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.
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
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.
dobermans arnt really that aggressive, compared to pitbulls, which are bred for baiting bulls and likely fighting too. dobermans were originally used as guard dogs, or at least escort police in the past. the amount of people owning Huskies, GSD, Mixed breeds and pitbull far outnumber those of dobermans, and poorly trained they all have potential to be aggressive, some more than others due to them being bred to bitey. alot of people cant hand high demands of some breeds.
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.
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.
According to Wikipedia (I understand the irony here) dogsbite dot org has been accused of publishing misleading and inaccurate information. However, pit bulls are terriers and terriers don’t let go when they bite. Most terriers are small ratting dogs where this doesn’t matter so much.
Dogsbite.org is super diligent about showing the supporting evidence. For example, the last complete year they have is 2019:
https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatality-citations-2019.php
Each death marked with multiple citations.
Wow, I can’t believe how many women in Joshua Tree were attacked by four pit bulls on that one day in January
read any of their about us/other similar links and their bias couldnt be more obvious.
especially funny is the page the dedicated towards complaining about how they’re the target of a misinformation campaign.
majority of studies they link to don’t list breed information at all (because it’s rarely if ever recorded at hospitals).
Go down the list of articles documenting people killed in 2019 and show me where the bias is.
It’s cool, I’ll wait…
When I was bit by a pit, I was in a fight with his uh, human. The dude was being a dick. The dog looked at me, looked at his “owner” and then lunged at me. I put up my left arm to block my face, thats where he caught me, in my upper arm. The guy jumpped on the dog, started punching it in the head (this guy was a complete moron) and he wouldnt let go.
I played dead. It was isntict, I dont know. After what felt like enterity, I just, took out a deep sigh, pushed all the air from me, went limp. the dog let go, the guy whos dog it was threw him in the bathroom and locked him in there, and I went to the hospital.
It’s sort of a plus … obviously not in your scenario …. I believe pitbull breeds tend to be one of the protective and loyal breeds, and they do have a very strong bite. I have no worries about my pit bull with my kids but if you frighten her around them you’ll see her instantly change from a cuddle bug to on guard against hell and its minions
Unfortunately they’re sometimes loyal and protective to people who don’t deserve them
I also feel like I need to add that many breeds of dog are very loyal and protective. In the same situation a German shepherd is equally dangerous. Even little dogs are likely to come after you for attacking their human although obviously they can’t do as much damage. I feel like your situation was a general dog issue: many/most dogs are protective and loyal. You really can’t attack their human without them helping (and yes it doesn’t matter who started it or if he was a dick, to the dog you were attacking his human
My neighbors had a pit that hated other dogs. My sister brought her dog over and it escaped the backyard and jumped through an empty screen door to attack her. I was right there on the porch though and got the dog by the collar. As soon as I got it away from my sister’s dog, it was wagging tail and happy face. Pit bulls are capable of intense focus when they have identified “prey.” Most dog owners are not equipped to deal with the reality of training a dog like that. Luckily I only got grazed in that altercation.
I worked with a lady who had an Akita that did this - she got a call at work one day that her dog had attacked the neighbor’s dog. Had busted through the screen door, jumped OVER the pool, busted through the pool screen, jumped over the fence, and attacked the neighbor’s dog, because she could see it in the neighbor’s yard.
Repeat after me, correlation does not imply causation. Two things can be correlated without there being a cause/effect relationship.
What you’re saying is essentially: Pitbull-like races are around 14% of large dogs, but are responsible for 55.9% of fatalities, i.e. more than all other combined. Therefore Pitbulls are dangerous.
I bet you would agree with that logic… Except those are not dog numbers, that’s USA statistics on the African-American population. Congratulations on the racist argument.
Similarly to how there are multiple factors that explain the disparity for African-Americans there are also multiple factors at play for dogs, for example:
- People commonly miss identify pit bulls
- Assholes who abuse their dog tend to prefer breeds that are known for being aggressive. Abused dogs tend to react violently. Thus creating a cycle where dogs that are seen as aggressive are responsible for more aggressions.
I’m fairly confident that if you normalize for living conditions the numbers would not show any significant difference for breeds.
