When Steve Sailer takes a break from pointing out unpleasant things about brown and black people, he trashes dog breeds that are popular with some brown and black people. My best friend is a pit bull, and he is by far the most amiable and least aggressive dog on the face of the earth. I have known a number of pit bulls, none of whom have been aggressive to people. But my friend scares some people because of the bad press and misinformation about his breed. Also, because of this misinformation, his breed is popular with some real jackasses who actually try to provoke their dogs into viciousness.
Let’s consider some factors that lead to the dissemination of myths about pit bulls:
1. The dogs have been misidentified on some occasions. I am personally familiar with some dog attacks where the media claimed the dog was a pit bull when it was actually some other breed altogether. There are a lot of mongrel dogs, and it is not always easy to tell just what breeds they have in their ancestry. In common parlance, such dogs are often called “beagle mixes” if they have hound characteristics, “shepherd mixes” if they are shaped somewhat like an Alsatian, and “terrier mixes” otherwise.
2. Pit bulls are popular with the dog fighting set because of their physical characteristics, especially their strength and tenacity. And because of their reputation for ferocity, they are popular with gangsters as guard dogs. However, it takes a regimen of training and outright abuse to turn a pit bull into a fighting dog, and most of them don’t make the cut. The pit bulls in animal shelters are often those specimens who were just too friendly to make it as fighters or gangster dogs. They get abandoned by their owners.
3. Because pit bulls are popular with the lower social orders, they sometimes have irresponsible owners who allow them to roam neighborhoods in a semi-feral state. This is a recipe for disaster with any large breed.
Frankly, in my experience the most vicious and aggressive dogs are lap dog breeds. Of course, they can’t do much harm, so people think it is cute when a silky terrier tries to maul them. Larger dog breeds, including pit bulls, have not been systematically bred for viciousness, since such animals would be too dangerous to be tolerated outside the small sub-culture of dog fight enthusiasts. Quite the contrary, larger breeds have been bred to retain puppy behaviors and curiosity so that they will be more controllable and malleable.
2 comments:
As an avid jogger (nearly every day for 15 years, jogging in whatever neighborhood I lived), I can testify that I've been barked at, growled at, charged at and attacked by just about every breed of dog there is.
In the 70's, german shepherds were the fad breed of mass fear, then the doberman in the 80's, then Rottweilers, now pit bulls. In 20 years it will be something else. Yet "progressive" cities like San Francisco have put restrictions on the fad fear breed for one noteworthy mauling in the news.
I've always called the lap "yipper" type dogs "drop kick" dogs, reviving the memory of an ancient football play in describing the intuitive desire.
Steve-
I often refer to the lap dogs as "dust busters", especially the furry little guys. I used to run in city neighborhoods as well and learned when the dogs were serious and when they were just posturing.
I also learned the difference between aggression toward other dogs and aggression toward people.
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