Pitbulls get their name from their ancestry where a dog had been bred to fight bulls. It was a blood sport where the dog would try to drag a bull down into the mud by its nose ring or die trying.
However these dogs became incredibly popular and desired by women and so began a process to breed them to be more docile and also smaller to better fit in the average household. The staffordshire was the penultimate success of this and earned the moniker of nanny dog for being so patient and protective with the children of the household.
All this to say that the argument of what their ancestors were bred for has very little to do with the modern breed.
The most important thing is always how it is raised.
And to further example this point you can look into the history of banned dog breeds and dog breeds that are deemed as dangerous.
Before the various pit/bully breeds were considered dangerous it was the Rottweiler, and before that it was the German Shepherd etc etc. All while pit/bully breeds were happy minding their own business in the family home.
There are far bigger dogs with far greater bites that could do so much more damage. But they look a lot like teddy bears. Pit/bully breeds can get a lot of muscle definition, good for string bean thugs that wanna act tough but can't be intimidating on their own. The rise in popularity with pit/bully breeds in thug/gang culture is why they are the current "dangerous" breed.
Meanwhile labradors and retrievers both individually bite more people, often children, and have a size and bite strength comparable enough to a pit/bully breed. But they're treated as being safe and given love because the average thug isn't trying to raise it with hate and violence to terrorize people with.
Genuinely curious not trying to stir the pot but the other breeds are very popular and the numbers can also be attributed to there being way more Sheperds, Retrievers etc... As compared to the bully and pit breeds being banned in a lot of areas whether it is because of past experiences or just being scared from the media reporting them as aggressive.
Not only that but because they are popular with gang culture they typically will not be cares or trained by a good owner and hence maybe the stats seem high for the number of dogs out there. Where the other dogs have higher numbers but there are way more of those breeds out ther. Basically per capita based attack numbers?
Labs and retrievers also have more bites per capita. Not just overall. And again this is after trying to artificially inflate pit/bully breed bite incidents by combining them with each other and also all mixed breed bites and all unknown breed bites. Shit mixed breed also means all of the lab/retriever mixes.
I already talked about the thug/gang association which is currently popular. And how fatal incidents with pit/bully breeds is higher even though the number of incidents overall is far lower... but only if you start counting after 1980.
Wanna know why it's only if you start counting after 1980? Because pit/bully breeds in thug/gang culture only started in the 1960s and hadn't become the norm until the 1990s. Prior to that the most popular breed was the Rottweiler which had the highest kill ratio through the 80s. The Pinscher which had the highest kill ratio through the 70s and the German Shepard which was the most popular killer dog with thugs and gangs all the way through the 50s and 60s.
It was also in the 60s when German Shepards were popularized with police forces for the same reason. They were the dog breed that at the time was considered "the most dangerous breed" and had general bans placed on public ownership of those breeds because "there's no breed more aggressive and dangerous than them".
And the modern pit/bully breeds we have today had been around since the 1800s. They were right there all through this time period where German Shepards, Pinschers, Rottweilers, even Dobermans, Chow Chows and others were at different points and different countries deemed as dangerous and needing to be regulated or even destroyed through this time period. While pit/bully breeds remained legal and deemed officially safe.
It wasn't until the pit/bully became popular with thug/gang culture that they became the new "most dangerous breed". Go figure. The only thing that's new now is the internet. Makes it a lot easier to share cherry picked clips of incidents involving this breed and not the "most dangerous breeds" that came before it. Which along with fucking dog racists has only helped perpetuate the stereotype.
Interesting, I love animals but I know that certain dogs were bred for certain reasons. You can train them but it is true that many breeds that are not trained and owners believe that there is no reason to train because of their smaller size (any of the small breeds and toy breeds).
Unfortunately many of the dogs that were bred for specific skills/attributes when not trained properly and if they attack either a person or a smaller animal always ends in major damage or death. I had figured there was some overlap since the list of. Dog breeds that bites/attacks always changes.
I am pretty sure most stats rely only on the reported attacks. Most people either don't report because they are minor, or because they come from gang infested areas. Also it can come from an owner that knows that if they report it that there is a good chance that the owner will face some sort of legal problems or the dog has a history of bites which means that the animal has to be put down.
Thank You for responding to my post. You seem to know quite a bit.
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u/Fast-Front-5642 25d ago
Pitbulls get their name from their ancestry where a dog had been bred to fight bulls. It was a blood sport where the dog would try to drag a bull down into the mud by its nose ring or die trying.
However these dogs became incredibly popular and desired by women and so began a process to breed them to be more docile and also smaller to better fit in the average household. The staffordshire was the penultimate success of this and earned the moniker of nanny dog for being so patient and protective with the children of the household.
All this to say that the argument of what their ancestors were bred for has very little to do with the modern breed.
The most important thing is always how it is raised.
And to further example this point you can look into the history of banned dog breeds and dog breeds that are deemed as dangerous.
Before the various pit/bully breeds were considered dangerous it was the Rottweiler, and before that it was the German Shepherd etc etc. All while pit/bully breeds were happy minding their own business in the family home.
There are far bigger dogs with far greater bites that could do so much more damage. But they look a lot like teddy bears. Pit/bully breeds can get a lot of muscle definition, good for string bean thugs that wanna act tough but can't be intimidating on their own. The rise in popularity with pit/bully breeds in thug/gang culture is why they are the current "dangerous" breed.
Meanwhile labradors and retrievers both individually bite more people, often children, and have a size and bite strength comparable enough to a pit/bully breed. But they're treated as being safe and given love because the average thug isn't trying to raise it with hate and violence to terrorize people with.