Ban pitts

[Chew Toy McCoy]

well, not intended, but probably more true with dogs than with guns. people know to be wary of dogs (or they should know)....any animal can turn....but we have more faith in humans, although unfortunately often misplaced.

I think possibly a better argument is how much damage different breeds can do when they snap along with their normal instincts. Bite strength and grip comes to mind. If you say some breeds are better at herding animals then it’s accepted and nobody gets offended. It’s seen as a positive trait. If you say some breeds are better at attacking or killing then you get “Hey, that’s not true!” from some. It’s seen as a negative trait. We can get into a debate about everything that should or shouldn’t be done to prevent them from killing, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are physically and mentally optimal for that.

I’m not for banning them. I just think it’s a dumb risk to take with so many other options available. Some people train cobras and live a long life. I will not be one of those people.

 

[Macky-Mac]

I don't have much sympathy for the owners of dogs that attack people, "pit bulls" or otherwise. They should face serious legal penalties for not keeping their dogs under control.

 

[Yoused]

My neighbor had a dog-thing that would bark at me whenever I went in the back yard. It would bark at people in the street, at cats, raccoons, I swear that damn dog would bark at butterflies.

Mostly because it was bored.

She would come out back to give it food and water, and occasionally to move its chain stake to a different spot. That and "SHUT UP!" was the extent of her engagement with the dog-thing.

Which is why I call it a "dog-thing". To her, it was not even so much as an animal, it was a thing, to have. "Everyone else has one, so I should too."

In the end, it was not the dog that I hated. Well, not really "hated", just lost all respect for.

 

[Nycturne]

I am not a dog person, but holy sheet. That is depressing to read.

 

[Huntn]

Pit Bulls have a terrible rep. Statistically they are responsible for the majority of attack and deaths on their masters.

Is the breed recognized as purebred? I don’t know. Close friends of ours have a Pit Bull mutt who is an outstanding, protective family member. But this kind of attack seems to happen on a semi-regular basis. I’d never choose to own one just because of this type of headline. I’d never have one around small children.

Now should they be banned? That’s a complicated topic. At a minimum, it seems like owning one, opens you to serious potential liability and you’d better be well insured and maybe you’re putting your family, friends, and yourself at risk.

 

[mollyc]

I suppose this really does sound like a gun rights train of thought, but it's one thing to decide not to own a breed personally and another to decide to ban an undefined breed. There are several bully breeds that get lumped into pit bulls. How would you even go about banning a breed of a live animal? I mean, guns can be collected and stored or destroyed. Do we put a bounty on 4.5 million dogs and euthanize them all? What about strays? One of our local rescues brings dogs from Mississippi to the Northern Virginia area. I'd say at least half of the rescues have some sort of pit bull in them, but these rescue dogs are largely all strays or puppies of strays.

I don't know. Despite my previous comments, I do understand the concerns over pit bulls, but I just think they make for better headlines than "chihuahua mauls owner."

(eta: current estimates are actually over 18 million PB or part PB).

 

[lizkat]

This is a terribly sad story, one we've heard of over and over and no matter how many times I hear it you can almost always look back at the owner and ask WTF they were thinking. What's key here are dogs (plural) , they're very much pack animals and feed off of each other so if one gets violent the other will as well and they feed off it.

IMO the bottom line is if you can't handle the breed and all the responsibility it takes to own one then you have absolutely no business doing so. Even under the best conditions I would never think it's a good idea to have small children around a pair of them.

Our neighbors across the street had 2 dogs when they moved in. A Pit and a Weimaraner. After they had their second child they had to get rid of the Weimaraner because it bared it's teeth at one of the girls. The Pit was their buddy for 6-7 years until they had to put him down due to age.

So yeah.

What I picked up on when reading the cited story in this thread was that the couple had owned the dogs "for more than eight years without a violent incident." The children were two years old and five months old.

That means the dogs had had the couple to themselves for six years or so, before the first kid came along to "change the pack structure" by altering the dogs' perceived sense of themselves as main recipients of love and attention in a family unit. Then a couple years later another child...

A level of uncertainty and jealousy could have become negative factors over time. The husband wasn't home when the attack happened, so possibly one of the dogs figured to make it clear that whoever ran the pack, it sure wasn't one of those pesky little ones. Or one of the kids could have triggered the attack by accidentally hurting the nose, an eye or ear of one of the dogs. A warning nip over that could have caused the kid instinctively to hit back, unfortunately.

