Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Is it the breed or bad owners? It’s the BREED!

Your a FN idiot. A unleashed dog of any breed has no business running up to a person or a leashed dog. I've had friends drive into my property and their dog jump out of their truck to play. By the time I got my Hotshot to get my dogs of his it was over. You shoot one of my dogs on my property I'm face shooting you instantly.

WTF does it matter whose fault it is?

Pit bulls should not be allowed to live in our society.

Finally, somebody with enough sense to call ribka what he is !

We have the fortune of being able to pickup a piece of pasture land in 1988 that fronts a navigable 20 foot deep bayou for 3/4 of a mile. It furnishes grazing for about half our cows and on good years excess grass is turned into hay. The fishing is extraordinary and the fish population is constantly being augmented by the Red River and two upstream impoundments. We can see 15 or more whitetails grazing our abundant clover most late evenings. Our kids can shoot a deer anytime. Of course wild hogs are a fact of life and we kill dozens every year.

Now for the bad part. We have some neighbors that live as an extended family in 7 or 8 trailer houses on an adjoining 70 acres that is an undivided and not yet probated estate (over 40 years).They were allowing the uncontrolled breeding of Pit Bulls and some Chow and Husky dogs with the Pit Bull naturally dominating. You can sort of get the picture of underfed naturally vicious dogs visiting.

The dogs were vicious and always hunting food. Naturally they were drawn to cattle at first probably attracted to the cheesy calf droppings and afterbirth. There was only one solution and it did not involve notifying the putative owners of the dogs. It was called shoot on site and sight. Big body grip traps were also employed.

Yes, the owners were to blame but in a way they didn't really own the dogs. My neighbor to the north once had 2 calves killed by a female pit and her 4 offspring that were nearly grown. He chased them home and told the trailer house woman what happened and she said they weren't really her dogs, they just stayed at her place. He got his rifle and climbed up in his nearby box blind and killed all 5 when they sneaked back to their kill.

He and I have put a stop to free ranging predators and now the cameras seldom catch a visiting half feral dog. There was no other solution.

What if someone shot your dog for misbehaving on their property and he managed to get back to your property to die? I know of several cases of that happening.

I don't believe any dog should be running around on someone else's property no matter what the breed is. If my dogs are on someone else's property I expect them to do as I would if their dogs were on my property. I also have cattle, manage my property for wildlife and have plenty of trailer trash living close by. It's a bad deal for the dogs because you can't shoot, trap or poison the sorry azz owners.

Fair enough

Different strokes I guess.
My dog often runs free and visits the neighbors out in our rural area. Of course, my neighbors all know him and like him alot. He often plays with the big black lab next door. Of course, the only thing he kills are feral cats and once a young coyote.
It helps he's not a pit and my neighbors are good people.

He does always have a GPS collar on and has learned his boundaries. We don't live on "rural" 2 acre lots.

Anyone who does not believe that pits are predisposed to unprovoked violence obviously know nothing about dog breeding or genetics.

My neighbor, who was also a good friend, had a female lab like that.
She spent as much time going up/down the mountain trails as I did during my trail runs and was well known in the area. I don’t think anyone cared because she was friendly (she learned quickly to stay out of my backyard where I built the kennel for my GSD since he didn’t like ANY other dog).
All was well until she got hit by someone on our road, then it was ‘that driver’s’ fault. Decisions have consequences.

Your opinion is based on ignorance. Pitbulls were bred for a sport requiring that the dogs be handled by all sorts of strangers. This is why they have a strong tendency (more so than most breeds of dog) to be friendly towards everyone they meet. The problem the breed has is that they are so capable of harm that, on the rare occasions they do inappropriately attack someone, they make the headlines far more often than other breeds who bite. This skews the numbers on the stats making it appear that a typical Pitbull is constantly in search of victims to attack. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

What sport were they bred for? Bull baiting? Dog fighting?

