• minorkeys@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    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.

  • Muffi@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      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

  • Padit@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    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?

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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    22 hours ago

    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.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    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.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

  • Concetta@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 hours ago

    Holy shit we’re actually starting the doggie eugenics on lemmy now, this comment section is a fucking travesty.

  • mx_smith@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    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.

    • Elting@piefed.social
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 days ago

        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.

        • Elting@piefed.social
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          3 days ago

          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.

          • RBWells@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            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.

    • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip
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      3 days ago

      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 whatever end result would actually be more representative of real data

      • velma@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        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.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          2 days ago

          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”.

        • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          If you look at the chart “mixed breed” is it’s own category and they excluded reports where the breeds were unknown.

          • kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 days ago

            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.

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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.

        • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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          5 minutes ago

          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.

          • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            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.

            • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.uk
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              2 days ago

              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.

              • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                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.

                • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.uk
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                  2 days ago

                  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.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Sure it matters, if you don’t normalize for sample size your data is meaningless. Here’s a similar example:

          I have a farm that produces both red and green apples, last harvest I had to throw away 100 red apples because they went bad, but only 10 green apples for the same reason.

          You would think that red apples spoil 10x easier than green ones, but you’re missing the crucial information that my farm produced 10.000 red apples and 1.000 green ones, so in both cases it represented 1% of the whole amount.

          This could be the same thing, if there are more Pitbulls than other races it would be expected that they bite more in absolute numbers.

        • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip
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          2 days ago

          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.

          • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
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            2 days ago

            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.

            • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip
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              2 days ago

              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

          • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            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.

            • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              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.

            • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip
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              2 days ago

              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.

              • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                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.

                • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip
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                  2 days ago

                  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.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      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.

        • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          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.

          • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.uk
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            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.

    • Don_Dickle@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 days ago

        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.

      • Lasherz@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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.

      • Lydon_Feen@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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.

      • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.uk
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        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.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    3 days ago

    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.

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    3 days ago

    I can’t speak for every dog and every dog owner, though many anti-pit bull people will tell you they can and that they’re all just waiting to bite the face off a child.

    What I can say is that, of the pit bulls and pit bull mixes I know, they’re lovable softies with their owners, and I know one (our neighbors) that I can say with confidence could not/would not hurt anyone or anything else, as even when another dog attacked him he would not fight back. This dog is in a house with multiple small children, numerous cats, chickens, a turkey, and over multiple years being their neighbor I’ve never heard of him being hostile towards any of them, he’s always been a Very Good Boy.

    What I believe it comes down to is that pit bulls are big, strong dogs, with strong jaws, and some people are neglectful owners who fail to socialize them and train them properly. A poorly trained and poorly socialized Yorkie will bite you all the same, it’s just you can punt one like a football. People who are not prepared to train their dogs to behave appropriately – which is a part of caring for them, just as important as grooming or feeding them if not even more important – should not own dogs, full stop, irrespective of breed.

    It is, however, much easier for other people to blame the dog, have the dog put down (and let me say, if they did something bad enough to earn an early departure across the rainbow bridge, rightly so), and then promptly forget about the owner who didn’t bother to train them. The owner who will, then, almost certainly, get another dog to neglect.

    • kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      Pitbulls also have strong tendecy for aggression towards other dogs, because of the background of the breed. Not all of them have dog aggression, especially the mixed, but many do. As an instinct, it is often way too difficult to all but experts, to train them not to act on it, and many people can barely do basic training, much less realize, what sort of precautions they need to take, to prevent incidents.

      This also means keeping them in places, with a lot of other dogs around - so almost every situation people live in these days - creates a big chance of them attacking other dogs. And when dogs fight, it is very common for humans to get injured, while they try to stop it, because the dogs are in a very agitated state. Since pitties are a strong breed with strong jaws, getting bit by one means usually a really bad time, even if it just an accident… which then leads to blaming the dog for their owner’s stupidity, as noted above.

      • kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Also, as a personal anecdote: I have seen multiple pittie-type of dogs in dog parks, that are fine at first, but then after running and playing for a while, start to get agitated, which then triggers aggressive behavior towards the other dogs. The common theme with the incidents I have seen, is the owners not understanding their dog’s bodylanguage, and not realizing when they are starting to get agitated, and should have stopped and left.

        I am autistic person, grown up with dogs, so often I can read dog bodylanguage better than human one. I have taken my dog, and left from dog parks, when I have noticed the agitation rising in that type of dogs, because I do not trust the owners. These days it is honestly just safer to not go in there, if there is a pittie-types, even if they seem to be fine.
        I sadly find it is also pointless to try to point this behaviour out to the owners, as they get offended for implying their dog is aggressive, even though that is not the point. And then they get couple bad incidents, and quietly stop visiting dog parks.

        Do not take a dog from a breed, that has high tendency towards dog aggression, if you want a high chance to have a dog, you can take to dog parks.

    • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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      2 days ago

      the problem with them is, as with police… and the whole point of the ACAB movement… we cant possibly know what state any given [strange] pit bull is in, and so we kinda have to assume the worst for our own safety… until proven otherwise.

      often, that takes 30 seconds meeting the dog and the owner in the park, but i will never not assume a defensive stance with certain breeds and owners.

      weirdly, unmanaged/mismanaged german shephards are a big problem in my area to the point my dog now just hates all of them.

    • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      There’s also people who just want a strong, violent dog for various reasons and pit bulls fit that bill pretty well. They’re large, strong, persistent, and the person is a shit tier person who will likely beat the animal.

      • volore@scribe.disroot.org
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, I don’t disagree with that, but that’s a problem with the owner and not the breed. If the breed were outlawed, all it would do is get a lot of dogs who don’t deserve to be put down, put down; and those kinds of assholes would just get a doberman, a rottweiler, or any other number of large, strong breeds they can mistreat and neglect into being a menace to society. The fact of the matter is that shitty people are the root cause of the problem, and we don’t hold the owner accountable enough when a dog bites.

  • Gerudo@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    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.

  • Lasherz@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    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.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    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.