Pit Bulls should be banned in this country ! <<MOD WARNING - FOR RULE 9>>

For over 65 years, I've either owned a dog or been around dogs. I currently have 2 smallish dogs. I've even been a baby-sitter / dog-sitter for an attack trained Doberman. The owner had to leave the country in a hurry but that's another story. I baby-sat "Spot" (the attack trained Doberman) for about 6 months. Spot was a little past his prime but still a healthy & powerful animal. For that period, Spot never bit me or any of my friends.

The only dog bite / nip I've gotten was from a "friendly" Rottweiler around which I'd spent plenty of time.
Admittedly, I've spent very little time around Pit Bulls but both the numbers and anecdotes have made me very wary of them.

Do I think that they should be banned, no. However, I do think they should wear a muzzle & on a leash while in public & not allowed to roam free.


"Are Pit Bulls Really Dangerous?"
https://www.livescience.com/27145-are-pit-bulls-dangerous.html
EXCERPT "But do pit bulls deserve their reputation as vicious "attack" dogs? An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests, in some instances, they do.

A five-year review of dog-bite injuries from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, published in 2009 in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, found that almost 51 percent of the attacks were from pit bulls, almost 9 percent were from Rottweilers and 6 percent were from mixes of those two breeds.

In other words, a whopping two-thirds of the hospital's dog-attack injuries involved just two breeds, pit bulls and Rottweilers."CONTINUED

 

So the mother should be charged, just as if she shot the child. How does that change anything I said? It's like blaming a the gun for someone that was shot by it.

It doesn't. Again, you're completely ignorant regarding breeding and environment.

 

The lack of health problems is not related to the shape of the animal but due to the fact that they live in the wild and all the sick animals die before being able to breed, unlike dogs bred specifically by humans to actually be as genetically inefficient as possible.
Mother nature so to speak only allows for perfection, by means of continually removing the imperfect.

 

So the mother loses her child, and you would send her to jail, because she believed immoral liars like you who claim how gentle these dogs are. That said you should be charged for this murder for defending this worthless excuse for an animal.

 

Unfortunately, they do. Not all domestic dogs will, but many .. once in packs of three or more, will try things they wouldn't do alone. The pack reinforces primitive drivers, so even in breeds long removed from any need or ability to hunt, it can be 'switched on'. This doesn't mean they'll go after people of course, but they might take down a cat, or a sheep ... when alone they wouldn't even think to do so.

 

By health problems I mean those issues associated with alterations to conformation.

 

Great post, and agree completely. My medium sized and very very obedient working dogs (15kgs a piece) do the same to stuffed toys. It's quite disconcerting to watch, sometimes.

Meantime, this idea that nurture will somehow obviate genetics in dogs, is easily refuted by the fact that most wild dogs and wolf/dog hybrids, no matter how carefully they're raised, will retain some of the unpredictability of their wild cousins. They also need to be 'caged', as opposed to simply fenced. That alone, tells you much.

 

This is simply false. Many cities in the US and Canada have banned pit bulls and have seen a dramatic reduction in the number of attacks and fatalities as a result. Several home insurance companies are now disallowing pit bull owners from being covered as a result of any liability that might arise from the dog(s). This is clear evidence that this breed and similar breeds are a problem. Would you say an insurance company charging more insurance for a high powered sports car was punishing the "good drivers" for the "bad drivers"? No, you wouldn't, you'd say that's a reasonable assumption to make, that a high powered sports car is more likely to get into an accident and more likely to cost a great deal more in repair and hospital bills. Same thing goes for pit bull breeds, they are more likely to bite, maul, kill, and cost more in liability and hospital bills. It only makes sense to restrict their availability, and impose heavy limits on those who are bound and determined to own them. Most jurisdictions already have similar limits on half-wolf hybrids, I can't see that pit bulls are any different.

 

This. I'd add that in some countries, you can't have wolf hybrids at all. They're illegal in my country, for example. They're considered too dangerous to be kept as pets.

