Pit bulls were indeed bred to fight. I agree that dog breeds do have certain distinct characteristics. However, pits didn't gain notoriety as dangerous dogs until fairly recently. How do you explain that?
I'm not suggesting that irresponsible breeders aren't trying to produce aggressive dogs, but pit bulls have been around for a long time.
Please help me out here, as I'm trying to fully understand your argument and absolutely do not wish to put words in your mouth. For your argument about pit bulls to be correct, either:
1. Pit bulls have always been a dangerous breed, or
2. The entire gene pool of these dogs has been destroyed by irresponsible breeders over a roughly 20-year period.
I have problems with both arguments because the first isn't supported by history. Pit bulls used to be viewed as pretty much the all-American dog. In the case of the second argument, I can point to when German Shepherds and Dobermans had the same type of notoriety that pit bulls currently have. Were their gene pools permanently destroyed when irresponsible breeders were churning out thousands of substandard dogs?
I'm not trying to be a jerk. I responded to your post because you advanced a coherent argument, unlike the people who post an inflammatory one-liner about wanting to kill all pit bulls.
Exactly. Pit bulls were one of the most popular dogs in the country around WWI. Teddy Roosevelt had pit bulls in the white house; Helen Keller had pit bulls. The dog on Our Gang was a pit bull.
If this breed were inherently bad, why is it that these media reports are a relatively recent phenomenon? I'm old enough to remember that in the 70s, dobermans were the inherently vicious dog -- you never heard about pit bulls back then. After that, it was Akitas, and before that, it was plain old English and American bulldogs. If it were an inherent breed problem, you wouldn't see this fluctuation.
Here's how you would see such fluctuation: if a certain breed becomes popular with thugs and criminals who want mean dogs, you'll see a relatively rapid rise in attacks by that breed. The thug popularity also leads to irresponsible overbreeding, so there will statistically be more unstable dogs out there. In classic "it bleeds, it leads" fashion, the media then reports only the terrible stories -- so those who don't hear about the hundreds of thousands of good, happy family pit bulls out there get a skewed perception of what's actually happening (same phenomenon that we see happening with the reporting on Iraq).
I completely understand why responsible and loving dog owners would have pit bulls -- to fight back against the evil thugs who are trying to ruin what has historically been a fine breed.
If you look at some of them directly in the eye they are ready to go, they challenge you.
I've been around pits for over 20 years and they were as dangerous back then as they are now.
The nice ones are a lot of fun, you can throw a rope over a tree limb and they will bite it and you can pull them up into the air about 20 feet and they will not let go, the jaw muscles are amazing.