I pet people’s adorable pit bulls all the time. They are sweet dogs under most conditions. That said, if I got a dog, I’d not get a pit bull.
Here is my scary pit bull story. When we lived in a beach town with an amazing police presence, I was in our alley watching my little boy on his scooter playing. All of a sudden a dog and a few uniformed officers ran into our alley. The officers yelled “Little Boy! Drop your scooter and run to your house NOW!” My boy with special needs did exactly what they said and ran to me and up the steps to safety. The dog bounded past with the officers behind him.
Later they came back to talk to us, and they wanted to meet my son. One of their cams had videoed the whole thing. I had thought they and their police dog were chasing a suspect. Nope. The DOG (happened to be a pit bull) was the suspect. He had mauled his owner, taken off, attacked an unknown woman on the street, and was running from the police when he ran up the alley where my son was playing. I hadn’t known to be scared of the DOG.
The cops told my little boy he was a big hero back at the station because he had done exactly what they asked, didn’t even try to bring his scooter home, just ran to safety, and they were all very proud of him. It was a cool thing. They showed us the video and my son felt very important.
A lot of them are beautiful, sleek dogs. A lot of them are cute, goofy, funny “clown” dogs most of the time.