Anyone that leaves an infant , newborn with their dog unsupervised are the same parents that leave their kids in the car

Tiffany, in your earlier post you remarked that in the old days "dogmen" involved in pit fighting culled dogs showing human aggression. It is not the first time I've heard this assertion and for all I know it may be somewhat or even mostly true. I am curious about the quality of the evidence backing it up. Do you have any?

I am also skeptical of the claimed ability to select for extreme dog aggression and for stability and non-aggression toward humans in the same dog. Again, if anyone wants to explain why this is believed to be possible, I'd love to hear the arguments and see the basis for the belief that this type of selection for seemingly anti-thetical qualities is possible.

This is not a matter of disagreement or having a contrary point of view. It is just testing ideas that become common currency.

rgds, andrew may

andrew:

i think it's because eventually, through large numbers of cullings and the more "successful" dogs living to breed longer, you can achieve both "desirable" traits. a dog that's not sufficiently dog-aggressive or tenacious is probably killed pretty early in the pit.

a dog that's handler-aggressive will probably die of an injury sustained, unable to be treated, or culled on purpose. i imagine the eventual result would be dogs that are DA but not HA, which survive long enough and are successful enough to be bred - it seems pretty obvious to me that even someone with a low enough IQ to enjoy animal fighting as a passtime could see that it's better to breed a dog that's won a lot of fights. i imagine dogs win a lot of fights by having desirable traits.

as for my own experience with pits, my wife's family when i first met her had a delightful pit-mutt. he snarled at me when i first met him, but he quickly warmed up to me. he never once bit me, or anyone else i knew of. he was however hell on cats, squirrels, rats, birds, or anything else that moved that came into his backyard. oh and if it matters, he was intact.

i've had friends who've had absolutely charming pits, with no maulings. i also knew of at least two people who fit the mold for lower-class backyard breeders who were churning out questionable quality pups just to flog them off. i'm personally convinced that it's an overall degeneration of the quality of the breed coupled with clueless owners that's caused the situation pits are in today. i wouldn't own one now, as i've said before, because of the liability the hysteria's created. as i've said, your lab bites someone, pay for a few stitches, do some paperwork. your pit bites someone, bend over.

Andrew, in your free time, if you're really interested, check out any of Richard Stratton's books. He's an old-timer who is generally (in the APBT world) considered a good authority. He's not a youngster, and has actually met/worked with/bred some of the REAL greats in APBT's...most of which these losers today have probably never heard of. He brings a different perspective to the table, as he "remembers when." You can allege that it's all hearsay...lol, but I don't know of anyone with videos of this culling in the early part of the century;-). I think we just have to read as much as we can and decide for ourselves. I will tell you that the dogs I've met with old lines (Colby, Corvino, Old Family Red Nose) hold true to the temperament that's alleged in his writitngs: dog aggressive to same sex (but can be managed in a home environment-worse with "outside" dogs), and absolutely not a trace of human aggression, even under extreme provocation. Most of this is of course anecdotal, but by the same token, so is all the hype about them being killers.

My ex's Corvino line dog died of head injuries inflicted by a passerby who saw him attempting to steal a child's bicycle (long story, lol). He was beaten repeatedly in the head with a large branch. My ex did not realize he'd gotten out of the house and ran outside to grab him and saw this happening and actually heard it, he was hitting him so hard. The dog did nothing but bark. Typical Pit-didn't want to give up (or maybe just stupid), but didn't consider fighting this human opponent. Animal control actually came by the next week to check on the dog and tried to find the man who hit him, since he was (by all witness accounts) not behaving aggressively toward the child or anyone else. He lived directly across the street from a gas station, and being the friendly sort, that's where he headed. If he'd been a Golden Retriever, someone would've grabbed him and checked his tags. Instead, someone jumped out of his car and proceeded to try to kill him. No doubt a knee-jerk reaction to media hype. Why, if you can get that close to the dog w/out injury or threat, would you attack it instead of grabbing it or ignoring it??? Who in their right mind that's really afraid of Pit Bulls would run up to one and decide to start beating on it?