And yeah, I'm speculating. But I have seen how dogs adjust to kids, or take their time adjusting to kids. And I had a bro who declined to give one of his grown shepherds to a family with two young kids, even though he was looking for a new home for that dog. "Get a pup," he advised the parents. "The pup sees how it fits into your family from the get go. He is not remotely the boss."

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I suppose this really does sound like a gun rights train of thought, but it's one thing to decide not to own a breed personally and another to decide to ban an undefined breed. There are several bully breeds that get lumped into pit bulls. How would you even go about banning a breed of a live animal? I mean, guns can be collected and stored or destroyed. Do we put a bounty on 4.5 million dogs and euthanize them all? What about strays? One of our local rescues brings dogs from Mississippi to the Northern Virginia area. I'd say at least half of the rescues have some sort of pit bull in them, but these rescue dogs are largely all strays or puppies of strays.

I don't know. Despite my previous comments, I do understand the concerns over pit bulls, but I just think they make for better headlines than "chihuahua mauls owner."

(eta: current estimates are actually over 18 million PB or part PB).

This is probably going to come off as dogist, but every time I hear there is a pit bull attack the dog pretty much always ends up looking exactly like I thought it would before I even saw it. In keeping with the 2nd amendment theme maybe the media should refer to them as a “pit bull-like” dog if they aren’t pure.

 

[ronntaylor]

This isn’t a Meghan Markle situation claiming to be a black woman which is possibly only true when compared to the cadaver white people of the UK.

Wow, what a shitty, misogynistic and racist thing to put out there. On a thread about dogs.

 

[lizkat]

This is probably going to come off as dogist, but every time I hear there is a pit bull attack the dog pretty much always ends up looking exactly like I thought it would before I even saw it. In keeping with the 2nd amendment theme maybe the media should refer to them as a “pit bull-like” dog if they aren’t pure.

Nah, that post comes off like something better slept on, truth be told. And it was beneath you, relative to posts I've seen you make here on any number of topics.

Also and even after subtracting the comment on Markle, not sure what point(s) you were trying to make.

EDIT: to align quoted post after it was edited.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Wow, what a shitty, misogynistic and racist thing to put out there. On a thread about dogs.

Agreed.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that these thoughts are allowed to slip, slide, slither, into the public space on a thread about dogs.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Nah, that post comes off like something better slept on, truth be told. And it was beneath you, relative to posts I've seen you make here on any number of topics.

Also and even after subtracting the comment on Markle, not sure what point(s) you were trying to make.

My point is, you know what a pit bull looks like. You don’t need to euthanize it, do a deep autopsy, and run DNA tests to determine that. Every pit bull I’ve seen involved in an attack was clearly a pit bull. I’ve never seen an owner go “I didn’t know!”. If a gun used in a mass shooting 90% matches an assault rifle are we going to say it’s not an assault rifle because of that remaining 10% that doesn’t match? Does that ultimately even matter or make sense? The point on the point is, if people just stop raising and adopting pit bulls their numbers will decline naturally. I honestly fail to see how the breed is a needed part of a healthy ecosystem. Aren’t most, if not all, dog breeds the result of human engineering anyway?

 

[Deleted member 215]

I always find this topic interesting. Because it's like, either pit bulls are responsible for more attacks/deaths or they're not. If it's true, then there are some facts that are so unpleasant to some that they can't be allowed to be true.

 

[lizkat]

My point is, you know what a pit bull looks like. You don’t need to euthanize it, do a deep autopsy, and run DNA tests to determine that. Every pit bull I’ve seen involved in an attack was clearly a pit bull. I’ve never seen an owner go “I didn’t know!”. If a gun used in a mass shooting 90% matches an assault rifle are we going to say it’s not an assault rifle because of that remaining 10% that doesn’t match? Does that ultimately even matter or make sense? The point on the point is, if people just stop raising and adopting pit bulls their numbers will decline naturally. I honestly fail to see how the breed is a needed part of a healthy ecosystem. Aren’t most, if not all, dog breeds the result of human engineering anyway?

OK I think I understand what you meant to say about the dog breed and the issue of correctly describing guns, whether or not I would agree.

EDIT: to remove a comment that became irrelevant.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

OK I think I understand what you meant to say about the dog breed and the issue of correctly describing guns, whether or not I would agree.

All the more reason to suggest that you just edit your post and excise the comment about Meghan Markle. If you do, I will certainly edit this part of my reply, as well as replace the quote above by quoting your edited post.