Did you just call black people dogs…? What’s wrong with you…
No, I showed how the argument of a minority of population causes the majority of fatalities is flawed by showing an example of the same argument no sane person would defend. The argument is ridiculous for pitbulls but people don’t see it, use the same argument for people and they see why it’s ridiculous.
Except no- it doesn’t.
Take a pitbull and a labrador. They aren’t simply the same animal with different colours.
Labradors were bred to assist fishermen in retrieving fish. So this would mean being controlled and obedient, not eating what they were sent to retrieve, etc.
Pitbulls were bred to fight other dogs- they were bred for fighting and destroying and that’s it. They’re essentially weapons that decide for themselves. Sure, any animal can be tamed, but it takes effort.
For your argument to work, you have to “concede” (although I wouldn’t use that term because it’s an outright lie) to the racist narrative or what have you that black people are inferior and have less control and are inherently less civilised than white people due to their race. So your argument is a racist one, because it assumes and only works that black people are significantly different to white people, like a different breed of human.
The differences between black people and white people in reality are negligible. They’re not different breeds, they’re both homosapiens. Essentially it would be like arguing black labradors are more violent than white labradors, which just simply isn’t true.
Not only that, but you’re trivialising the struggle of black people against racist oppression to that of people whining against their fighting dog being banned for good reason.
Worst of all, if they were the same argument, it’s like telling racists that comparing black people to white people is like comparing pitbulls to labradors, which would bolster their argument massively, as they’re completely different breeds of dog.
I urge you to recant your argument, you’re basically saying black people are like a more aggressive, dangerous, and less controlled breed of human compared to white people which is an absolutely vile, disgusting, and false thing to say.
Answered in the other copy of this reply.
I think this graphic should also be taking into account the number of owned dogs by breed, kinda like per capita. Because what if almost everyone owns pit bulls, and all the others are just outliers, then yeah, most attacks are by pit bulls because there’s more of them.
In my opinion, this would probably actually make pits look even worse, but it would actually be more representative of real data
A lot of mixed breeds are labeled as “pit bulls” which can skew the data as well. There’s several different types of “pit bulls” like American Staffordshire Terrier.
And as another commenter pointed out, this graph is coming from a biased source.
i have seen posts on other platforms of people being obsessed with the GSD, but they dont want to deal with the high energy of the breed, so they try to create new 'mixes with them to make them mellow and call it a “certified breed”.
If you look at the chart “mixed breed” is it’s own category and they excluded reports where the breeds were unknown.
and they excluded reports where the breeds were unknown.
And didn’t disclose how many there were of those. For all we know, that was the vast majority of cases.
The number of dogs doesn’t matter, it’s tracking the number of human beings killed by the breed.
Yeah, Chihuahua might bite you, they aren’t going to kill you.
What? The number of dogs absolutely matters. This is like, basic statistics.
Again, what we’re shown here is the number of fatal injuries, but we don’t necessarily know the distribution of dog breeds. Imagine testing this by putting a child in a room with one of each breed of dog and seeing if they get attacked, except with one breed we put in 200 dogs instead of just one, odds are that yeah, one (or multiple) of those dogs is aggressive because there’s so many of them.
This example is basically what the data above represents, it doesn’t consider that maybe pits actually very rarely bite people, but there’s just so many pits that more bites happen.
It is my personal opinion that pits are a more dangerous breed, but I won’t let that cloud my vision of accurately representing data.
For this to be reflective of an even amount of bites per number of each breed of dog owned, half the dogs owned would have to be pit bulls. That doesn’t match my very casual observations. This site, whose accuracy and validity I haven’t bothered to verify in any way, puts pit bulls at about 20% of the dogs sent to shelters. It seems very likely that the dog fatalities are outsized relative to the number of pit bulls owned in America.
I totally agree with that. The problem is that this graphic doesn’t represent it. The only reason that this graphic looks correct is coincidental. The fact that it’s not an equal #/each is exactly what I want to be shown, but the problem is that this graphic doesn’t show that
The number of dogs is irrelevant because the statistic is counting human deaths by dogs.
You wouldn’t say “well, how many people are there?” either.
You haven’t made any argument against the information presented. You will not get a response from me unless you actually respond instead of repeating the same statement.
Again, you are willfully misunderstanding what the statistic is stating:
Here are the total number of PEOPLE killed by dogs.