 

A somber and sobering page of statistics and information:

• 31 U.S. dog bite-related fatalities occurred in 2016. Despite being regulated in Military Housing areas and over 900 U.S. cities, pit bulls contributed to 71% (22) of these deaths. Pit bulls make up about 6% of the total U.S. dog population.
• Together, pit bulls (22) and rottweilers (2), the second most lethal dog breed, accounted for 77% of the total recorded deaths in 2016. This same combination also accounted for 76% of all fatal attacks during the 12-year period of 2005 to 2016.
• The breakdown between these two breeds is substantial over this 12-year period. From 2005 to 2016, pit bulls killed 254 Americans, about one citizen every 17 days, versus rottweilers, which killed 43, a citizen every 102 days (Related graph).
• In 2016, the combination of pit bulls (22), their close cousins, American bulldogs (2), and rottweilers (2) contributed to 84% (26) of all dog bite-related fatalities. Both American bulldog cases involved dogs acquired in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2016.php

It's worth noting that, as depressing as the idea of dying at the jaws of a family pet may be, other, more bizarre ways to die claim far more lives each year:

peanut butter allergy: 75-100 deaths/year
choking on hot dogs (I have done this, it's not fun): 70 deaths/year
using right handed products (lefties): 2,500 deaths/year
falling out of bed: 450 deaths/year
accidentally touching power line: 105 deaths/year

And standard ways to die, heart attacks and motor vehicle accidents, dwarf these numbers:

heart attacks: 610,000 deaths/year
motor vehicle accidents: 37,000 deaths/year

 

Domestic dogs may hang together, but they do not hunt like wolves. Wolves think alike because they are alike, a Lab in fact is considered a hunting dog, but in reality they have zero hunting instincts, all they do is fetch birds that have already been shot, they have no ability to either find the bird, or to stalk and catch it as a German Shorthair would. A pug and a basset hound in a wild pack of fearless killers................What they actually do is eat out of garbage cans, that is their only ability. A German Shorthair that can find every animal in any woods is actually more wolflike than a husky could ever be.

 

Every health problem known to modern dogs was created by so called good breeders doing line breeding.

 

Careful, outlawing people from owning guns is just what some on here want. More kids have died from drowning maybe we should make pools and swimming illegal.

 

Water was not created for the specific purpose to kill, as pits were.......................

Water is also very necessary for life, unlike pits..................

 

I'm afraid I've seen a few too many of the results of 'fluffy lap dog' pack hunts. As mentioned, when they're in packs, sometimes those primitive skills are switched on momentarily, and they effectively remember how to hunt. They will stalk, corner, and take turns bailing up their quarry. Just like wolves. It's actually quite remarkable (though disturbing) to see these instincts surviving in domestic dogs.

 

Indeed.

 

Where do you live that wild dog packs are allowed?

 

"mostly black and Latinos"? I am sure you can provide evidence of this claim?

 

FFS this is unbelievable! Even though a few posts ago I gave an example of the typical air-head response post-attack, when the owner says 'Well he's never bitten anyone before.' this bloke says exactly that! I'm afraid it exemplifies perfectly what I said about doggy people being seriously odd.

 

Andn rightly so, because when a dog tastes blood it keeps on wanting to taste it. But I'm more concerned about the child - have the scars healed yet, or is he/she disfigured for ever?

 

But they don't kill or mutilate anybody??

 

Oh well that's good to know! But tell me, do you think that the parents of a child who has been mutilated or killed by a devil-dog will take any comfort from it? (I can't believe this!)

 

Well we're not talking about the 99.9% are we, we're talking about the 1%. So tell us, why do you own a dog that has the ability to kill a person? And have you ever contemplated that one day it might be you? I mean - the irony of that??

 

As an unfortunate person who has had to suffer through years and years of looking for lost basset hounds, I'll have to correct one misapprehension you have implied here, that bassets cannot hunt. That's not true, while most of their aggressiveness has been bred out, they will still hunt, and very effectively. All the hounds - bloodhounds, beagles, foxhounds, etc. - were bred to hunt by nose, and bassets are no exception. Fearless killer? You're right, not likely, but zero hunting instinct? Incorrect. A basset hound picking up an exotic smell will follow it to the ends of the earth, forgetting to eat or how to get home again.

 

This is exactly what I mean - not only do they fail to acknowledge the fact that one day they might be helplessly watching their dog rip a child apart in a park of somewhere, or an elderly person being blue-lighted to hospital because their dog has bitten into varicose veins and the victim is bleeding to death, they actually try to justify owning them. I've got depressed a few times about political stuff, but never as depressed as I am on this thread.