Edited out and I won’t go into it further. Let’s keep it to animals. Nobody mistakes a house cat for a tiger, but they’re both cats. To suggest they are exactly the same or that people look at them the exact same way is ridiculous and not living in reality. Also getting offended that people point out the house cat isn’t a tiger is absurd. "You should just see a cat!" Anybody who says they don’t get at least slightly nervous around a random pit bull is probably lying. Sharks get an over exaggerated bad rap too but even knowing that you’re probably not going to jump in the water with them.

My friend married a woman who brought a pit bull mastiff into the relationship. Totally well behaved for the most part but at some point it killed one of his cats and eventually attacked a person when she was walking him. Thankfully nothing major but between those two events and after much counseling she put him to sleep. I found that incredibly troubling and sad. On one level it wasn’t the dogs fault. Natural primal instinct kicked in. My next thought was why even breed these dogs that are more prone to these occurrences? It’ s tragic for everybody including the dog. Their are breeds of wild dogs that everybody knows you shouldn’t keep as pets. How is this any different?

 

[lizkat]

Edited out and I won’t go into it further. Let’s keep it to animals. Nobody mistakes a house cat for a tiger, but they’re both cats. To suggest they are exactly the same or that people look at them the exact same way is ridiculous and not living in reality. Also getting offended that people point out the house cat isn’t a tiger is absurd. "You should just see a cat!" Anybody who says they don’t get at least slightly nervous around a random pit bull is probably lying. Sharks get an over exaggerated bad rap too but even knowing that you’re probably not going to jump in the water with them.

My friend married a woman who brought a pit bull mastiff into the relationship. Totally well behaved for the most part but at some point it killed one of his cats and eventually attacked a person when she was walking him. Thankfully nothing major but between those two events and after much counseling she put him to sleep. I found that incredibly troubling and sad. On one level it wasn’t the dogs fault. Natural primal instinct kicked in. My next thought was why even breed these dogs that are more prone to these occurrences? It’ s tragic for everybody including the dog. Their are breeds of wild dogs that everybody knows you shouldn’t keep as pets. How is this any different?

It's a difficult situation. The only solution would seem to be to raise awareness of the fact that pit bulls have often been bred and/or raised to accentuate a natural inclination to be aggressive, that they can attack without command or training to do so, and sometimes without apparent provocation.

We don't seem to have a handle on how to see that tendency progressing in dogs not intentionally trained to attack. It's not clear to me that the dogs themselves necessarily have awareness of it. The pits sure don't seem to know how to quit once they fly off the handle, in situations where they were not intentionally trained to attack and have never been known to attack before.

It's a a tragic and more extreme outcome than in the case of border collies or other dogs bred to herd livestock. Those breeds are not necessarily "born to herd" but may naturally at least be more inclined than other dogs to chase and control whatever they see moving. Some of them, after training and while working, will only herd groups of certain animals, but some will also go after anything that moves when they're off duty, apparently just for the merry hell of it. They don't want to hurt it, just to herd it. But then being chased by a herd dog can be pretty unnerving. It's hard to decide to stop moving and turn around when a dog is charging at your butt.

My late bro-in-law had one border collie just couldn't resist trying to indicate he'd like to cut you a new rear pocket in your jeans if you got out of a vehicle and started walking towards the back door of the house. If you turned around and said his name, he'd quit and wag his tail and not resume trying to herd you, but the initial sight of anything moving away from him would trip that call in him to steer a moving critter, by following close and adding some shoulder action or a bit of a nip to suggest a course correction.

Some of his other working dogs weren't like that, and only even went to get the cows when urged to do so. One or two were over-enthusiastic as youngsters and probably freaked the cows out driving them through creeks and brambles on a crow's flight sort of tack to the barn. But they all had that spark waiting to be triggered: "get them!" They loved their work and even their off duty escapades seemed joyful pranks.

But see with pit bulls I'm not sure we know what all might tell that breed "Get them!" I'd never keep one in a house with kids, and I'm not sure I'd share a house with a pit or pit mix that I had not raised as a pup. I can't think of a good reason for me to adopt such a pup either. And I really like dogs, even though most of my pets have been cats.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

It's a difficult situation. The only solution would seem to be to raise awareness of the fact that pit bulls have often been bred and/or raised to accentuate a natural inclination to be aggressive, that they can attack without command or training to do so, and sometimes without apparent provocation.