Of that number, here’s how many PEOPLE were killed by each breed.
This isn’t tracking bites, or overall attacks, it’s tracking human deaths.
A similar stat would be tracking vehicular accident deaths, if in a year you have accidents involving “brand x” accounting for more vehicular fatalities than all other brands combined, that points to a massive, massive problem with the brand.
It doesn’t matter how many cars there are, that’s not what the stat is tracking.
But if you really want to know, Google says there are around 90 million dogs in the US and 4.5 to 18 million pit bulls depending on how you count. So 5% to 20% of the dog population accounting for 66% of the human deaths.
Then replace every time I said “bite” with “someone died”. That doesn’t change anything about my argument or the validity of it.
In your car example, that is exactly wrong, let’s say that 99 out of 100 cars are Toyota Corollas, and as a whole, they get in 50 fatal accidents every year, but the remaining 1 car is a Ford F150 which got in 1 fatal accident every year. Does this mean that corollas are more dangerous? No! It just means that there are more corollas and therefore more opportunities to kill.
The correct way to represent this is as a percentage of each car brand. 50 accidents divided by 99 corollas is a little less than 50%. 1 accidents divided by 1 F150 is about 100%. According to this, F150’s are actually more dangerous because 100% of them get in fatal accidents, whereas only 50% of corollas get in fatal accidents.
Good on you for looking into the actual data, but the problem is that this specific graphic isn’t showing the actual data. The only reason it looks correct is by coincidence.
Think about it in the extremes.
If there were a billion poodles out in the world, and they caused 10 human deaths.
And there were 50 terriers out there and they caused 10 human deaths.
Which breed would you buy for your grandmother?
For every five terriers out there, one is killing someone on average. I would go with the Poodle.
Even if pit bulls are a minority of the population and the majority of attacks that doesn’t mean they’re aggressive, it shows there’s a correlation, but not a causation link. Read my other reply, but in short, this is the same argument racists assholes use to say black people are aggressive, because they’re a minority of the population but are the majority of homicide offenders.
Dude, you’ve spent a long time arguing from a point of view that fear of pitbulls is equivalent to racism.
Doing this is trivialising racism and painting a breed bred for agression and fighting as innocent victims of oppression.
It’s bogus and offensive and trivialises racism. Stop it.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
And I suppose you also think that in this comment I’m trivialising the struggles of pit bulls by comparing them to apples.
Bad logic is bad logic, whether applied to dogs, humans, apples or whatever. The fact that you can instinctively understand the argument is wrong when applied to people is the exact reason I used that, so people would understand it’s a bad argument that proves nothing.
Bad logic is bad logic, whether applied to dogs, humans, apples or whatever.
Racism is racism, whether it’s direct and obvious or just casually equating ethnic minorities to the most feared “dangerous” dogs whilst claiming that you’re “just explaining logical errors”.
No, you don’t get to pretend you didn’t make an awful and offensive analogy (based on your irrational belief that the pitbulls are falsely maligned).
If the logic is as flawed as you claim, there must be hundreds of analogies you can draw that aren’t racist and don’t equate black people in the USA with pitbulls.
There might be, but I’ve only ever heard “X is a minority yet causes the majority of fatalities” used for two Xs, it’s bad logic in both cases, it would be bad logic in any other case too, feel free to find me another example of that logic that people instinctively understand it’s wrong and I’ll use that next time.
Just fucking stop the racism.
It’s not my job to write your reality denying nonsense for you.
If your one and only recourse is to call black people violent dogs, you’re the one whose logical thinking is broken.
STOP with the racist crap.
I think you’re the racist asshole comparing black people to dogs
You need to work on your reading comprehension, I compared arguments, not people. The two are an example of “a minority of a group causes the majority of the fatalities, therefore that group is dangerous”, showing an example of that same argument people can instinctively understand it’s wrong.
Except no- it doesn’t.
Take a pitbull and a labrador. They aren’t simply the same animal with different colours.
Labradors were bred to assist fishermen in retrieving fish. So this would mean being controlled and obedient, not eating what they were sent to retrieve, etc.
Pitbulls were bred to fight other dogs- they were bred for fighting and destroying and that’s it. They’re essentially weapons that decide for themselves. Sure, any animal can be tamed, but it takes effort.
