Pit Bulls are a menace

Recently here in the SF Bay Area, there have been 3 serious pit bull attacks on people. In one case, a 12 year old boy was killed by his two family dogs. A 66 year old woman was attacked by her own dog. And just this Thursday, an 8 year old girl and her mother were attacked when a neighbor let the pit bull she was supposed to be watching get loose.

I don't understand why anyone would have a pit bull around at all, much less around children. After every one of these attacks there's a chorus of people who have pit bulls saying "Oh, my dog is so sweet, she would never do anything like that." Yer nuts, people!

I'm a dog lover. I have a very sweet Australian shepherd. She's the first pure breed dog I've ever had and the experience has taught me a lot about genetics. The herding instinct in Aussies is incredible. But what's also incredible in her behavior are the things she doesn't do. She has no interest in chasing birds. Compare that to a bird dog. I've seen setters chase birds all day long at the beach. She has no interest in our many, many gophers. Compare that to a terrier. She also doesn't chomp onto things and lock her jaws. She nips. She nipped us like crazy as a puppy. Why? Because that's what she's been bred to do. Herding dogs that bite or kill the herd aren't going to last long. So Aussies nip and they nip hard but they aren't biters that go for the throat. That's what has really amazed me about pure bred dogs--the breeding process has been incredibly successful.

And so it is just as true for pit bulls. I read recently that pit bulls were originally bred for fighting bulls and they could literally take a bull down by the bull's nose. Then that was stopped and people moved on to training them to fight each other. These dogs are bred on purpose to be fierce fighters, so, why are we surprised that they live up to their breeding?

Personally, I think the training we do with our dogs is a finishing veneer and not much more. You can only do so much to overcome the tendencies that have been so successfully bred into dogs. I can't turn my Aussie into a bird dog, and you can't turn off the aggression that's bred in a pit bull. It's just not possible.