SDA has some amazingly astute commenters. One of them is ‘Unknown Jane’. She recently shared these thoughts:
This debate is starting again, and it’s rather near and dear to me. And it does point to a societal issue because it cuts across demographics (I’ve taken a lot of sh#t from all sorts when discussing this one; proof that anyone can fall into this sort of thing.)
I’ve worked with a fair number of dogs; I’ve owned a fair number of dogs — the majority of them, while very good dogs, are from breeds I would never, ever recommend to the average person, much less families with small children or physically/lifestyle incompatible with training and controlling such a dog and giving it the life it needs (like my Malinois, like my Doberman, like my German Shepherd, like my Border Collie — breeds I happen to love and don’t want to see getting caught up in this).
It isn’t ‘racist’ to be afraid of Pitbull type dogs; it isn’t dumb either. It’s probably very smart to be very wary of them because they can do a lot of damage and they are very capable of violent responses. I think you should have the right to own one, but you also have the responsibility to respect what they’re capable of and not infringe upon the rights of others. I can’t help but notice that firearm owners are kept to a higher standard (of a Constitutionally protected right), yet handguns don’t escape from the house on their own and harm people (and bringing the firearm debate into this one is a false equivalency; guns are not dogs). People have shown that they want to claim the right, but are incapable of owning the responsibility — some of the reactions have been enlightening (from both sides). I’ve seen people threatening to kill people’s dogs out of hand (bad), and I’ve seen all the tired excuses and false equivalencies from the people who own and love these type of dogs (and those are equally bad, if not worse — blaming the toddler for being mauled is disgusting, saying only a few children get mauled/killed each year is disgusting, and I notice no other dog breed enthusiasts who do this).
And bringing race into the debate is just filthy — humans aren’t dogs. But it is strikingly similar to pointing out that certain cultures have problematic traits, which is apparently ok for some to point out (and they aren’t wrong) … but not ok to notice that certain types of dogs can be problematic/are causing problems??? If you can’t understand how your rights can’t override the rights of others and how if you continue to allow it that leads to nanny statism stepping in, then I don’t know what to tell you — maybe grow up and take some responsibility for a change; PS don’t lie!
Dogs have an issue of choosing the wrong people to be their owners. I see many pitbulls dragging their human around. The idiot uses a breast collar and refuses to use a choke collar “because it’s cruel.”
The trouble with pitbulls is the original intent of the breed. Sick bastards wanted thrills watching two dogs rip each other apart. All good temperaments were bred out. Any pup showing anything other than extreme alpha behaviour was used to train the rest. When all good traits are removed it takes a while to breed it back in.
The biggest problem with pit bulls imhao is that certain groups (cough, Best Friends, look into their backstory, cough) and others (usually of a left leaning political bent, funny that) infiltrated the animal welfare and control organizations and started up this ‘nanny dog with the flower crown’ junk and basically became the warehouse whole sellers for them. They’re the least spayed and neutered dogs (funny, when other dog breeds, like Dalmatians, hit the shelters due to overpopulation there were huge spay/neuter and learn before you buy campaigns, virtually non-existent for pit bulls); they cause the majority of the bad to lethal bites by a margin of about 10 to 1 compared to the next most lethal breed (many are given second chances after biting even to the point of moving them around the country to ‘hide’ their true aggression history, which isn’t given to other breeds); and no other type of dog is consistently lied about to prospective owners or excused for poor behavior.
Don’t get me started on the ‘pit bull adoption days kissing booths’…I have never seen any other breed rescue do something like that, again, wtf?
I’d almost wonder if it was a conspiracy to get the general public to hate dogs or at least large dogs — but it’s probably just stupidity.
I use dogs as a way to explain things to people, yes all dogs are the same species, Canis Lupis Familiaris, but there is a huge difference between a Pomeranian and a Great Dane! Same with Humans, yes we are Homo Sapiens, but there is a huge difference between an Australian Aboriginal and a Swede!
Well thank you Robert. Yes, I’m still seething. How freaking dare somebody say “less than 2 kids have been killed, so…”. That’s so freaking monsterous.
The bigger point (for me) is that this sort of bury my head in the sand because ‘I have never had a problem’ and ‘I like/own xyz’ is dangerous to society.
I happen to love shawarma…but I’m not going to get all stompy foot about my right to delicious, authentic shawarma if it means others have to put up with rape gangs. Protecting people from getting raped is more important. It doesn’t mean that all shawarma makers are rapists; I have nothing against non-rapist shawarma makers. But I do indeed have a problem with rapists, want to see them gone, and I detest the arguments that getting rid of criminals/illegals from my society would impinge upon shawarma enjoyers. At that point the shawarma enjoyers are being a bunch of selfish, entitled pricks if you ask me.
