It’s not the owner (although pretty often the owner doesn’t help matters), it’s the breed. I sincerely don’t know how many children have to be eaten by these monsters before everyone wakes up to the reality of these dogs. They have bloodsport fighting genetics hard wired into their brains, the same way you can’t stop a pointer from pointing or a herding dog from herding. They are the most impulsive breed, and they turn even on kind and loving owners all the time. Pit bull owners will flock to the comments to gaslight everyone about what wonderful dogs they are and how they must have been triggered by the child breathing or blinking and it’s not the dog’s fault. I’m attaching an image of such an argument I saw today.
I think many pit bull owners secretly like owning a killer dog, and just have some sort of oppositional defiance that makes them want to prove to everyone how wonderful their dog is, and until the dog turns on them will defend them to insane degrees. I think they like seeing people and pets and livestock get hurt or killed. I understand some people get caught up in romantic thoughts shaped by publications like The Dodo of helping a poor abused dog become a wonderful pet, and I totally understand wanting to help, and this isn’t their fault, but stark reality sets in quickly when they bring the dog home and it promptly tears apart their cat.
The Bennard family is a prime example, they are middle class people who lovingly raised their pits from puppies, and when they were 8 years old one day the dogs killed their baby and toddler and hospitalized the mom in the ICU. Pieces of that baby were everywhere. Apparently the reason was because the toddler picked up the ball the mom was throwing for the dogs, but she had had to break up a very vicious fight between the dogs shortly before. For that two innocent children lost their lives, from family pets who were lovingly raised.
I know what many of the comments here will be like, but I stand convinced that not one of these dogs is safe simply because of genetics. They are doing what they are bred for, and it’s high past time people get realistic about them.
So, I’ve never owned/raised a fully, true, actual pitbull.
But I have raised 3 different mutts, somewhere between a quarter to a half pitbull for each of them… we were never 100% sure, we’d take in strays, abandoned or unwanted dogs from the pound or people that didn’t want em any more… and we’d just have one dog at a time for roughly the first 3 years of getting them, to be able to focus on training just one, then as they get older, sort of stagger it so now we get one other younger dog at the same time… staggering it out helps make training snd acclimation work better.
Two of them were more impulsive when it comes to violence than many other dogs and breeds, one of them had such severe PTSD from being abused as a puppy (before we got her) that she only barked 3 times in her entire life, was never violent.
She was so abused that she literally quivered and whimpered in fear everytime anything really scared her, she’d been smacked everytime she ever barked for any reason, basically from birth, so… she was seemingly incapable of ever being physically violent, always very docile, restrained, reactive.
With all of them, solid and consistent training from an early age can and did make them into absolutely wonderful animals.
Of the two not totally traumatized, they only ever had a violent fear response, as in, actually biting at someone or another dog or something… around less than 5 to 10 times in their whole lives, for each of them.
What you do is, once the immediate situation is under control, dogs are restrained or removed, people are removed, medical situation is either non severe or under control, you reprimand them verbally fairly strongly, as immediately as possible, and then basically ignore them or be slower to respond to their non mandatory needs (eating, being let out to poo/pee), and you stop giving them the otherwise standard positive things, regular playtime or walks, for a couple of days.
And you do this for any action from them that crosses a threshold to even potentially being able to cause actual damage to another living thing.
If they are under roughly 2 or 3 yo, and you are consistent with this, you can teach them that actually violent responses, that cross over from defensive growling, snarling… into attack attempts, that those are unnaceptable, even in what they likely think is self defense.
With those 2 non totally traumatized ones, in our first years with them, they had a few times they crossed the line, we made sure they understood they had crossed the line, and they largely ceased such behavior.
Not… entirely though.
While none of them ever seriously harmed a human or other pet, I think each of them did fully break ranks and hunt down and murder a squirrel or bird maybe once or twice in their lives.
One, when he was older and riddled with cancer/tumors, rather stupidly picked a fight with some wandering cat… and lost, badly, he had to be saved, lol, and we had to take him in to get his clawed up face patched up.
… So, again, this is all for non full, 100% pitbulls.
They can largely be succesfully trained, but it requires a good deal of consistency in training from all of the humans regularly in their lives, a mix of regular positive rewards for good behavior, learning and following commands successfully…
… verbal reprimands and immediate, clear displays of displeasure/dissatisfaction when they do something dumb, with a kind of ‘time out’ period afterward where you just aren’t as friendly/enthusiastic toward them for maybe a day or two…
… sufficient physical strength from involved humans to be able to control them while on a leash, and if required, in a worst case scenario, the humans need the physically ability to immobilize them with a kind of wrestling hold thats not gonna cause permanent damage, but does let them know you are in charge.
What I am trying to say is that at least a mutt with a fair deal of pitbull in them can be trained to be a great dog, but the humans involved have to be pretty serious about training them.
