Any dog can become violent.
The most vicious dog I ever encountered in my life was a Golden Retriever named Bella who attacked my German Shepherd.
My dog was leashed while being walked, the Retriever was playing fetch in its front yard with its owner.
The dog ran up two houses to initiate the attack. The owner did nothing to stop the attack. The only reason I know the dogs name is because the police told me the name. The owner never even called the dog back.
I had to beat the crap out of Bella, because Bella wanted blood. She got her ass kicked real good. Neither dog suffered any severe injury, the owner tried to have me arrested for beating her dog.
All that being said, I do not trust Pit Bulls at all, I never want to own one, I’d never have one around children or seniors, and I also know that German Shepherds can be dangerous, I have met two male and two female Shepherds that are not safe to be around even when muzzled with heavy duty gear.
I feel sorry for both these men and both dogs. Sad situation.
My mom was attacked by a border collie that had jumped its fence. Dog was one of those the owners had tired of and just left in the yard by itself all the time; neighborhood kids would tease it. So it hated everyone.
I had to beat and jab it back with a prop pole from our clothes line until my dad came out with a shovel. Talk about a hard dog to aim for, the thing writhed like a snake and I couldn’t lay a solid strike on him.
Dad got a couple licks in to his shoulder and head and the dog fled; Dad then went and pounded on the owner’ door and told her if she didn’t get rid of the dog he would kill it right in front of her. She got rid of the dog.
There was another dog in the neighborhood a lab mix that used to go after kids on bikes and try to pull them off; he got out one time while everyone was horsing around with a tennis ball cannon and someone got the bright idea of aiming for the dog after he started it again. The tennis ball, to everyone’s surprise, actually hit the target in the ribs about where his heart would have been and I guess the concussion was enough to stop the dog’s heart because he dropped and rolled to a stop, dead. All the kids cheered but scattered because they were afraid the owner would find out. We didn’t care if the owner found out and didn’t know who he was anyway... but we had a lot more respect for a Polack cannon after that and were much more careful with them.
Some guy’s lab took after my pet ground hog which he saw from 3 or 4 doors away; when he charged, I scooped up the woodchuck and stuck it in our tree to keep it out of reach and grabbed my handy shovel to see if the dog was going to stop or not... it didn’t and shovel met dog forehead. It kind of wobbled a bit in surprise and by then the neighbor was able to call it back.
I thought I was really going to get it one day when playing with some kittens in my front yard- a guy came up the road on a bike with his big German Shepherd trotting along beside him and the Shepherd saw the kittens. I saw the shepherd coming in like a dive bomber when the owner’s cry for it to stop alerted me, but could tell it wasn’t focused on me at all it just wanted to kill the kittens so I tried to get between them, about that time my momma cat who used to be a semi-feral barn cat comes flying out from wherever she’d been lounging around and you could just about hear her claws click into place as she headed to intercept the shepherd at the curb; he saw her and started putting on the brakes but too late, she clawed him across the nose and muzzle and he yelped and turned to run away just as the owner arrived to see his courageous shepherd tuck tail and run with the momma cat in hot pursuit.
I was hoping the cat would come back but she chased the dog down the street and he yowled all the way like he was getting mauled by a mountain lion until his voice faded in the distance, and then after awhile as they rounded the street and returned up another one the yelping got louder and here comes the dog from the other direction, a tired momma cat way behind. The embarrassed owner took off apologetically to catch his dog as it sailed by while I busted a gut laughing and thanked God that my fears didn’t come true.
I’m just glad I grew up in time before pit bulls became popular or things would have been a lot different.
Please see my post 10. Are you sure the Golden Retriever was out for blood or is there any possibility it was not? I am not questioning what you know about your incident. I was just SO sure the charging pit bull was going to attack and kill my German Shepherd, and when all was said and done, he just wanted to greet my dog and play with him.
Your situatation may have been completely different.
Amen. I was nearly blinded by a Yorkshire Terrier when I was a toddler, and I carry the scars to prove it.
When my rottweiler sent me to the hospital (Ha! Not for a bite, but for a meniscus tear because the old girl was the size of a small truck and we realized would couldn’t walk through a doorway together without her brushing against my knee and bending it. Low speed, too. But she was a tank.) the ER doc said the worst dogs were not pit bulls but small little ratters like Chihuahuas, Scotties, Westies and the dreaded Yorkie because they had small dog syndrome and were usually never trained because they were “harmless lap dogs”.
They also tended to do more damage in a shorter amount of time before they could be pulled away.
Yeah, but what does an ER doc know.
Ah well, this is a tragic story, and I bet the pit wasn’t even remotely trained.
the most frightening attack I was apart of was when my one of my buddies was horribly mauled as my friends and I were returning from a renaissance festival, all dressed up in the costumes of knights Templars and when we came over a hill there was a terribly ferocious killer rabbit and...
...wait...that might have been a movie.
Oh...I remember now!
The killer bunny was in the water next to a canoe I was paddling and I defended myself from certain death by pummeling it with my paddle and...
...wait, wait....
....um never mind