dobermans... Along with some experience with little dogs. The only dog ever to bite me, or attack my dogs, were pitbulls. Two attacks, my whole life, all pitbulls.

I dunno, man. It's just my personal experience, but shit. I know what kind of dog I don't trust.

We had a Pit & another mutt - yes the pit bull was good natured and polite, gentle under normal circumstances, easy to train to be obedient to me - but she was strong as fuck, and if another dog, including our other dog, wanted to fight, she was all in, I do think they are bred to fight. Thankfully she moved out when my daughter moved down the street from us, we would have kept her or the other dog but not both of them. We still get to see her & my kid gets to see the mutt, they are practically next door, but it's better with them living in separate houses.

All that to say - yes they are just dogs, trainable and sweet. But so so strong and willing to fight, you have to be able to redirect them quickly if they see another dog get aggressive.

ETA: we never once saw her START a fight. She was a little anxious about men but not at all naturally aggressive, liked other dogs; and we trained her to accept people better. It was my other dog who would snap at her. But once it started both of them lost their damn minds. We didn't plan for two dogs, one was left chained on our porch by I don't even know who. One dog two cats is the ideal pet situation.

It is a bigger, stronger breed. The damage it can cause when misbehaving is naturally way worse.

I visited America for a month last year, and I have never met that many ill-behaved dogs. Pit Bulls are fine if they are thoroughly trained, but most American dogs are definitely not. Why do Americans also always have more dogs? They never stop at one. Every time I met a dog owner, they had at least two.

Holy shit we're actually starting the doggie eugenics on lemmy now, this comment section is a fucking travesty.