Full, 100% pitbulls?
Never had one, don’t have any experience beyond meeting other ones… and yeah, I largely agree that full pitbulls are even more impulsive and violent, and I would imaginr that training that out of them would be somewhere between extremely difficult to nearly impossible.
A big problem here, as I see it, is that tons of just pet owners in general are terrible pet owners, and are very bad and inconsistent with training and care, but they either don’t care, or they think they’re actually great pet owners, while they’re basically ass-backwards on the most basic fundamentals, but are very sure they are not.
A really big element that at lot of people miss when training dogs is that… well you should treat many breeds as potentially violent untill you’ve trained them otherwise, ie, dont let the kids around them unsupervised unless theyre at least body weight/size matching the dog…
…and also, training and attitude toward a dog has to be consistent from an entire family of humans.
If the kids aren’t capable of that, its not safe, if the family has one person who is very forgiving and loose with the rules, the dog will just become very attached to that person, and the training will be compromised, dog will be spoiled and inconsistent… you have to present a united front to establish behavior standards for them.
But at the same time… I do tend to agree that compared to most othet breeds, full pitbulls are innately impulsive and violent, and it just is the case that most of them are very poorly trained, thus they fully deserve their reputation as likely to be dangerous.
I just wanted to give some caveats, qualifications, bit of my relevant experience with partial pitt/mutts.
That’s fine. I don’t want to argue with someone who put an effort into their mixed breed but is mindful of their genetics as well.
But I also have to point out that I have a mixed pit in my building and it broke away from its owner (who clearly has never had a dog before and has gotten swept up into the propaganda) and attacked a dog who was merely urinating and ripped its leg open. The owner was then subsequently resistant to paying the vet bill and walking it on a muzzle as she was ordered to by animal control.
I will also say that my friend was an ER clerk and one night the paramedics patched in to tell them they were bringing in a person whose friend’s pit mix had ripped off their arm simply because they were walking it and tried to pull it back from running after another dog. It turned on them and mauled them, until their arm was ripped off, and the cops had to shoot it to get it to stop. Never made the news.
It is 100% necessary to be mindful of what their genetics is and how they can turn on you.
See, that scenario that you described was basically our nightmare scenario… but it was also the baseline that we started from.
IE, if we do not properly train our dog(s), if we do not properly control it, be aware of where it is and what it is doing at all times…
Well, its got a good chunk of pitty genetics, and that means that if we fuck up, our dog will eventually do something like that, and it will be our fault.
It is a very real and serious concern… and fuck, I’m sorry just even hearing that that happened.
But like… if your dog is significantly pitt, and you don’t expect that kind of thing happening as a default baseline, if you do nothing to train that out of them?
Then you are an idiot, a public health hazard, you should not have that dog.
I’m not really trying to defend full pitts in general.
You are basically right, they are just very innately impulsive, violent, and disproportionately physically strong compared to similarly sized breeds.
People do not fucking give that the level of respect and seriousness it deserves.
Frankly, its not dissimilar to white trash folks who just leave a goddamned gun lying around and then act surprised when their kid or the neighbor’s kid shoots something or someone with it… Americans are way, way too fucking blaise snd irresponsible about violence and things that very obviously can potentially lead to violence.
But, on the flip side of that… there are good dog owners, and, not trying to expand the convo too much unnecessarily, there are also responsible gun owners who get real training, just own like, a gun or two, store them safely, and just enjoy occasional hunting or target shooting…
…not everyone is a wildy irresponsible dog non-trainer with a dangerous breed, not every gun owner is a fucking obsessed nut with an armory and weekly ‘kinetic response’ style drills just in case they finally get home invaded so they can justifiably kill somebody.
But, there are a whole, whole lot of fucking idiot assholes doing their damndest to show other people that anything associated with them should probably just be completely banned.
Ok, rant over, but back to full agreement:
110% agree that knowing your dog’s genetic makeup should define your training approach to it, and frankly yeah, people probably just should not be allowed to own full pitties at this point, maybe keep em in pounds and cross breed them untill full, 100% pitbulls aren’t a thing anymore, I dunno.
That would require like, a functioning society that gave a shit about other people, so, la la fantasy world right now, but yeah, ideally, you’d think full pitties would require some kind of mandatory training requirements or something, I dunno.
Waaaay too many lackadaisical doofuses have pitbulls, and they just are a genuine safety concern.
Guess I’m just trying to say that there are at least some partial pitt mutts that are good dogs, well trained, with good owners, and that it sucks that so many more irresponsible people are basically causing people/dogs like me/mine splash damage.
Like… those who can well train a partial pitt are those willing and able to take up that level of responsibility, because we know that even partial pitts are innately dangerous… not because we just pretend they aren’t.