Quote:
Originally Posted by airstreamingypsy
Statistically, if a dog kills you it is a Pit. Pit apologists say, "It's how they were raised" that's not so, all breeds have bad owners. Most Pits live their whole life not killing anyone, but not all. To me, its a bit like playing Russian Roulette. Five empty chambers...... do you want to have a dog that probably won't kill someone... but might.
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I think your Russian Roulette analogy is perfect.
I know two women who have pit bulls. Both of these women are highly intelligent and successful, but when it comes to their dogs, common sense seems to not be a factor.
They definitely subscribe to that embedded mantra, “It’s not the dog. It’s the owner.” (I have always found that to be an arrogant statement on the part of pit bull owners, like they think they are in some special category that can overcome nature.)
One of these pit bull owners has small children and likes to talk about how “good” the pit is with the kids although highly territorial in most other situations…..Hellooo, sounds like a time bomb to me. (I cringe, and hope I never regret keeping my mouth shut — which would not make any difference anyway. The mantra would continue.)
Years ago, we were at a small party at the home of someone with a pit. The dog had taken a liking to Mr. Boomer and was sitting next to him. I later sat down with the dog between us and when I turned to talk to Mr. B, that dog growled in my face. I made sure not to even look at Mr. Boomer after that and quickly made polite excuses to leave. I think I could have lost my face had I not taken that dog’s hint. I am sure glad I had sense enough to read that dog.
I find Nature/Nurture to be fascinating, whether in dogs or people……
As a parallel to Nature/Nurture in dogs, I think of the dog we got not long after we were married. We wanted a middle- sized dog, so I looked at newspaper ads where I found a Brittany Spaniel……..
She was a beauty, who knew more about her ancestry that we know about ours. Her grandpa was a field champion. Her markings were perfect, just like the orange and white Brittany pictures in books.
We do not hunt birds or anything else. We just wanted a pet. I bought a book about Brittany Spaniels that I called my Brittany Spaniel Manual. I still remember the first sentence, “The Brittany is at home at the hearth as well as at the hunt.”
She had a wonderful life with us for over 16 years — before that last ride to the vet.
But, here’s the thing, even though she was our pet and lived in the house and had never, ever been taken hunting, we soon realized that when outside, her nose was almost always sniffing the air, not the ground, and she would often go into a perfect point and could hold that point forever.
There was a big county park close to us and those were the days when we could let her run there. One day, she was flushing birds from cattails by the lake and a man who was watching tried his best to buy her from us.
The point of this dissertation on our Brittany Spaniel is that she had been bred to hunt and it was in her nature and showed up whenever she got the chance to go into her perfect point or to flush birds. It was fun to see and we gave her many opportunities to exercise and show off her bird dog nature, though we did not carry along a shotgun — much to her disappointment, I’m sure.
Nature/Nurture? I think — and have seen — that both are always there, whether in people or dogs.
There is an old saying, “What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh.” — Applied to a bird dog? That’s OK. But when applied to a pit bull………………
Boomer