And I’ve seen plenty of leftists make this very argument.
This one is very similar, and I’m seeing conservatives and libertarians make the same damn argument: my rights, my property…and it wasn’t that many people. Well, what about cows, they kill more people (which, they do, but I have yet to see somebody walking a brace of Angus down the street). What about Chihuahuas. They are bitey little suckers, but I don’t know of any case where a vicious Chihuahua has caused life threatening injury because well, they’re tiny. And this is the same argument made by the left again: well, what about human group x? They do worse…that’s not the point; the point is no tolerance for bad behavior, doesn’t matter who does it.
Oh, oh, and “it was probably the kids’ fault” — the children who died were disemboweled, shredded, even partially eaten. Da F? Why don’t we just say they weren’t properly attired and thus deserved it, that’s a pretty standard excuse for some other stuff too.
My Chihuahuas, Cid and Cesar, are “death from the ankles down”.
Yes, there is an important difference between a dog whose bite requires a Band-Aid
and a one-bite dog like my 85 lb. Olde English Bulldog Sirius was.
None of the toys I gave Sirius lasted more than 2 minutes. He was a gentle soul, was Sirius.
Sirius liked to watch jet contrails in the sky or go up to flowers and smell them in people yards.
Sirius lived his whole life in peace, but his bite could have sent someone to the morgue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Wpn3dFrEs&list=RDR5Wpn3dFrEs&start_radio=1
Chihuahuas and Dachshunds are bitey; I wouldn’t recommend them for families with small children. But if they got loose and bit somebody it’s not likely to send that person to the ER or on the Life Flight to the regional trauma center.
Most of the guard dog breed associations are very up front that their dogs take special handling and aren’t for everyone. Even the Jack Russell breeders are great about being very honest about their dogs — there’s a ‘Horror Stories’ page on their national site to discourage people from going out and getting one without careful consideration.
Some of the people I’ve been tangling with are people whose political opinions I usually agree with and whose arguments I have in the past greatly respected…and they’ve lost my respect in one exchange, completely. I don’t want them anywhere near the local party headquarters or planning; they’ve proven themselves unreliable….and just disgusting (this after we’ve had two very nasty incidents locally in the past 3 years, one close to the elementary school when the kids were outside, and there’s an ordinance against these dogs in the town). I’m not sorry that they have ‘cancelled’ me after yesterday.
I don’t like purity tests, but I do believe in common sense and morality testing.
Oh, oh:
I don’t care because it hasn’t/doesn’t impact meeee, so to prove my point and get my way politically, I don’t care if a bunch of girls get physically injured playing against biological males because ‘trans rights and equity’….and it doesn’t/hasn’t impacted meeeee.
That’s basically the same rhetoric.
Chihuahuas and Pit Bulls are dogs, both bite, so Chihuahuas and Pit Bulls are exactly the same — great inference. The girls are volleyball players, the biological male identifies as a girl and plays volleyball, therefore they are both volleyball players and play ball so I can wave my pastel rainbow flag and get my way, and it doesn’t directly affect meeee.
behaviour around dogs is ANOTHER pc of curriculum missing from schools. where you have all the kids ‘together in one spot’. its like jeepers, did *anyone* ever learn the does and donts of buying a car, in high school?
you know, something USEFUL. but they got the gender choice stuff down pat.
That isn’t usually something covered but in light of some things, maybe it should be. However, if you are the owner of a dog, the responsibility is on you, not other people. You own the dog; you have to protect your dog and others from your dog.
I don’t have a problem telling people to not come up on my Malinois. She’s pretty well trained and hasn’t shown anything but scorn for strangers, but she’s a Malinois. I don’t care if it gets me dirty or weird looks. I will keep my distance from people because you just never know.
I have seen pit bull owners using other people, or worse other people’s kids or pets, as socialization tools for their pit bulls, some of which were showing marked aggression at the time — oh, they’re just nervous; they were dumped and probably abused. Get out of here, just out, stfu — my kid isn’t your training prop; I don’t care if I’m a doggy racist. Nobody should ever feel guilty about wanting to stay away from dog breeds with a reputation.
and to reiterate, thats Samson in the accompanying meme(?).
140 pounds of muscle. l only keep him because lm stronger than him and he is at heart a loving animal. he took to my new landlord same as his dad, all excited tail awagging barkie face. but he never goes out without a leash and wears a muzzle at the vet. IF l had $3000 for the fees or was a professional trainer it wd be preferable. but l at least remain realistic and take precautions.
if he ever did bite someone incorrectly it wd break my heart but l wd put him down.
