this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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Assholes will get big dogs, abuse ignore and isolate them, then act surprised when they act unpredictably.
Breed specific legislation isn't the answer. The answer is for mandatory training courses predating dog ownership. All dog ownership too. Little dogs can be assholes too.
When 1 breed is per capita significantly higher represented... yes it is.
Little dogs can't kill you.
If we breed a dog to be the size of a hippo... Is that still okay to have? Even if it's only 6x as dangerous as the next breed?
it's higher because people use pitbulls for dog fights, etc... if you abuse an animal it's more likely to attack someone.
if you look at stats, getting killed by a rotweiler or a german Shepard isn't that far off.
which would be the next two "tough dude" cool pets...
not to mention, pitbulls aren't even a breed, really... there's plenty of pit cousins that would be the new pitbulls... plus half breeds and whatnot...
my solution is to just require all small children carry revolvers... super simple, and those dogs will think twice before attacking them.
We should just breed our toddlers to be vicious dog-killers machines, problem solved. I want my kid to be able to tear everything to shreds on the playground by the time he hits 6.
They didn't just use pitbulls, they specifically bred pitbulls to fight and never give up. It's deep in their brain.
"Deep in their brain" is that a science term. I kid. I would like to know the science behind it, though.
This is correct. My argument isn't just that they top the lists... it's ALSO that the damage they do is much higher than any other breed as well. These concepts are inextricably linked.
When a pomeranian bites you, it's whatever... bleeds a little bit, you put a bandaid on it later, but punt the fucker now. If a pitbull bites you... You might be missing part of your fucking leg. Try punting a pitbull...
We have more known attacks that are pitbulls simply because the damage they do is so fucking much more that it can't just be handled in private. It's actually probably 100% probably that pitbulls on average strictly bite at the same rates as other dogs... But the sheer amount of damage done by pitbulls means those bites = more deaths and hospitalizations. I've never once claimed that pitbulls bite more or less than any other breed, simply that they cause more casualties (and often specify deaths).
This is called gameness and the trait is not inextricable for pit bull breeds. It was bred into them through selection, not too dissimilar to how those stubby faced breeds were bred to be that way (e.g. pugs).
If pit bull breeds were selectively bred to reduce/remove that trait it would change things. It’s almost like the root problem isn’t the dogs but the people and breeding practices.
Why then pick pits? I get emergency calls about dog attacks all the time. It's always pits. Assholes want asshole dogs. People use them to fight because they're monsters and will fight till the death.
It's more represented because morons buy that breed more than others. When they get banned it's other breeds that start attacking people.
You don't understand what "per capita" means do you?
Cool... I'll take being attacked by a pomeranian any day. I can at least punt those little fuckers over a fence.
You don't really understand how statistics work do you? Per capita can still get artificially skewed in favor of one breed or another. For an example, let's say we have red Legos and blue Legos and statistics say that murderers are more likely to pick red Legos. As a result, more people pick blue Legos because they don't want to be perceived as murderers, leaving the red Legos for murderers and people who are skeptical or ignorant of the statistics. The result will be that there's a much higher number of murderers per-captia with red Legos than with blue Legos.
The same can be applied to pitbulls. Create the story that pitbulls are man-killers, and the stats will get skewed as people looking for man-killers buy more pitbulls and people looking for companions intentionally avoid them. The result will be that there are more man-killer pitbulls per capita because that's what they're being trained for. It's called a self-fullfilling prophecy. Maybe pitbulls truly do have a disposition for being man-killers, however their reputation means that the stats will be skewed in favor of the man-killers trait, as more people will buy them to make them man-killers.
Loved your comment, just wanted to chime in that what you’re referring to in the quoted portion above is commonly called gameness. Generally speaking it’s not that pit bulls are more prone to attack by default but their attacks are more unrelenting.
Yeah the statistics on this are incredibly clear.
For the US this year it's overwhelming staffy / Pitbulls causing human deaths.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States
I knew someone who had a badly behaved dog, it attacked their partner so they put it down.
A few weeks later "I'm getting another one and I'm going to train it myself" Meaning they just won't train it, lost their shit when someone called them out as a dog killer. People don't deserve animals, people suck.
A minute of silence for all the people killed by asshole chihuahuas...
how can you get killed by a chihuahua? it nibbles away your toe and you get an infection?!
They think that they're making a clever point. Of course larger dogs are inherently more dangerous than tiny dogs. No one is disputing that.
But to advocate for the complete wiping out of an entire breed versus mandatory training classes for owners is an insane answer.
Make "dangerous breeds" more difficult to get, sure. I agree with that. But I can NOT with the "wipe out all pitbull/rotties/dobermans/GSDs/etc"
A moment of silence for the victims of Labradors then.
Pit bull apologists refuse to just look at the numbers logically. We don't keep pet tigers, we shouldn't keep pet pit bulls.
I'd be suspicious that any lab that may have killed or severely injured someone isn't a "lab mix" like the shelters push out.
Wiping out? Why keep breeding something humans created in the first place. It's cruel to them and humans. Just like pugs and a bunch of other breeds that are cruel. Dogs are a human creation and humanity shoukd take responsibility and stop breeding them. Mutts are as close as natural and stable as you're gonna get.
Wiping out? Why not just forbid malicious breeding goals, like aggression, bite force and of course torture / unhealthy breeding?
Yeah, for real. Pitbulls are the common target because they're the "vicious dog". It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. Talk about how pitbulls are vicious man-killers, people who want vicious man-killers buy them and train them to be vicious man-killers, pitbulls become vicious man-killers. Meanwhile, the people who want a family dog don't get pitbulls because, well, they're "vicious man-killers". The result is that statistics get skewed in favor of the "vicious man-killer" status, leading to people seeing the breed as nothing more than vicious man-killers.
That combined with the pseudoscience that was spewed by Merritt Clifton, that everyone still quotes today, and you've got yourself some statistical issues.
In case people don't know who Merritt is
People who get pit bulls as "family dogs" have the same issue.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/08/2-children-killed-mother-hospitalized-after-tennessee-dog-mauling/8219201001/
https://winknews.com/2023/07/06/north-port-6-year-old-dies-dog-bite/
Behavior is influenced by genetics as well as environment. Certain individual animals are more genetically predisposed towards violence than others. Certain breeds of particular species tend to have more of these individuals than others. So, it is possible to have a breed that is violent in that: if you take a random sample of that breed where the individuals are subjected to an identical rearing process more of those individuals will be more violent than average than the average breed has individuals who are more violent than average. (I realize that sentence is probably difficult to digest, but I'm not going to spend 20 more minutes working on this).
Given the data that we have on pit bulls, I think they're a violent breed. Not all pit bulls are violent, but a pit bull is more likely to be violent than a golden retriever when the two are raised in the same environment.
I agree from both an animal welfare and public safety perspective that we need far stricter laws and regulations on dog ownership in general. But also I also think that some breeds are inherently more dangerous than others. For the American Bully XL in particular, we are talking a new pitbull-adjacent breed which has been bred for both aggression, intimidation and maximum muscle mass, both to skirt past existing legislation that bans American Pit Bulls, but also because all these traits appeal to the kind of irresponsible owners that just want an attack dog that looks 'aard as fuck.
We're also deluding ourselves when we claim that a dog bred to resemble the canine equivalent of Brock Lesnar is a nanny dog and wouldn't harm a fly, when in actuality losing control of a 145 lb jacked beast has even led to grown adults being mauled to death.
The only dogs to ever bite me are chihuahuas, and I worked as a vet assistant for years.
Same