No Stupid Questions

I can't speak for every dog and every dog owner, though many anti-pit bull people will tell you they can and that they're all just waiting to bite the face off a child.

What I can say is that, of the pit bulls and pit bull mixes I know, they're lovable softies with their owners, and I know one (our neighbors) that I can say with confidence could not/would not hurt anyone or anything else, as even when another dog attacked him he would not fight back. This dog is in a house with multiple small children, numerous cats, chickens, a turkey, and over multiple years being their neighbor I've never heard of him being hostile towards any of them, he's always been a Very Good Boy.

What I believe it comes down to is that pit bulls are big, strong dogs, with strong jaws, and some people are neglectful owners who fail to socialize them and train them properly. A poorly trained and poorly socialized Yorkie will bite you all the same, it's just you can punt one like a football. People who are not prepared to train their dogs to behave appropriately -- which is a part of caring for them, just as important as grooming or feeding them if not even more important -- should not own dogs, full stop, irrespective of breed.

It is, however, much easier for other people to blame the dog, have the dog put down (and let me say, if they did something bad enough to earn an early departure across the rainbow bridge, rightly so), and then promptly forget about the owner who didn't bother to train them. The owner who will, then, almost certainly, get another dog to neglect.

It's not so much the animal as that I don't really trust people with that kind of animal, just as I don't want to see people walking around with a lion, or a machine gun

When you look at annual statistics of dog bite fatalities, pit bulls aren't just the #1 cause of dog bite deaths, they account for more deaths than all dog breeds COMBINED.

The type of people who want a dog to bite are going to be getting something like the size of a pitbull. A much smaller dog and a human can easily fight it off, they can do some damage, but not as much as the people who want a dog to bite would like their dogs to give. A larger dog and the owners wouldn't be able to control if the dog would attack the owners, so they won't accept that.

That is why, in general, (understand there are exceptions). Big dogs tend to be very friendly. Because any big dog that's not friendly, the owner is going to put it down before it kills someone. Thus big dogs are bred to be friendly. A Pitbull is about the largest dog that you could breed to be unfriendly without risking harm to yourself.

Again, this does not say anything about any particular dog breed. It says something about the type of people who would have a mean dog.

pit bulls are just better equipped for certain things like using their uniquely powerful, clamping jaws to rip animals apart. pair this with the lowest common denominator human and you have a possible recipe for accident.

The conversation is nuanced and long, but TLDR is that it is a breed which requires more training than other breeds. It's also important to note that many owners' version of training is ineffective or counter productive.

Pitbulls are highly energetic and much like great Danes, grow up physically much faster than mentally. They end up being an extremely powerful dog, chalk full of muscles, who crave constant attention and behave like a puppy. Well, puppies bite, and when a dog bites you, you tend to address it (give it attention). Compounding this, they're also not very smart and it takes a while to train them. Compounding this further, they have instincts like all dogs where pushing is met with resistance (something Cesar talks about a lot with food etiquette around dogs), and basically everything they do is exaggerated with their enormous energy.

Comparing them to a breed like a Labrador, the obliviousness, energy, strength, and attention needs are not the same.

They can be very good dogs, but effort was made to achieve that. There are dogs who have been bred to be home bodies and they much more naturally fall into a "good dog" category. Pitbulls were bred for dog fighting and blood sports. This is not a good start for family's first dog.

To put this into other terms. There are chickens who have been bred for cock fights. They can be good roosters, but watch your back and be ready to remove them if they attack your hens. That being said, predators beware. Different breeds have different specialties, if you want one for the look be very deliberate about what actions you are going to take to change the "natural outcome" of their behavior being the behavior you don't want.

What has four legs and an arm?

A Pit Bull in a playground.

Generally, it comes down to which statistics a "hater" believes. I'll refer to twain here about lies, damn lies and statistics, since numbers always seem so certain, but can be cooked.

It doesn't help that "pit bull" isn't a breed, it's a "type", which is vague as fuck all. There's something like a dozen breeds that get called pit bull, each with their own range of traits. What they have in common is an origin as fighting dogs, including those bred to fight bigger animals.

But if a dog just looks similar to any of those breeds, it's a pit bull, including mutts with no known ancestry in fighting breeds.

So, folks see a scary looking dog and that's that, they hate scary looking dogs.

Is the hate justified? IDGAF tbh. Assuming any of the statistics are accurate and applicable, I can understand wanting to limit breeding more, as well as the strict side of enforced euthanasia once a dog turns aggro. But with the vagueness of what gets counted as a pit bull in those stats, and the cherry picking that goes on in such debates, I can't work up any emotional response to the subject.

But that's why the hate. They're scary looking dogs, and when a dog that looks like they tend to look attacks, it'll fuck its target up worse than something like a Chihuahua or poodle. That much is fact, a big muscular dog with strong jaws can fuck shit up.

Pitbulls are the hollow points of the dog world. There is nothing wrong with them per se but the consequences of one being misused are so much worse.

Get bitten by a lab or a Yorkie and it's not so bad. Pits have the bite strength of an alligator and the instinct to hold on, so if you try to pull free or shake loose you are losing muscle or maybe a limb.

I imagine this may become a contentious thread, but one book I've partially read and enjoyed (and now remember I need to go back and finish) is Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon by Bronwen Dickey.

I dont hate putbulls, I am however weary of them, because I was bit by one at 24.. I didnt blame the dog, but its human countetpart(s).

My sisters Pug used to bite people, I do hate pugs, for many reasons, as I dont think they should exsist, the poor things.

Why take on the hassle of a pit bull? Just get a Labrador or a poodle, there are so many easy going dogs. Easier to insure as well. Bit of a needless conversation.

Mostly just the new breed to gang up on. It's made worse because while statistically they are being shown as having higher bite percentages, there is some skew because of miscategorized breeds that get lumped together under the unofficial breed of "pit bull". There are also many more of them than other breeds. Partly because of being en vogue and partly again because multiple breeds are being lumped together.