The worst behaviour my dog used to exhibit was sticking her nose into the dress of fat lady’s bums at Farmer Markets.
On my long list of reasons to own a gun, shooting deadly dogs and their smirking owners is on it.
Its always a “twofor”.
Always.
Those are some fantastic observations, “Unk Jane.”
Thankfully, I have a great fit with my Black Lab….(named Orson, which is where my screen name comes from. and sourced from Dean Koontz’s “Fear Nothing” book series). He loves to run, and has plenty of space to do so. Chasing rabbits should be more main stream, in his opinion. I swear he finds the same things as tedious as I do, to the extent of rolling his eyes when not impressed. I’m not a big fan of cucumbers, but I grow them anyway because Orson will take them right off the vine and scarf them down. Perfectly safe. Good hydration….and bonus, he loves crunchy stuff.
My husband’s dog (which he trained to be his service dog and she was wonderful for that) is a German Shepherd/Belgian Malinois cross bred to a Golden Retriever. She’s a great dog. She is extremely well trained. She is very well socialized. She is also nine years old and getting slow now. She weighs 85 pounds. I can just barely handle her by myself now that he’s gone. She’s never hurt any dog except when attacked by a pitbull who started it with absolutely no provocation at all. That time, she fought back and tore flesh and finally pinned the pit to ground on its back in a throat grip. The ptibull submitted and so didn’t die. The psycho owner said with great pride that if his dog had won the fight my dog would be dead now. My dog has no killer instinct, he said, as if that was a fault. She also threatened an attempted car jacker and a violent mentally disturbed druggie. She didn’t need to bite either one of them. The car jacker took one look at her and he ran off while she stayed right beside my husband. The druggie decided discretion was the better part of valour and left the area.
All that being said, I will not be getting a dog like her again. When her well deserved retirement is finished, I will not have any kind dog over 30 pounds. I have a five year old sheltie who is my dog and he’s perfect for my needs and my personal situation. I simply do not have the physical strength as a small woman in my 60s to train a big dog nor do I have my husband’s talent for it. His dog has already tested my ability to discipline her a couple of times since he died. I passed the test but not by much. I know if she was a two year old, I would have to rehome her or put her down and it would be no fault of hers. It would just be reality of a mismatch between dog and owner.
The thing about pitbulls and their owners is the breed often seems to attract owners who lack the capability to do right by the dog. I agree that they can make wonderful pets, with the right owner, in the right circumstances with the right training. That combination is exceedingly rare.
A friend’s brother has moved in near us.
He has a nasty boxer he’s proud of.
He himself is a fcking asshole.
There are also lowlife’s not far from him who have pit-bulls.
Probably isn’t going to end well if there is a meeting.
I don’t care if everybody dies.
It’s the culture of permissiveness. Why were there not as many problems with these dogs (or any dogs) back in the day? Because people wouldn’t accept it (there are reports from turn of the century newspapers about dog attacks, but eventually somebody did something).
I used to teach ESL; Saudi students were almost funny with their bluntness: why do people put up with this (they were talking about the behavior of the migrants/illegals)? They thought their way of potentially dealing with them would be superior (and thus their culture was superior); they thought we were nuts; no, they didn’t want to take any of them — ‘they’re criminals’. Not PC, but can’t say they didn’t have a point.
Same thing goes for students: I’ve spent time in all sorts of classrooms. It is now to the point that I prefer teaching the children at the specialized school for kids with autism/mental handicap. Why? because quite a lot of their early childhood program is on behavioral outcomes and emotional regulation. They’re better behaved and capable of actual study than the normal kids in the normal classrooms, who have had very little expectations of appropriate behavior enforced, nor have their parents had it stressed to them that attendance relies on their general deportment. I even managed to have a better classroom discussion about The Scarlet Letter (special edition) with the LD kids than in the regular high school because they actually listened and tried to respond to questions.
Because just like the dogs, we don’t expect people to behave anymore, and now we get to live with it. Yay us!
We had a Great Pyrenees cross with Golden Retriever over 80 ponds. She had a split personality. Golden Retriever friendly, greeted and loved every one who came onto the farmyar . If we weren’t home the same loving dog greeted all arrivals, but then she would run ahead of them up onto front porch look them in the eye and growl. All our aquaintenances would say guess they aren’t home and drive away.
