About pit bulls....

WhyFi, you said it better than I ever could. People are stunned when they hear I have a pitbull, another dog, 4 cats, and I foster cats. They've been so inundated with the "all pitbulls are vicious" falsehood that it's hard for them to believe. Especially when I tell them that Ripley has gotten her butt whupped by 2 different foster cats. I've had her since she was 6 months old and treated her no different than any other dog I've had. I enjoy breaking that "typical" pitbull owner stereotype and showing people that pitbulls can be loving and good dogs when raised properly. More people need to see that.

lmboogie, you're lumping all pitbulls into one category when you say they're genetically predisposed to violent behavior. Of course, there are those who have been selectively bred to be more vicious. Many of the people doing that are backyard breeders who breed purely for aggressive behavior. But not every single pitbull in the world came from breeders like that. Another thing to consider is that the people that breed pitbulls to be aggressive are obviously not training them properly. Pitbulls are by nature very loyal (in the early 1900's they were the number one family dog). They were actually called Nanny Dogs because they were used to babysit children. Unfortunately, some people used that loyalty to turn these dogs into the "monsters" they wanted. Out of every pitbull attack reported, how many of those pits belonged to real responsible owners? Ones who have taken the time to learn about the breed and train their pits the way they should be trained.

And let's not forget the role of the media in this, "vicious pitbull attacks" make for great ratings. You'd be surprised at how many of the pitbulls in these stories aren't pitbulls but other dogs. This site has links to quite a few stories about mistaken identity.

http://www.understand-a-bull.com/BSL/MistakenIdentity/WrongId.htm

I do have to say that painting an entire breed of dogs with the same brush is wrong. People do that with people of other races as well and that is also wrong. The American Temperament Test Society has done temperament testing on just about every breed of dogs. Pitbulls and other bully breeds have scored higher than many "family dogs".

AMERICAN BULLDOG - 83.1%
AMERICAN PIT BULL TERRIER - 84.1%
AMERICAN STAFFORDSHIRE TERRIER - 83.9%
BULL TERRIER - 91.5%
STAFFORDSHIRE BULL TERRIER - 85.2%

Compare that to the "family dogs":
BEAGLE - 79.7%
BICHON FRISE - 77.8%
CHIHUAHUA - 71.4%
COCKER SPANIEL - 81.7%
DACHSHUND (MINIATURE SMOOTH) - 76.9%
DACHSHUND (STANDARD SMOOTH) - 66.7%
DALMATIAN - 81.9%
JACK RUSSELL TERRIER - 81.5%
LHASA APSO - 69.2%
MINIATURE PINSCHER - 80.8%
MINIATURE POODLE - 76.6%
POMERANIAN - 75.0%
SHIH TZU - 76.9%
TOY POODLE - 81.6%
YORKSHIRE TERRIER - 81.1%

http://www.atts.org/statistics.html

I would love to have a decent exchange, it's the only way people with differing opinions can learn from each other. Anger and hysteria only further the divide between people. I enjoy having rational discussions like this, it gives me a chance to see a person's view that I wouldn't normally get to see.

MOD NOTE: split from the michael vick thread

caseopele:thanks for the response. interesting to read and learned a few things. you lost me on the "race" comparison but that's ok, not the point.

i'll be interested to see responses to leet's point which is really what i was getting at.

I believe that the people trying to ban pitbulls by saying that all pitbulls are vicious are similar to people who say things like this:

All asian people are bad drivers.
All jews are cheap.
All black people are criminals.
All white people are racist.
All gay men are promiscuous.
All lesbians are man haters.
All arabs are terrorists.
All blondes are dumb.
All Irish men are drunks.
All Germans are Nazis.

I could go on but I think that's enough. Also, I think it's nice to think that dogs are bred by only professional responsible breeders. But there are alot of irresponsible people out there who mate fathers with daughters, mothers and sons, and brothers with sisters. This occurs with any popular breed, not just pitbulls. I can't tell you how many small purebreds I've seen exhibit decidedly uncharacteristic behavior for their breed. Chihuahuas, Pomeranians, Toy Poodles, Malteses are some that I've come in contact with that were horribly ill-tempered dogs. When I lived in PS I made a point of crossing the street with my dogs when I saw a small dog coming. 9 times out of 10 the little dogs would bark their heads off at my dogs, lunging towards them and antagonizing them. I knew that if my dogs tried to defend themselves from any of these dogs that they would be considered the aggressors. And the cries of, "that vicious pitbull went after my little baby for no reason!" wouldn't be far behind. Fortunately, my dogs tend to ignore those little dogs who talk smack to them. Although they are pretty scared of ballsy Italian Greyhounds.

