<p>It’s interesting that 50 years ago, pit bulls made excellent family pets-- being bred for fighting and all. Handler aggression was never, ever tolerated in fighting dogs because the handlers needed to be able to pull aggressive dogs apart from each other without being bitten-- something that is INCREDIBLY dangerous to do with average dogs. Trying to break up a fight is a really good way to get yourself killed. A fighting dog that bit a human would never be bred again, ever, for this reason. Families could bring pit bulls home and let their kids hang all over them and they were no problem-- much like how many of our beloved pitbulls are today, for those of us that have them.</p>
<p>Breeding got sloppy because people wanted money and didn’t care about what they were doing to the breed, and that has caused a lot of problems that have been very damaging to the pitbull reputation-- there are obviously a lot of dogs now that are very aggressive and unfortunately a lot of people feel the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t believe that the aggression issues we are facing today are because “pitbulls are bred for fighting” because that’s been the case for a long time and this didn’t used to be a problem. It’s very similar to how all the dalmatian bloodlines got contaminated with blindness and deafness when the breed spiked in popularity a while back, and how their reputation was damaged. Breeding got sloppy and dogs that were NOT in line with the breed standard and should never have been bred were bred for money-- and, for those of you that don’t know, dog breeding properly is not a source of income but an expensive hobby, so that tells you what kind of people do these things. Because of the boom in popularity, bad breeding, and uninformed people bringing droves of dalmatians into their homes, the dalmatian now has a reputation for being aggressive and stupid, despite being HIGHLY intelligent and well behaved with the proper amount of stimulation and exercise. When idiots consistently bring a dog into the wrong circumstances and don’t care for it properly (including breeding it inappropriately) and it doesn’t thrive, it becomes a breed stereotype. It’s never a failing of the owners or the breeders, but it ought to be. Very few dog breeds are inherently vicious as a breed standard. Pitbulls wouldn’t be either if they were still being bred appropriately, and being cared for by people who have a clue what they’re doing. The few that don’t get dealt a bad hand at every step of the way can make fabulous pets. I’ve worked with dozens upon dozens of them, strange starving dogs off the street who by all accounts should be bloodthirsty beasts, and the only screwball to ever take a chunk out of me was a jack russel. </p>
<p>Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of aggressive pit bulls out there. There are a lot of aggressive dogs in the world-- most of them being german shepherds, as they ARE instinctively territorial as a breed standard, which is not true of the pitbull. But there is just nothing about pitbulls as a breed that make them irredeemably, inherently violent. There are unfortunately a lot of circumstances which can create that in ANY individual dog, however, and pitbulls are particularly susceptible to crumple under those circumstances in my opinion-- they are very sensitive and they are very strong, which is a dangerous combination in a dog that won’t be well cared for. It’s a shame we focus so much on the former rather than the latter. The latter is a problem that would be a LOT easier to fix if anybody that mattered were paying attention. Try getting somebody prosecuted for dog fighting or animal abuse-- the last summer I worked at the shelter we’d managed to bust a 30 person dog fighting ring, and the police let all the dogs esape and all the owners got away because they “forgot” to arraign them within the required time period. Law enforcement and the judicial system are asleep at the wheel when it comes to preventing these dangerous animals from ever being created. They think they have bigger fish to fry. Which is all well and good until somebody gets killed, and we’re killing off dogs by the millions trying to prevent that and it isn’t actually solving the problem. The dogs aren’t the problem.</p>
<p>That’s all I am going to say about this argument, I am not interested in getting into going back and forth with somebody over this. But I have years of experience working with stray and otherwise homeless dogs, most of which are pitbulls, and I am happy to share the knowledge that I have. I won’t spend time fighting about it, however. These are my educated opinions, take them or leave them.</p>
I’ve been desensitized to it after so much time handling unfamiliar dogs.</p>