A positive pit bull story from Oakland, California:

http://insidebayarea.com/argus/localnews/ci_3638669

This protection trained pit bull saved his owner's life from a gunman and was shot and killed. Hope they catch this scum when he comes into some hospital with his arm rotting off. But of course why a mugger would attack someone walking two large pit bulls is beyond me...

So a mugger would attack someone walking a pitbull?
Plus the attacker was able to run up behind the guy and hit him on the head first? With a dog that had been protection trained?

I'm sorry, but a lot of parts of this sorry do not hold up here.....

I am no professional but some things strike me as od. I own pitbulls and would love positive press. One, the guy said his dog locked its jaws on the bad guy. Only uninformed indivduals believe a pitbulls jaws lock. Two, he is talking to the dog as if he really thinks the dog understands.
This story seams over glorified. Sad to say. Just my opinions. It does seem odd that a bad guy could get to owner of a protection trained dog.

I think the key here to the "protection training" is the statement about how "he", I assume the owner, had trained the dog to react to aggression. DUH. I wonder how many times he'd worked a scenario with him actually being attacked? I work in the sport of Schutzhund and my old boy would alert and act really nasty if commanded. Protect me? Nope. Act threatening and scare away the average wanna be a bad guy, yeh. It's sad when people put their lives in the hands of dogs they think are "protection trained". Change the saying from "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" to don't bring a dog to a mugging. Sorry he lost his beloved pet, and the dog was brave in latching onto the guy. But I'd have thought the dog would have alerted before it got to that point. NO expert here. JMHO.CH

Well, the last lines of the article was pretty telling:

 Quote:

Police said it is highly unusual for robbers to mug someone walking with dogs, particularly two big pit bulls. And definitely not very smart.

"If they were smart, they wouldn't be criminals," Sgt. Caesar Basa said.

As far as the jaw locking thing, that is, of course, wrong that pit bulls can magically do this. Though if the guy said to the reporter that he locked his jaws onto the mugger, the same could be said of a GSD locking his jaws onto something. It's just me being subtle but "locked his jaws" is slightly different than "having a locking jaw."

And sound pit bulls are generally much less suspicious of strange people (like someone running up behind him) than say a sharper GSD or Malinois. I was walking my three dogs (Zoso the Mal, my Aussie/husky mix and my husky/Rott mix) once at dusk in my neighborhood and I looked down at Zoso. The hair on his withers was standing partially up even though he hadn't turned his head around and the other two were walking on like normal. I immediately turned around and there was a young man in his late teens or early twenties with a hoodie pulled up over his head running in the grass right up behind me delivering newspapers. Zoso (who is neither especially sharp for a Mal nor protection trained) was the only one who signaled he had felt anything that concerned him while the other two didn't care. If the pit bull wasn't especially sharp, he probably wouldn't have cared until something very obvious went wrong.

Daniel,
Yeah, I get less and less impressed reading the story.

First off, it's what's called a "self-report" - notice that the story is actually someone telling a reporter what happened without verification ( even the "verified by the poice" is a self-report, notice closely ).

Then you have the classic "the dog grabbed the gun hand myth" that all those type of stories have......oddly, those of us that train protection dogs on a daily basis can't even remember when we've seen a dog do that ( but every unverified street hero dog story always has the dog biting the gun arm....how strange )

Sorry, I'm calling "BS" for this story...... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

 Quote:

Daniel,
Yeah, I get less and less impressed reading the story.....First off, it's what's called a "self-report" - notice that the story is actually someone telling a reporter what happened without verification ( even the "verified by the poice" is a self-report, notice closely )......Sorry, I'm calling "BS" for this story...... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Add in the factor that the guy's dog was killed, and that he is grieving, and that he would like his dog, who is now dead, to be remembered as a hero.

And embellishment of a story can (and does) get so imprinted on the teller's mind that even the teller can start believing the "evolved" version.

I'm not trying to say that this is what happened, and I mean no disrespect for the man, but I'm saying I think this *does* happen.

I don't find this hard to believe at all. I think the writers may have mangled the facts. Not surprising. This story is different than the last by a few facts:

another version

Why is it so hard to believe that a dog would protect his owner? I just recently saw a couple dogs targetting the weapon arm in the Ultimate K-9 video.

I'm easily impressed, and now I'm gullible <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I just don't understand why people would waste their time making things like this up <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> The first article had me teary eyed <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

 Quote:

I don't find this hard to believe at all. ....I just don't understand why people would waste their time making things like this up <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> The first article had me teary eyed <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Well, maybe because "Add in the factor that the guy's dog was killed, and that he is grieving, and that he would like his dog, who is now dead, to be remembered as a hero."

And maybe there is lots of truth in there, but maybe it has been shined up a bit. I guess a protection-trained dog allowed a mugger to approach from behind and surprise the man..........just sounds odd to me.

I didn't think he made it up; I just thought maybe there was a little confusion in recounting the events. It made me teary too, no matter what the entire detailed story was.

Personally I don't think it really matters how it all went down, in my opinion the dog would've behaved admirably even if it had just grabbed the would be assailant by the pant leg.

All we need to know really is that this mans dog foiled a would be mugging and ended up paying with his life.

Heroic? sure I will give the dog that much, there are a lot of dog's that would've done nothing but perhaps bark.