For your argument to work, you have to “concede” (although I wouldn’t use that term because it’s an outright lie) to the racist narrative or what have you that black people are inferior and have less control and are inherently less civilised than white people due to their race. So your argument is a racist one, because it assumes and only works that black people are significantly different to white people, like a different breed of human.
The differences between black people and white people in reality are negligible. They’re not different breeds, they’re both homosapiens. Essentially it would be like arguing black labradors are more violent than white labradors, which just simply isn’t true.
Not only that, but you’re trivialising the struggle of black people against racist oppression to that of people whining against their fighting dog being banned for good reason.
Worst of all, if they were the same argument, it’s like telling racists that comparing black people to white people is like comparing pitbulls to labradors, which would bolster their argument massively, as they’re completely different breeds of dog.
I urge you to recant your argument, you’re basically saying black people are like a more aggressive, dangerous, and less controlled breed of human compared to white people which is an absolutely vile, disgusting, and false thing to say.
None of that matters to the point that “X is a minority yet produces the majority of Y” in a vacuum is an example of a “correlation does not imply causation” fallacy. More specifically it’s an example of Simpson’s paradox, where you look at the data as a whole and derive a statistically significant result that X is more prone to Y, but if you were to normalize for some factors (in both these cases standard of living) you would see that there’s absolutely no correlation between the 2.
I never compared dog to people, I’m comparing the argument to show how it doesn’t make any sense. All of the new arguments you pulled there are an entire different can of worms, but in short while you’re correct that artificial selection of dog breeds has altered then genetically to a greater extent than what natural selection did for humans, it’s still the same species in both cases and your argument sounds straight out of a Nazi science book in Eugenics.
Let me be very clear here since you seem to not be able to understand, I’m saying people who claim black people are more aggressive are stupid idiots who can’t understand basic statistics when it’s starting them in the face. I’m saying there are a lot of factors at play here and reducing things to a simple “the majority of attacks are caused by X subgroup” ignores all of them and is a BAD ARGUMENT.
I think that the problem here is that you can’t seem to accept that the argument is bad, therefore when presented with the exact same argument applied to people you don’t stop to think that if the logic doesn’t apply here it also doesn’t apply there. It’s like someone said “I never met a green bird, therefore no bird is green” and I replied “that’s the same as saying I never met an asian therefore they don’t exist” and you went into a rampant about the struggles of Asians in our society.
We all have a single common ancestor so where do you draw the line? All humans are genetically closer to each other than dog breeds are. That’s the fault of eugenics. The theory isn’t wrong as it falls off of the theory of evolution, the facts are wrong because humans are so generically close to each other regardless of race. Dog breeds are different to the point that it’s scientific fact that they have different traits. Your argument just digs your grave further as you have to say different races of humans are like different breeds of dogs. Which in fact is a racist narrative - once again you’re helping contribute to the eugenicist argument by saying humans are like dogs.
“Correlation doesn’t equal causation” yet when 99% of lighting strikes happen during a storm, maybe it’s worth investigating if the storms contribute to lightning strikes happening. People have investigated this with black crime statistics, and turns out that it was systemic racism. So thus it was debunked.
The argument for pitbulls is purely emotional. Sure they may be as aggressive as chihuahuas, but I can beat a chihuahua in a fight. A pitbull, probably not.
It’s a pikachu face when you’re dog bred to destroy other dogs just so happens to be dangerous, and maybe we really should wipe out that entire breed from existence.
But I whole heartedly believe that pit bulls by nature were meant to be farm dogs. And if you get one and raise them from birth in a good and loving home than bites won’t happen. With this statistic did any owner say that yea I hurt my dog but only because he or she deserved it…etc etc etc. I didn’t think so. No one man or animal is inherently mean. That is a learned behavior. And with all avenues of information getting to people and children is more likely going to be people who are mean. But born that way. Fuck No. Anyone feel free to prove me wrong for this discussion.
Speaking from experience. I adopted a pitbull about 10 years ago. Spent countless hours training it, sent it to a daycare to make sure it was socialized.
