"People need to spend more time thinking about what dogs need, and some people shouldn't have big dogs at all. They can mess up the little ones, and while bites will still occur, at least people won't get killed because of owner stupidity."
Sorry but according to many on this thread your knowledge and experience with dogs disqualifies you as an idiot with an agenda. Owner stupidity is never involved. Some breeds "just snap" and should be exterminated. You can never know what a dog is thinking. Just kill them all.
Thanks for your response, and the humor.
You are dead on that we can never really understand a dog's "thinking", though. We must understand that instinctive drives can and do take over in the right environmental circumstances, and plan accordingly.
Dogs do "think" in a primitive way. What we humans have to do is understand which stimulus is more rewarding to an individual dog. Given a choice between a nice chunk of meat, and chasing a crow, my Mal will pick the crow in a millisecond.