I had an oversized working line German Shepherd (for some reason he got bigger than he should have, very nice E. German/Czech line working dog most stable GSD I’ve ever seen; had two another dogs from similar bloodlines — better size, very stable with excellent work drive, but not as mentally good as that one; he was outstanding). Anyway, he was very friendly to people, but they couldn’t come in the house, nor pick anything up (like a package) without us being there.
Great coyote killer; we put Wiley stickers on the side of his travel kennel; he was a double ace.
I don’t consider protective behavior a fault in guarding breeds but it has to have mental clearness and stability. Breeders have to select for that. Potential owners need to know about it.
“Our Staffordshire bull terrier was such a loving and cuddly puppy … and then she tore the face off the 4yo neighbor girl. She must have pulled the dogs tail or something.” Right? How many times have you read that crap?
I heard it yesterday…maybe the kids (a 5 month old and a toddler) poked the dog.
First, wasn’t the case. Second, even if it was: oh yes, children deserve to be mauled to death because they poked a dog (most stable dogs won’t go that far if at all) and the mom didn’t deserve to get mauled trying to save them…freaking morons and worse. I don’t think kids should be allowed to harass any animal (because it isn’t right and it isn’t smart), but that isn’t the good argument that some people think it is.
And thanks everyone for letting me vent; I needed it.
I had a lovely female Bernese Mtn dog. But she could get quite happy/enthusiastic … so I took her to several obedience classes when she was a young puppy. I even trained her to fetch my newspaper off the driveway each morning. I was surprised at how easy she was to train. Remember those? Newspapers? But I still had to watch her like a hawk, as she would bolt down the street to greet one of the neighbor kids … who she could knock over with her happy wagging tail (yes, she was 110lb with a long, strong, furry tail). Happy, loving, never a biter … but she didn’t know that circling a little kid with her tail going full speed may have been full joy … but quite a brute force too.
About 40 years ago I was working in a warehouse when a truck driver obviously from down South came in with a delivery. He had a box of puppies that he took to show the people in the office, and the women were cooing all over them (they WERE adorable).
I asked him what the deal was, and he told me he was from Georgia and raised pit bulls. The timing was right when he found out he was driving north to see if he could get rid of a few puppies, because if they came back down to Georgia with him they would be killed. They had already pulled out the 2 puppies in the litter that would be good fighters.
THAT is what the pit bull fantasists ignore. They aren’t bad dogs on their own. The reality is that for decades or more human beings bred them to be bad dogs just like they bred bulldogs to have bigger heads.
Just to add to the dog stories. We have a husky who found a good way to make mischief. He gets Muslim women, and some men, to pet him when they think no one is looking. I don’t know how he does it, but there is a definite pattern of “bad Muslims” petting our dog. If there are any large breakouts of apostasy in our area, I’m going to credit the dog for it. 🙂
I had 2 fine dogs.
Joe was a German Shepard/ Border Collie mix.
Betty was a black lab / rottie mix.
It was their good fortune to have lived on 40 acres in the sticks as wild dogs that came home for easy meat.
They were both good, loyal, loving dogs to me and my wife, but we had to restrain them whenever a serviceman or whomever came by our place.
Dogs be dogs.
Now I live in a place where people put fucoon socks and shite on their fur babies.
GAWD!
And let’s talk about cats as well. Very much back in the day, brother-in-law and family had a Siamese. Cat was really cuddly for family, but they figured – probably correctly – that any intruder would be met with flying claws and nasty teeth.
Fast forward, and one of the family members decided to adopt a Tuxedo though was warned not the nicest cat. Cat has turned out to be an outdoor cat which – given they live next to a natural area – means they don’t get any voles or mice. Downside is that said cat isn’t friendly to any than the family; spouse as a wound from cat’s ingratitude while he was over feeding her while family on vacation.
More than a dozen rabbis from the city of Elad near Tel Aviv issued an edict declaring all dogs bad and warning residents that keeping them will make them accursed.
The edict, dated June 14, contains the signatures of all the Sephardic rabbis in Elad, a city of about 46,000 residents where most of the population is Haredi Orthodox, and the city’s chief rabbi, Mordechai Malka, the news site bhol reported Friday.
“We have heard and have seen that lately, a serious phenomenon has spread in our city Elad, in which young boys and children walk around publicly with dogs. This is strictly forbidden, as explained in the Talmud and by the Rambam, anyone raising a dog is accursed and especially in our city where many women and children are afraid of dogs,” the anti-canine edict states.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/all-dogs-are-bad-and-their-owners-accursed-israeli-citys-rabbis-rule/
The DJ is on it:
https://youtu.be/OlEGORSKXDE?si=cCWUdNOUAQPJunZZ