Strike 1 was when he got kicked out of the daycare for fighting. Strike 2 was when out of nowhere he bit my friends dog. Strike 3 was when he turned on my border collie and nearly killed her. She was the dog he grew up with and spent every single day with. I had to beat him with a grill spatula to get him to let go, and I was bitten in the process.
My observation with the breed was that they have an instinct built into them and when it triggers they become possessed and they lose all control. Humans don’t usually trigger it, but other pets tend to.
That would be expected behaviour, they have been bred to kill other dogs.
Yep. We found a more suitable home for him.
Should have been destroyed. It’s a ticking timebomb.
We did fully explain the dogs history to the new owner at least. Honestly at the time I dont think I had it in me to put him down tell you the truth.
Fair enough, there’s one thing being on an armchair talking with the benefit of hindsight, and someone else in the moment with something they’re attached to.
The real question is “why would you believe that?”
They were bred to kill bulls, bears, and rats, in pits so that none of the animals could escape.
Truly one of the worst takes I have ever read. What you “believe” means nothing.
Pitbulls were bred to be as aggressive and strong as possible. They are literally attack dogs made for fighting.
It’s a shit breed that should be made illegal, period.
Animals aren’t mean, but they can be bred to be aggressive and dangerous. A pitbull probably doesn’t feel malice, but the reasoning in it’s head is incapacitated by years of breeding to essentially be a weapon that will effectively kill and attack ruthlessly. That was it’s purpose. It’s just following it’s instinct. And that’s what makes them so dangerous as well, they don’t realise it’s wrong.
the fuck you mean “by nature”? man made dogs.
I think your thinking of hot dogs.
I’m confused now. Do you genuinely think dogs are a natural species? Because… that might explain a lot about this entire post
It’s pretty well known they were bred to be fighting dogs for blood sports. It doesn’t mean they end up that way, but intervention is needed in places other breeds do not require it.
Why take on the hassle of a pit bull? Just get a Labrador or a poodle, there are so many easy going dogs. Easier to insure as well. Bit of a needless conversation.
Lol, Labradors are not easy dogs. They are very friendly, but they need a lot of outlet for their boundless energy and constant direction or they become misbehaved. Every other poodle I ever met was undertrained and misbehaved too.
Same reason we’re not all driving a Toyota Corolla. Labs and to a lesser extent poodles are vanilla AF. And not really low energy or low effort.
Because sometimes pit bulls need rescuing. We picked one up wandering the side of the road who turned out to be the absolute sweetest and most loving creature we’ve ever known. We walked him and our other dog one morning and a little neighbor dog came running (stupidly) up to attack. Our other dog just spiked this dog’s face into the sidewalk and proceeded to fight back while the pibble just got excited about the new friend.
You gotta be careful though, The one who bit me was a rescue. The guy who took him in was a complete moron entitled asshole, and I ended up getting bit due to this dudes negligence.
Sure, don’t mess with any kind of strange dog, but in my opinion that’s the owner’s fault. That idiot probably has firearms too.
it was, the previous place he came from wasnt good, and then this person got the dog without any proper training, and didnt train the dog at all. I told this person not to get thd dog, they did anyway. I felt bad for him, the pup, and used to walk him a lot each day. Then the fight happened, and he attacked me. I didnt blame the dog but the humans involved. There are people who arnt ready to take in a rescue, who still do so, Ive seen it a lot in my personal life. I didnt mean to say you werent prepared for and knowledgable about training and handling, but, a lot of people out there arnt, yet they still pick up dogs.
Ill never take in a pit because what happened to me. I think thats fair. I also dont think everyone should just take in random dogs they dont know how to care for.
Completely agree that one shouldn’t take on an animal without knowing what to do, but no one has ignorance as an excuse in this day and age.
No beef with you having your own issues with pit bulls based on your personal experience, but I just hate the idea of an entire breed suffering just for being capable of damage.
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.
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.
They get joy from killing other animals. The stats don’t account for what they do to little critters. There is probably some survivorship bias in the stats too, the owners know who they are and treat them accordingly. Well the responsible owners.
They get joy from killing other animals.
You seem to be psychic; or you can talk to them. Which is it?
My family has vet hospital people and spca people in it, and they don’t have your level of certainty.
Personal observations and stories all over.
Your family are all psychic vet hospital and spca people that can talk to animals? That’s wild.
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
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
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 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?
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.