The line of dogs that led to the development of the premier pit fighting breed goes way back to when they were originally used in boar hunting and bull/bear baiting. When bull/bear baiting was outlawed, pitting them against each other became popular for entertainment, betting, etc., like cock fighting (also referred to as a sport).

In all the above activities, they are constantly handled by strangers, unlike, for instance, dogs bred for an activity like estate guarding or sheep guarding, which dogs are usually only handled by their regular handlers, and thus have no particular requirement to be docile towards strangers.

I have been told mules are good at protecting pasture from dogs

As a youth, I’ve been chased and bitten by a 3 legged Rottweiler (raised by a VERY rough family), a very large Rottweiler breeding male that got out of his kennel somehow and greeted me at a friends house when I showed up on my atv - not so much raised but used as a breeder by a single mom that had no authority over him at all, and a Springer Spaniel that was our family dog for years but got hit by a car and started acting very strangely right up til he bit my face as a child and my father “rehomed” him.

I’ve been around a LOT of dogs my entire life. I have always felt I could read dogs fairly well. That said, my 12 yo boy had his face, head, and neck chewed on by a great pyranise owned by another single woman who admitted after the fact that she had such little control over that dog that she would have a friend take him regularly to “give her a break”.

That dog was docile before and after… even after chewing on my boys head for about 20-30 seconds - he sat beside him and wagged his tail. I wasn’t there when it happened, otherwise the dog would have been immediately put down.

I’ve seen dogs do enough in my time to realize you shouldn’t trust ANY of them unless you know them well and know their training. And I LOVE dogs.

I’ve known several pits and never had an easy or trusting feeling around any of them - and they were all VERY well trained and behaved. One female (likely the second or third best trained dog I’ve even been around) was docile and sweet and playful. I would occasionally catch her literally side eyeing me and when I’d return the gaze, she’d stand up with her head down. Presenting in a way that I’ve always taken as “ready”.

We’re on chocolate lab number 4 and they are fantastic animals… I would never turn my back on a pit.

This, with the addendum that if I know the owner and his/her training methods and general habits with dogs, I'll be more likely to be relaxed at the outset.

I love GSDs.
I have a history with GSDs in a working capacity.
I currently have a yellow lab, and won't have another GSD until I retire. If I can't provide the time for proper training, exercise, and socialization....I don't have any business keeping the breed as a companion.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to retirement.

GSD’s can be an incredible dog…
They do need proper rearing and consistent guidance in my opinion. My wife’s parents had one (an otherwise stellar dog) before she was born. Her father walked in on the German growling at her with his teeth bared and shoulder hair raised (she was about 18 months old!). That one departed shortly there after as well. I knew a 140 pound German that was a gentle giant, and a 60 pound German that was a nipper.

I find dogs’ behavior is EXTREMELY situational, and relies heavily on their raising. Certain breeds have proven to be higher risk than others. I suspect a part of that is genetics and a part is due to the typical demographic of owners.

When I start trapping I catch those kind of dogs within a few days. If the dog has a collar I let it go the first time. I just wish people would keep their animals on their own property or on a leash.

Just an aside, I was walking my 70 lb Old English Bulldog (image below) last year at night. As we approached the fenced in yard of two dogs (a full blooded male Pitbull in his prime weighing about 65 lbs, and his female German Shepherd buddy, also in her prime), I noticed that they were both loose. Someone had left their gate open.

These two dogs have been acting like they've been spoiling for a fight with my dog for years from behind their fence, and now they were loose, and both charging at me and my dog with all anger and fury.

My dog just looked at them square, body braced for a fight as they charged towards him, and when they got within a couple of yards, with a low roar he launched himself in their direction, like, "Okay, lets do this." I could barely hold onto the leash.

At seeing this, both of them practically fell over themselves to stop on a dime within feet of my dog, and ran back to their property as fast as their feet would carry them.

It tickles me every time I think of it.

I grew up with two German Shepherds. Great dogs, but we absolutely couldn't have strangers in the house or on the property without putting them up.