Disclaimer: I do not believe any of those stereotypes, I don't judge entire races or groups of people. I judge each person I meet solely on their own behavior not the color of their skin or who they sleep with.

This is such an emotional issue for lots of people. I'd avoid getting into a discussion of this topic on a public message board if it weren't such a fun issue to debate.

My point was pretty simple, that through selective breeding dogs can be produced that are more aggressive - or docile. Operations like the "Bad News Kennels" that Michael Vick was running (or whatever it was called) are an example of selective breeding of pit bulls for aggressive behavioral traits, specifically toward other animals, not humans (though who can say if a dog like that would recognize a small human as an animal or not).

I wasn't saying that all pit bulls are aggressive, but I do think that some are because they were deliberately bred that way.

The fox farm study done in Russia is quite fascinating and relevant to this topic:

A scientific team from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICG) in Novosibirsk has shed light on this question by experimentally reconstructing the domestication process in the silver, farm-bred form of the red fox (Belyaev 1969; Trut 1987, 1999). When the ICG studies started in the 1960's, Belyaev and colleagues hypothesized that selection of farm foxes for less fearful and aggressive behavior would lead to development of a domesticated strain of this species. In 40 years of continuous selective breeding, about 50,000 animals were tested for amenability to domestication (Belyaev 1979; Belyaev et al. 1981; Trut 1999). The resultant population of foxes selected for tameness demonstrates emotionally friendly responses to humans from 1 month of age (Trut 1999, 2001; http://cbsu.tc.cornell.edu/ccgr/behaviour/index.html). In parallel with this selection for tameness, a second strain of fox was selectively bred for aggressive behavior (Trut 1999). Studies including experimental crossbreeding of domestic and aggressive animals, cross-fostering of newborn pups, and transplantation of embryos have demonstrated the genetic basis of tame and aggressive phenotypes (Trut 1980).

http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/95/3/185

And finally, it's not right to conflate a discussion of animal science with racism in humans. Are we reaching the point of Godwin's Law here?

apollonia666 wrote: I just want to say that, for what it's worth, I've met WhyFi's pit and while she's just one example of the breed, she's a good example of a pit raised right and she's a big ol' mush. Be careful around her, though, because she just might slobber you to death.

Totally, that doggie loves ya too much!
Sorry WF, you know I'm a sucker for that kitty of yours :cat:
My sis has a pit mix and it's a big baby. I've never seen such a wuss in my life Love that mutt!

lmboogie, as long as you stick to avoiding them and don't start trying to ban them all then I have no problems with you!

Ooooh, then it's on! :rambo:

i think what leet is getting at -- or at any rate, what the friend i was discussing this with the other night was getting at using similar examples -- is that if
1. aggressiveness is inheritable
and
2. a lot of people are breeding pit types to be aggressive
then
3. don't your odds of getting a "naturally aggressive" pit become much higher than getting a naturally aggressive individual of some other breed, not currently in vogue for fighting?

by the way, my guess is that is does go up, but not very much, since selective breeding isn't easy, so the number of pups with traits passed on will be fairly small AND since those breeding fighting dogs are most likely to keep the pups that dog show desired traits. also, as whyfi and others have pointed out on other threads, dog aggression and people aggression are different traits.

i think that if you could breed a naturally highly aggressive dog, we wouldn't see such horrific abuse in the course of training dogs for fighting, since such a dog would fight on its own. those who could afford to do so would quickly buy puppies bred by whoever had hit on the magic formula, and a guy like michael vick, with money in his pockets, wouldn't be messing around torturing dogs into meanness. the amount of abuse it seems to take to convince these dogs to fight suggests to me that pits are being chosen as fighting dogs on the basis of physique, not temperament.

(really, i'm just scared whyfi will sic lucy on me and i'll be drowned in slobber.)

i always pet dogs. pitbulls? never a problem. but a couple of months ago a shiba inu nipped my leg.

ok, i was warned. brother of owner who was dogsitting said dog sometimes bit but i was too entranced by shiba inu to heed the warning. glad i was wearing pants

sad situation

WhyFi wrote:
Okay, so why are you arguing the dangerousness of pitbull-types specifically when you're fearful of all dogs? Singling them out seems a bit disingenuous given your stance.

Agreed. It doesn't make sense to dislike dogs according to their breed. Size maybe. A family's Siberian Husky ate their 2 week old baby last Tuesday in Perth, and I believe that's thought of as one of the gentler breeds; at 86.8% it scores better temperament than most of the abovementioned breeds.