I know I've rambled on too long about this...but this was 6 years ago and I still get furious when I think about it. He was just the sweetest dog and what happened to him makes me sick. This was not exactly the inner city, if you're not familiar w/Naperville. The media is not doing anyone any favors by perpetuating this image and inciting this irrational fear in the public. JM(very strong)O. I know you weren't specifically asking about the media, but I think that we'd need to provide less "evidence" to the contrary if they provided less themselves. There is rarely any evidence given to these stories, and when the truth does come out, do they ever get back on TV and say "Sorry folks, that was NOT a Pit Bull in our earlier broadcast; the attacker is in custody and it appears to be a Bichon Frise." Not gonna happen. BTW, Andrew, this tirade wasn't directed at you in particular;-)

Let me add to Jenni's list of breeders, dogs from the, Carver, Davis, Mountain Man, Tudor, Tant, Chrenshaw lines....if you read the history many of these folks had dogs that would sleep with their family and battle their canine opponents, not all but enough to mention. The ideal dog was one that could be handled by strangers and often then hold it's own during combat.

During my only skirmish with my female, a man totally lost his sense when my dog and his got into a skuffle, instead of remaining calm he went on the offensive...he stomped me and her with his feet, over and over, she just took it and watched me take it as well, she never lost site of the other dog, but she never became aggressive towards him or protective of me or herself...she never demonstrated HA in a highly physically charged situation.

Now this is a good PB (not a properly trained PB at the time) but a good temperment from her breeding. I have been told by reputable breeders most PBs will not act protective, they will willingly go with people, strangers....the best story I heard from a breeder was about the fact that he kept losing dogs off his yard....people would remove them from their kennels and just take them, so he invested a nice chunk of change for some very well bred GSDs to guard his PBs.......I think I can believe this....

Agreed <:-)

My son has a pitbull bitch who's the sweetest, most reliable dog on earth -- When they're bred, raised & trained properly, a good PB makes the best family pet you could ever want !

Sorry to jump in late again. I agree with reading some of the old timer's things. Louis Colby actually has a book out as well. His father is one of the original breeders, and one of the best known dogmen of the APBT. I take the information from these "old timers" who have experienced how things were with the APBT before fighting was illegal, etc and formulate my own opinion. All of these men will agree on almost every subject involving the APBT.

We have a lot of problems with other breeds being bred into the APBT and hung papers. I'm not going to mention the particular lines of dogs, but they have admitted to having various mastiffs, bulldogs, etc bred to their APBT to make a big headed, stout dog. These are often the dogs that bite as their temperaments are not as stable as a TRUE APBT. I will take a game bred APBT over a show or 100lb pitbull ANYDAY as in my experience they have the most stable temperaments.

As far as HA vs DA there can easily be a difference. Look at hunting breeds. They're instinct takes them after prey animals, and without being trained properly they'd go out and kill these animals. Does it mean they will be HA? Look at terriers...they're tenacious little buggers and very often are DA as well as aggressive towards any other animals. Are they all going to go attack humans?

We also have to remember that the pitbull was the only breed where culling was practiced so regularly, and where basically all dogmen did it to the point where it was almost religious. You don't hear of people culling JRTs that show aggression towards humans, or labs, or pointers, etc at any point in their breeds' history.

How could you possibly fight a dog that would turn on you when you tried to pull the dogs apart? Typically dogs were not fought to the death like the bad boy wanna bes do today. There were a lot of rules and regulations to the "sport" and nobody wanted a dog to be seriously injured or killed. So, it wasn't like grabbing one dog off of a dead dog, they were often still in full fight mode. Ever see somebody try to break up a fight between dogs that aren't pitbulls? I have...I've seen that person almost lose an arm to a lab. Have you ever seen somebody try to break up a fight between two pitbulls? I've done it myself when a rescue got out of her crate, I very easily grabbed each dog and got them apart by myself.

I personally can't comprehend how you can pit two dogs against each other and still care if they're injured or killed, or how you can put your family pet in the pit, but that's how it was.