Campaigners have welcomed the move to outlaw the breed they argue is "a clear and present threat to public health", but concerns have been raised it may not be practical and lead to other kinds of dogs being prohibited.
It’s becoming more common to see police departments ban Malligators. Less predictable than GSD.
Any dog can be aggressive, yes. Most pits have great personalities, sure. But I’ve known a few pits that weren’t aggressive towards people. Until they were.
The owner problem is a real factor (owners who are likely to raise aggressive dogs are more likely to get pits), but there’s an extra layer to pits. They are raised to be muscular with very strong jaws. If a Yorkie turns on it’s owner, someone’s getting bloody ankles. A pit (and chow, and Rottweiler) can really hurt people.
On top of this, there’s two types of aggression in dogs: performative aggression with barking and short charges, and prey drive which is quiet staring and sudden lunges towards the throat of another dog or animal. I was under the impression for a long time that dangerous dogs had terrible tempers and were “grouchy”. No, dangerous dogs are social creatures like most dogs and many show affection to other pets and humans, until something triggers their prey instinct. The website I cite below has a statement that pits are less likely to act aggressive before an attack.
There were a string of dog deaths in my city last year. All pits. Two were family pets that both attacked their toddler playing in the family’s yard. The mom ran to help and the dogs attacked her and their infant. Both children died and the mom was hospitalized. And a friend of mine had to mace a dog doing his job last year for the first time, it was a pit. Anecdotal, I know, but it’s changed my mind on pits.
One 2019 fatality was from 8 different breeds. This means that if you flip that statistic around to “percentage of fatal attacks involving pits”, that number is even higher.
It won’t be.
People that want an aggressive dog, buy the dog with the reputation to be the most aggressive, then they raise them to be aggressive.
Ban pitbulls, and they’ll go back to buying rottweilers, which are usually bigger and stronger too.
Just wait till they get to Malinois…five years ago you never saw them outside of law enforcement and military…now im starting to see them in shelters…
It’s becoming more common to see police departments ban Malligators. Less predictable than GSD.
Any dog can be aggressive, yes. Most pits have great personalities, sure. But I’ve known a few pits that weren’t aggressive towards people. Until they were.
The owner problem is a real factor (owners who are likely to raise aggressive dogs are more likely to get pits), but there’s an extra layer to pits. They are raised to be muscular with very strong jaws. If a Yorkie turns on it’s owner, someone’s getting bloody ankles. A pit (and chow, and Rottweiler) can really hurt people.
On top of this, there’s two types of aggression in dogs: performative aggression with barking and short charges, and prey drive which is quiet staring and sudden lunges towards the throat of another dog or animal. I was under the impression for a long time that dangerous dogs had terrible tempers and were “grouchy”. No, dangerous dogs are social creatures like most dogs and many show affection to other pets and humans, until something triggers their prey instinct. The website I cite below has a statement that pits are less likely to act aggressive before an attack.
There were a string of dog deaths in my city last year. All pits. Two were family pets that both attacked their toddler playing in the family’s yard. The mom ran to help and the dogs attacked her and their infant. Both children died and the mom was hospitalized. And a friend of mine had to mace a dog doing his job last year for the first time, it was a pit. Anecdotal, I know, but it’s changed my mind on pits.
This group says 69% of dogs involved in fatal attacks in 2019 were pits: https://www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2019.php
One 2019 fatality was from 8 different breeds. This means that if you flip that statistic around to “percentage of fatal attacks involving pits”, that number is even higher.
Pits are estimated to be 6.5% of American dogs.
If you lumped every retriver into a single group, they’d have a lot more bites.
If rottweilers were better fighters, they would have the reputation pitbulls have.