Jenny
05-13-2008, 06:57 AM
If you take a dog that you breed (encourage certain genes in) to fight each other, and that spills over to increased attacks on humans* then the fact is that breed of dog presents an issue for people in society.**
* First point. These are animals. Not humans or computers. If we humans encourage a breed to be aggressive with each other, it's not out of the question that animals with less then perfect intellect might make mistakes, unleash their aggression on other creatures that are not pitbulls. It would be nice to think that aggression will only be directed at other animals, but chances are that is not how aggression works.
** Second point... One of my neighbors has a loud, but small dog. I know that if he gets away he is not going to attack me. He may bark at me, but he is too timid to attack me, let alone my cat. The other neighbor has a Pit Bull. He may be very well behaved around his owners which he has grown up with every day, but the question is, if he gets free by accident, does he pose an increased risk to me, my cat?, if I had little kids, to little kids? See it's great to hear these stories about how loving Pit Buils are with their owners, but they are irrelevant to me. I just care about what is the risk to me, the not owner. Some pets I know are no risk to me. Some I am not sure about.
Dude, this is how people work. This is not how dogs work. Historically handlers felt perfectly comfortable getting in the middle of a dog fight to break it up. Pitbulls kept for fighting were simultaneously kept for family pets. Historically pitbulls were known for being gentle and obedient with people. While I disagree with any kind of dogfighting, the contemporary method of fighting in which dogs are treated as disposable objects, used for only one purpose and trained without discrimination is absolutely not what they were bred for. Dogs are bred. They don't just occur. Pitbulls were not, contrary to popular myth, bred for aggression. They were bred for agility, strength and obedience. People simply take the current atmosphere of dog fighting and project it backwards and assume that is what pitbulls were bred for.
You also might consider the vast assumptions you are making in your little dog/big dog danger. A toy poodle probably couldn't kill you. It could, however, kill a little kid or your cat. And unlike pitbulls, toy poodles do not have a history of being gentle with children.
Anyway. I'm thinking there is a pattern emerging here. I notice that people who don't really know anything about dogs are very suspicious of and hateful towards pitbulls, where people who do know about dogs are not. Fine in a sense - I mean not everyone is that interested in dogs, and why should you have to be? But there is a reason that municipalities and provinces, when enacting breed specific legislation eschew consultation with Kennel Clubs, veterinary association and humane societies and universities and instead rely on anecdotal accounts.
* First point. These are animals. Not humans or computers. If we humans encourage a breed to be aggressive with each other, it's not out of the question that animals with less then perfect intellect might make mistakes, unleash their aggression on other creatures that are not pitbulls. It would be nice to think that aggression will only be directed at other animals, but chances are that is not how aggression works.
** Second point... One of my neighbors has a loud, but small dog. I know that if he gets away he is not going to attack me. He may bark at me, but he is too timid to attack me, let alone my cat. The other neighbor has a Pit Bull. He may be very well behaved around his owners which he has grown up with every day, but the question is, if he gets free by accident, does he pose an increased risk to me, my cat?, if I had little kids, to little kids? See it's great to hear these stories about how loving Pit Buils are with their owners, but they are irrelevant to me. I just care about what is the risk to me, the not owner. Some pets I know are no risk to me. Some I am not sure about.
Dude, this is how people work. This is not how dogs work. Historically handlers felt perfectly comfortable getting in the middle of a dog fight to break it up. Pitbulls kept for fighting were simultaneously kept for family pets. Historically pitbulls were known for being gentle and obedient with people. While I disagree with any kind of dogfighting, the contemporary method of fighting in which dogs are treated as disposable objects, used for only one purpose and trained without discrimination is absolutely not what they were bred for. Dogs are bred. They don't just occur. Pitbulls were not, contrary to popular myth, bred for aggression. They were bred for agility, strength and obedience. People simply take the current atmosphere of dog fighting and project it backwards and assume that is what pitbulls were bred for.
You also might consider the vast assumptions you are making in your little dog/big dog danger. A toy poodle probably couldn't kill you. It could, however, kill a little kid or your cat. And unlike pitbulls, toy poodles do not have a history of being gentle with children.
Anyway. I'm thinking there is a pattern emerging here. I notice that people who don't really know anything about dogs are very suspicious of and hateful towards pitbulls, where people who do know about dogs are not. Fine in a sense - I mean not everyone is that interested in dogs, and why should you have to be? But there is a reason that municipalities and provinces, when enacting breed specific legislation eschew consultation with Kennel Clubs, veterinary association and humane societies and universities and instead rely on anecdotal accounts.