The Pits

As I sit here and type this, my 45 pound dog is literally in my lap. Oh the joys of being a pit bull owner. If you’ve ever gone looking for an apartment complex that allows you to house your dog(s) with you, you know it’s difficult to find one. That difficulty is compounded depending on the weight of the dog and the breed makeup. Chances are, however, that anyone who thinks pits are mean, aggressive, toddler mauling monsters has never owned one nor been around one for any length of time. I would even wager that these people don’t know much about dogs in general. I can‘t speak for the breed in general, so I’ll delve into my personal experience to see if I can shine some light on the subject.

My dog, Sherox, is a big baby. She is around my 2 year old niece and nephew on an almost daily basis and instead of mauling them when she sees them, she cleans their faces with one swipe of her mighty tongue. Needless to say, when they are around each other, neither the children nor the dog are left unsupervised. It’s not that I don’t trust an animal with sharp teeth around two children whose brains are still developing…okay, so it’s exactly like that. Although, when she is eating (prime time for canine aggressive behavior), the kids can approach her, touch her, pet her, almost do whatever they want, and she just keeps eating and lets them. My sister does a good job of getting onto them, and I do a good job of shepherding my dogs and catching unwanted behavior.

So what makes pit bulls so special? Answer: nothing. In my experience they’re no more or less like any other breed of dog. The difference lies with the owner. A person who, for whatever reason, shouldn’t own a pit, shouldn’t own any other type of dog over, say 20 pounds. Actually, I take that back. Part of that does lie with the dog (no pun intended there…moving on), and the weight may or may not be a characteristic up for consideration, but for the most part it’s the owner. My sister has a long-haired Chihuahua who was abused at his former home, and the whole time you’re petting him, he growls like he wants to tear your head off. When you stop, he nuzzles your hand to persuade you to continue. Strange dog he is, but it’s not really his fault. His behavior problems aside, he WAS badly abused at the place wherefrom we got him. I’ve been working with him, and I’ve got the scars on my hands to prove it. Moral of the story: I deal with 3 large dogs, 2 of which are pit bulls, and 3 smaller dogs, 1 of which is a demon dog that someone absentmindedly fed after midnight. Ah well, I digress.

Point was, it’s not the pits that will get you. It’s those little fuzzy knuckle-munchers. I’m sure, for the purpose of this article and its intended use on doggiebagonline that I’m preaching to the choir here. That being said, I’m never one to just spout off anecdotal jabber without backing it up with empirical evidence. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the statistics gathered by the American Temperament Test Society (atts.org). Out of the 665 tested, 98 failed. That gives the breed a passing percentage of 85.3%. American Staffordshire Terrier, a comparable breed scored just slightly below that at 83.9%. To put this all in perspective, let’s compare it to the statistics of a breed commonly believed to have a “good temperament”, the Golden Retriever. What’s your score, Goldie? 720 dogs were tested. 609 of them passed. 111 of them were on the fail trail, leaving a passing percentage of 84.6%. What about a notoriously “bad dog”? Let’s try to find one, shall we? Actually most dogs register somewhere in this range. Those that are significantly higher or lower were those who were tested only a handful of times so far, and therefore the test’s results would be a little skewed.

In conclusion, it’s really not the dog. There are no bad dogs, just bad dog-owners.