“Pit bulls and rottweilers account for over half of the deaths caused by dogs. But nowhere near half of the attacks.”
Yep. I own a Rott/Shepard mix myself. She’s a great dog, friendly to everybody that comes to our house.
But put a hand on anyone in our family, and it takes about half a second before she’s between you and the family member, one Very Loud bark and a look on her face that says ‘You’re obviously insane, and I’m going to hurt you if you don’t let my pack member go...”
She’s never once bit anyone - outside of the accidental ‘nip’ when she and I are playing.
Its not the dog, its the owners, folks.
Some will tell you they got a pit bull or Rott or GShepard for ‘protection’. And for some weird reason they get it into their pea brains they have to make the dog ‘mean’ to protect. Nothing could be further from the truth. These dogs are Pack Animals, and you are the leader of the Pack.
You get accosted, they’ll respond EXACTLY as they would in the wild. They’ll attack the aggressor. You don’t have to ‘teach them’ to do this, and thats probably the single biggest mistake a inexperienced dog owner makes with the larger breeds in particular.
Yep. I own a Rott/Shepard mix myself. She’s a great dog, friendly to everybody that comes to our house.
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A quarter century ago I owned a purebred (championship bloodline) Rottweiler stud. This dog never offered to harm anyone but his presence was enough to scare most people half-witted. My brother had a Rott and German Shepherd male that turned out to be a nervous wreck and finally had to be put down after he lunged and caught the tip of my finger, I probably would have lost the use of my right hand had I not had extremely fast reflexes. He only got the extreme tip but I wound up having to have a doctor cut the infected tissue away from my fingernail and put in a couple of tiny stitches before my finger would heal. I later told my wife that if felt as I imagine it would feel if you took a roofing nail and welded it to the edge of a car door, heated the nail red hot with a torch and slammed the door on the finger, driving the red hot nail through the finger tip. I still shudder to think what would have happened if he had gotten more of my hand.
What was I doing that caused the dog to bite? I was setting a dish of food on the ground for him, the dog knew me well and had never offered to harm me before. I am a big, physically imposing sort with a deep voice and I have made big aggressive dogs turn and go the other way by just facing them down but my brother’s dog taught me not to be so confident.