@CrazyDaisy wrote:
@gardenman wrote:
Go back forty years or so and our local dog shelters were full of labs and lab mixes. This was largely due to the fact that we have a lot of hunters around here and they're hunting dogs. Pit Bulls were largely unheard of. Then dogfighting spread into the area and became more popular and now our shelters are filled almost exclusively with Pit Bulls and their mixes. It's kind of rare to find a lab or lab mix in the shelters anymore.
I've never understood the problem with banning Pit Bulls. What property does a Pit Bull have that you can't find in another breed? Pit Bulls aren't especially attractive dogs. By and large they aren't the smartest dogs around. They don't always have the best temperament. What makes a Pit Bull such an attractive dog that they're now flooding the shelters?
The answer is they fight. Those that won't fight, or aren't good at fighting end up in the shelters. The rest end up in the ring or dead. Dogs that fight well get bred nonstop and their puppies sold for whatever the market will bear. For many of the poorer people in communities buying a Pit Bull is like buying a lottery ticket. If they get the right dog, train it right, and it becomes a good fighter, that one investment can make them a ton of money.
There are lots of animals that can be kept as pets that are banned for one reason or another and most of those banned animals don't kill people. Turtles and tortoises are banned in New Jersey and for the life of me I can't remember the last time I read of an angry tortoise killing it's owner or a passerby. (Yeah, I know they're worried more about salmonella bacteria than temperament, but still, it's a little goofy.)
If Pit Bulls exuded some maigc substance that cured a disease or was otherwise irreplaceable, I'd say fine, don't ban them. Realistically, there's no property that a Pit Bull has, other than fighting, that you can't find in a more stable, less aggressive breed of dog. Why take the chance on owning a Pit Bull when you can find whatever properties you're looking for (other than fighting) in a more stable breed? Google the list of banned animals/pets in any state and you'll find lots of good animals that are banned for whatever reason. Banning Pit Bulls because some of them occasionally kill people isn't such an outrageous idea.
I would be interested in your background with this breed. Not sure where you have gotten your information, but you really do not have a good grasp of the breed. You do realize that this breed have been wonderful pets for decades before they were used by criminals for fighting. Only a very small percentage of these dogs are bred for fighting, the rest are wonderful pets. So you want to justify genocide the whole breed because of the actions of a few. Think Hitler used the same rational.....
Throughout history dogs have been bred for certain traits and characteristics. If you go way, way back in history (before Christ) and look at pit bulls and their antecedents you'll find that they were orignally bred by people called the Molossians. They were bred for their ferocity and courage to be used as war dogs and guardian dogs. They were soon taken in by the Romans who used them in their coloseums as fighting dogs. They then spread throughout the Roman Empire and ultimate to Britain where they were used initially in bull baiting and eventually used to fight pretty much everything from bears to whatever else they could find to put them in a ring with.
Modern day pit bulls came into being in the eighteen hundreds after baiting was made illegal. Those who enjoyed the "sport" needed smaller anaimals to fight in secrecy. The larger bull baiting type dogs (then known as Alaunt) were crossed with feisty terriers to create a smaller fighting dog that we know today as the pit bull. The breed was created specifically for dog fighting combining the strength and courage of the larger Alaunt breed with the feisty nature of the terrier. Hunting dogs were bred to hunt, herding dogs were bred to herd, pit bulls were bred to fight. That's their history. That's why the breed was created. They weren't sweet lap doggies who the bad guys corrupted. Pit bulls were bred to fight. That is why the breed was created.
You can take a pointer who's never seen the field in his life having been raised in the city and put him in a field with game and in all likeihood he'll point to the game. It's how he was bred. A retriever retrieves, a shepherd will try to herd/manage his flock. Every breed of dog was bred with a purpose in mind. The purpose in creating pit bulls was to create the ultimate fighting dog. A smallish, powerful, fierce fighter was the goal.
If you read/research the breed's history you'll find that everything I've said is true. The reality is that while some, many, maybe most pit bulls are just big goofs who will never cause trouble, there are plenty that still have the innate tendencies they were bred for and will exhibit those tendencies when given the chance.
As I said in my first post, there are no properties you can find in a pit bull that you can't find in another breed with the exception of their willingness to fight. You can argue they're sweet, and I'll counter that so is nearly every other breed of dog. You can argue they're smart and I'll let you meet a German Shepherd or two who know dozens if not hundreds of commands. You can argue they're loyal, but so are dozens of other breeds. There's no one trait that a pit bull has that you can't find in dozens of other, safer breeds of dogs that weren't originally bred solely to fight.
The sad reality is that the vast majority of pit bulls out there now exist solely because of dogfighting. The breed would have never been created if dogfighting wasn't popular. As modern dogfighting has spread north and west from the southern states so have pit bulls. Are some pit bulls great dogs? Absolutely! But there's nothing you can find in a pit bull that you can't find in another breed that wasn't bred for fighting. There are dogs that have been bred for their beauty, for their intellect, for their ability to find game, for their ability to retrieve game, for cuddling, for ratting, as companion animals, etc. The history of pit bulls is that the breed was created to fight. With proper training and guidance they can be great dogs, but far too many people don't give them the traning and guidance. Is that the dog's fault? No. The dogs are doing what they were bred to do, but with dozens of breeds that weren't bred to fight, why keep a dog that was bred to fight?
Banning pit bulls is not Hitler-like in any way. It's a commonsense way to keep a potentially dangerous animal out of the hands of idiots who want one for the wrong reasons. Does it deprive good owners of the ability to own a pit bull? Yes, but there are tons of other breeds of dogs out there that have any and every characteristic you're looking for without having been bred to fight.
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