Kate, who says “Pits are exactly the same as any other breed, the difference is the fact that people misunderstand them,” and the other people who are posting in defense of the pit bulls are entirely missing the point.

Pit bulls are NOT exactly the same as any other breed. They (and perhaps other breeds too, I’m not necessarily singling out pits) are more agressive than many other types of dogs, and when they DO attack, the damage done is much, much more serious than most (all?) other breeds.

Both the ER vet and the surgeon (who put back together the pieces of our dog’s leg in 4-hours of surgery last night) asked after looking at his x-rays, “Are you *sure* your dog wasn’t hit by a car?” Neither of them had ever seen a bone pulverized so badly by a bite wound. I asked, and neither of them had treated a fracture for dog attacked by a pit bull before – because all the other victims brought during their combined 10 years of practice had died before they could bother.

Had this dog been just about any other breed – perhaps even a dog just as agressive as this one was – we expect we would have been looking at something more like multiple lacerations and a bunch of stiches. Instead, our dog barely escaped with his life and we’ve got $5000 and mounting in vet bills to fix him back up.

It took the dog’s two owners a LONG time to get the pit to let go and pull him off of ours. They were yelling at him, pulling on him, hitting him… and all the while our dog was submissively on his back and the pit just kept coming at him.

Yes, these seemed very much like irresponsible dog owners, that much is true. But hey, I’d so much rather be bitten (or have my dog bitten, or my children bitten) by an irresponsible poodle, lab, Lahsa Apso (know that intimately, was bitten many times as child by ours), jeez just name the breed! than mauled and likely killed by the next pit owner with whom we cross paths.

I certainly don’t presume to think that I know the best solution to the problem, but that there IS a problem with pit bulls (and perhaps other extra-agressive and damage-inflicting types of dogs) and a *very* real danger to both people and animals in proximity to these dogs cannot be denied.

When I read an artical about a Pit that was shot when an officer tased a teenager and the officer was bit I was appolled. The dog was protecting his home and the kid. The officer should have tased the dog instead of killing it. Any dog who is in a situation where his home or a person in his home is being harmed they will protect it. If the situation was reversed and it was someone who tried to break into the home and harm the people there and the dog attacked, the dog would be reconized how he or she saved it’s owner from harms way. That’s a bunch of bull, it don’t matter who you are if you are going after someone and their dog protects them, dont kill it, tase it. We do everyone else.

I would also like to add that they produce the sweetest puppies in the world!

The Akita was and is a Japanese “fighting breed”…very dog aggressive as a breed. Want to wipe out that breed also? Write to the AKC and trounce them for registering this canine aggressive breed before one kills your pooch! Your argument; “You hardly hear about Akita’s attacking”….Think about the sheer number of ABPT’s to Akitas, it’s not even close. And news agencies get much more pub with “PIT BULL ATTACK”.

Fact: The APBT has dog aggressive tendancies. If you want to ban the breed due to this then you better start adding other breeds to the list! If you think the APBT is the only dog genetically pre-disposed to dog aggression then you need to do some real research!

Fact: The APBT has NEVER been bred for human agression…always just the opposite! I stand firm that any dog that shows true human aggression should be put down.

If anything, please remember this; DOG AGGRESSION AND PEOPLE AGGRESSION ARE TWO TOTALLY SEPERATE ISSUES AND CONCERNS. That is a fact!

It is absolutely true that the problem is a people problem. But the only way to regulate the behavior of PEOPLE who don’t have any business owning this kind of dog is to regulate the breeds themselves. Breed specific legislation is necessary both to protect communities from pit bulls and to protect pit bulls from many of the people who own and breed them.

In fairness, there are more dogs and more potential for dog interactions now than forty years ago. On the other hand, there are a whole lot more people breeding dogs specifically to be weapons (and pit bulls are the prime example). The breeds that are bred as weapons are ALWAYS the breeds that are killing people. Despite being the most popular breed by a huge margin for many years, labradors have never appeared even in the top ten of the dogs who kill people.