Quote:
Originally Posted by Tcoat
So can poodles, chihuahuas, beagles, collies, retrievers (all the colours), shelties, well pretty much any breed.
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That's all true, and I harbor no ill will towards any breed; I prefer dogs to people the vast majority of the time and have shared my home over the past almost forty years with three German Shepherds, a coydog, a flat-coated retriever-looking mix, and a chihuahua. Of the six, the chihuahua and one of the Shepherds were the only ones remotely territorial in terms of humans on our property, and we discouraged that. The chihuahua remains yappy for the first minute or so, then becomes everyone's best friend. The Shepherd in question would always be fine once he saw that WE were fine with whomever was visiting, but he always checked with us to make sure it was "OK" to relax.
The issue isn't really whether a breed is innately or genetically "aggressive;" all breeds can be wonderful, and all breeds can be awful, dependent upon the owner/trainer and on the individual dog. The issue, unfortunately, is more the capability of a given breed to inflict serious damage should it choose to do so. If we had a killer, trained attack chihuahua, it would be a drag but the worst it could to would be to ruin your pants cuff, your shoe, or maybe draw a little blood. If, heaven forbid, any of our Shepherds had decided that it was time to attack, they would have killed someone. We raised them to be sweet, accepting creatures and two of the three ALWAYS were, but we never put any of them in a position where we couldn't intervene immediately at the slightest hint of aggression from them.
What I'm getting at is that the danger of pitbulls isn't that they are innately nasty or mean; they are not. The danger is that, if one DOES decide to do damage, they are pretty much unstoppable. They are bred to have jaws like vices, and they do NOT let go until the job is done.
Dogs are just like humans, only usually way nicer, more predictable, and more loyal. However, again just like humans, sometimes there are isolated, thankfully extremely rare instances, where an individual specimen is truly evil and needs to be isolated or put down. A strong, large, athletic violent dog is eminently more dangerous than a small weak one... same thing with humans. It doesn't mean strong, large, and athletic is bad.. it can be VERY good. Just depends on the individual, be it human or canine.
I'd own a pitbull without giving it a second thought. I prefer Shepherds, and I miss my most recent one terribly. It's been almost two years since he died suddenly, and I'm still healing. All three of them were almost like brothers to me, and each occupied wonderful 10-year blocks of my life. Hopefully, the time will come soon when I'm ready to take on another one.