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.
also lot of the owners… own them because of that purpose. they want a ‘tough’ dog because they themselves think they are really ‘badass’.
many pitbull owners are human beings would be way more likely to start a fight with another person. so naturally that carries over to the dog, as dogs mirror the behavior of their owners often.
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.
Same experience here, dogs of all sizes, shapes, breeds. The only dogs that ever bit me for real were mini poodles, two of them.
Well technically I suppose my pitbull - I stuck my fingers in her mouth to pull out whatever she had picked up off the street to eat, but one time she didn’t see and accidentally bit down a bit. She immediately released and was mortified she may have hurt me
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?
Pit bull breeds are commonly available as rescues and they tend to become very attached to their family, very affectionate. They can be extremely smart and loyal. Also they look cool, somewhat distinct from the everyday golden retriever ilk. I trust my pitbull with my kids more than any other dog I’ve owned.
Personally I find them the right size: big enough to play rough or to cuddle without worrying about squishing them, small enough to be easy to feed and clean up after
They also seem like a great physical level for family life. They can have intense play but endurance is not their strong point. It’s not like they need to run all day
because of how they look and the image they project.
folks mostly pick breeds based on looks. just like cars or most other things they choose in life.
typically folks do not pick dogs based on how compatible the dog is with their lifestyle. and hence often end up making poor choices.
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.
Training and control is essential, but instincts are hard to eliminate permanently.
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.
Because when both adults work, it’s mean to leave a living creature home, alone, and enclosed for 9 hours. Pets are domesticated for companionship. It goes both ways
Yea. I’ve been tempted to this many times over the years. I’ve always had one dog at a time because that works for me, but I know they’ve suffered from lack of companionship when I’m not around. Getting a buddy would likely make my dog’s life better.
In particular my last dog never really adjusted to our family. Way too high energy level, way more need for attention than we were able to give. I specifically considered getting him a buddy but couldn’t risk one buddy’s life as the last ditch effort to save another. We did end up having to rehome that dog but at least didn’t affect another
they don’t. only 1/4 of dog owners have two or more dogs.
you just saw them more because they stood out to you.
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.
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.
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.
"chock full
What has four legs and an arm?
A Pit Bull in a playground.
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.
They’re bred to be fighting dogs. Attacking and killing is in their genes, both physically and mentally. The likes of german shepherds have to be trained to kill, pitbulls have to be trained not to kill.
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
Pitbulls are the hollow points of the dog world. There is nothing wrong with them per se but the consequences of one being misused are so much worse.
Get bitten by a lab or a Yorkie and it’s not so bad. Pits have the bite strength of an alligator and the instinct to hold on, so if you try to pull free or shake loose you are losing muscle or maybe a limb.
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.
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.