We don't seem to have a handle on how to see that tendency progressing in dogs not intentionally trained to attack. It's not clear to me that the dogs themselves necessarily have awareness of it. The pits sure don't seem to know how to quit once they fly off the handle, in situations where they were not intentionally trained to attack and have never been known to attack before.

It's a a tragic and more extreme outcome than in the case of border collies or other dogs bred to herd livestock. Those breeds are not necessarily "born to herd" but may naturally at least be more inclined than other dogs to chase and control whatever they see moving. Some of them, after training and while working, will only herd groups of certain animals, but some will also go after anything that moves when they're off duty, apparently just for the merry hell of it. They don't want to hurt it, just to herd it. But then being chased by a herd dog can be pretty unnerving. It's hard to decide to stop moving and turn around when a dog is charging at your butt.

My late bro-in-law had one border collie just couldn't resist trying to indicate he'd like to cut you a new rear pocket in your jeans if you got out of a vehicle and started walking towards the back door of the house. If you turned around and said his name, he'd quit and wag his tail and not resume trying to herd you, but the initial sight of anything moving away from him would trip that call in him to steer a moving critter, by following close and adding some shoulder action or a bit of a nip to suggest a course correction.

Some of his other working dogs weren't like that, and only even went to get the cows when urged to do so. One or two were over-enthusiastic as youngsters and probably freaked the cows out driving them through creeks and brambles on a crow's flight sort of tack to the barn. But they all had that spark waiting to be triggered: "get them!" They loved their work and even their off duty escapades seemed joyful pranks.

But see with pit bulls I'm not sure we know what all might tell that breed "Get them!" I'd never keep one in a house with kids, and I'm not sure I'd share a house with a pit or pit mix that I had not raised as a pup. I can't think of a good reason for me to adopt such a pup either. And I really like dogs, even though most of my pets have been cats.

One of my parents’ dogs got out of our cabin once. She doesn’t bolt but is a big fan of staying just out of arms reach. She pranced past one of the neighbor’s cabins who have a collie mix. Their dog saw this and got down to a stalking position. Eventually she took off and herded my parents’ dog right back into our cabin and returned home. I don’t think she was trained to do that. That’s just what they do.

Also forgot to mention with my friend’s wife’s dog before she put him to sleep she tried to find a rescue that would take him but couldn’t find one that would take him because of his attack history. It was just really sad.

 

[Herdfan]

Sharks get an over exaggerated bad rap too but even knowing that you’re probably not going to jump in the water with them.

Sharks get a hugely bad rap. Some of my best dives were with sharks. And not goofy "shark dives", but diving a wreck and being followed by a pregnant reef shark like she was part of the group.

 

[Yoused]

It's a a tragic and more extreme outcome than in the case of border collies or other dogs bred to herd livestock. Those breeds are not necessarily "born to herd" but may naturally at least be more inclined than other dogs to chase and control whatever they see moving.

I shared my home with a border collie named Dingo for about a year. Being a purebred, he had a problem with a flea allergy. But mostly he had to be sticked several times a day, to keep him from getting the stickness. I liked to start the throw and wait for him to go after it, then throw it so it landed on his back. One time I got a dense rubber ball and played with him for a while, until at last he brought me back what amounted to a round sponge soaked with dogslobber.

 

[lizkat]

I shared my home with a border collie named Dingo for about a year. Being a purebred, he had a problem with a flea allergy. But mostly he had to be sticked several times a day, to keep him from getting the stickness. I liked to start the throw and wait for him to go after it, then throw it so it landed on his back. One time I got a dense rubber ball and played with him for a while, until at last he brought me back what amounted to a round sponge soaked with dogslobber.

One of my brothers has an English bulldog that fetches stones. Makes the bro and his wife crazy. They don't know why he does it and are afraid he'll crack a tooth. He just wants to play but for some reason will preferentially start a round of fetch by bringing one of the family a stone or a big pebble the size of a golfball or so. Oy! They switch to a stick and he goes after it and if he manages to bust that up after a few goes, he'll fetch back a leaf or even a flower snagged out of a garden along the drive or house foundation. The bro's wife definitely loses interest then.

tbh one of my other bros and I have occasionally and privately described that dog as just nuts, although he's friendly and fun to be with. But a stone instead of stick for a game of fetch? Gimme a mutt any day, they know the place of a stone in the world and it's not in a dog's mouth.