To wish dangerous dog breeds and all breeds closely resembling them were banned in UK?

[DustOfALongSleeplessNight]

There are so many nice friendly breeds, why chose a breed that was developed for aggression and fighting? I know individual dogs have different temperaments, but if they were selectively bred for bull and bear baiting, how can they make good pets?

Pit bulls (illegal in UK) are frequently kept illegally and passed off as Staffy-crosses until the police find them.

I think they should ban all dobermans, rottweilers, staffordshire bull terriers, malamutes, huskies, german shepherds and any other dog with aggressive genetics, plus all the breeds that closely resemble them. I frequently see these breeds in local park, off the lead, running amongst small children!

YABU

we have a staffy, shes soft as anything. shes never shown aggression towards us, our kids or another animal. We have a gardener to do our grass twice a month (we have a massive garden and dh has a back injury) he brings his 3 dogs onto the garden for a run which we allow. he has a staffy and 2 JRTs. The JRTs have both bitten my staffy and drawn blood- unprovoked. she never retaliates, the poor baby. my mum has 2 bichonXpoodleXshihtzu and they show aggression towards my staffy aswell when she doesn't even do anything.

FFS I thought for ONCE we might have a sensible thread where people didn't resort to posting nasty things about small dogs.

Ive got a staffie, a bull lurcher and a Yorkie, the Yorkie sleeps on the bull lurchers back, they are besties and very bonded but i look a bit strange walking them

Don't agree with op but do think all breeds with jaw lock should be banned.
What a ridiculous dangerous thing to have on a pet that plays with children. I don't care what temperament they have. They are an animal at the end of the day and when I am out with my child I don't know it the dog has a responsible owner or not.

singing my uncle probably looks stranger. he is a large muscular man with tattoos and he walks down the street with his two chihuahuas and gets some funny looks off people. they expect him to fit into a stereotype and are quite shocked to see these little bundles of fur walking next to him

No dog has lock jaw.

Don't agree with op but do think all breeds with jaw lock should be banned.

ffs no dogs have got lock jaw, its a myth

The infamous “locking jaw” myth has been assigned to a variety of dog breeds, including the American Staffordshire Terrier, Bulldog and Boxer, but it's exactly that — a myth. No type of dog has been found to have a mechanism that enables them to “lock” their top and bottom jaws together

What greys said. No dog has lockjaw. A rottie is clearly going to be more powerful than a yorkie

Question: Do Pit Bulls have locking jaws?

Answer: Prepared by:
Al W. Stinson, D.V.M.
Director of Legislative Affairs, Michigan Association for Pure Bred Dogs, and the Michigan Hunting Dog Federation, and a Member of the Board of Directors of the American Dog Owners Association

The following quote was sent to me from Dr. Howard Evans, Professor Emeritus, College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, Ithaca New York. We were colleagues in the veterinary college for four years. He is the author of the textbook, ANATOMY OF THE DOG, (the world's definitive work on the anatomy of the dog). His statement was in a letter addressed to me on March 26. 2002. His quote was: "I have spoken with [Dr.] Sandy deLahunta (the foremost dog neurologist in the country) and [DR.] Katherine Houpt (a leading dog behaviorist) about a jaw locking mechanism in pit bulls or any other dog and they both say, as do I, that there is NO SUCH THING AS "JAW LOCKING" IN ANY BREED.

We all agree that the power of the bite is proportional to the size of the jaws and the jaw muscles. There is no anatomical structure that could be a locking mechanism in any dog." As a Professor Emeritus from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University, I agree completely with their conclusion.

Ok then a dog that has been bred to not let go! A dog whose jaw can do a hell of a lot of damage

Bodicea There are genuinely no breed of dog that can "jaw lock". All dogs can bite down and hold on, and staffies/pit bulls have no special mechanism that means they can do this better than any other dog.

singinghinnies my staff is besties with a yorkie too. hes 14, has no teeth and smells like hell. haha!

Bodicea That would probably include all terrier breeds as an absolute minimum- if they were not bred to not let go at the very least they were mostly bred to kill, either rats or larger animals such as foxes. It would probably also include the majority of hounds as, again, they were bred to kill game.

There are a small number of breeds which have been theoretically bred to have soft mouths- mostly gun dogs such as labs, but without training, these can and do bite, and won't let go. Equally, some herding breeds are bred to snap rather than bite- but this is just as dangerous in its own way as they are more prone to snapping without warning at relatively minor provocation.

ScorpioMermaid Love seeing old grey staffies who have made it to old age, mines 10 nearly 11

So that's what makes it difficult fair enough. I would still rather get snapped at by a collie than attacked by a staffie any day of the week. Obviously it is too difficult to ban certain breeds and hence we have this problem. I still don't see why anyone would choose to have a staffie as a pet myself but there you go.

Is it Dog-Bashing Week on MN?
In the past few days we've had posts about how dogs reduce people's quality of life, dogs off the lead whose owners don't call them in and now this...

I honestly can't be bothered to read the whole thread. Just can't. Have had enough of them, and it's late.

The issue that some dog owners are not responsible, do not train their dogs, do not understand dog body language, and generally behave like idiots. Given that, banning dogs, or breeds of dog, is on a par with banning motorbikes because some idiots ride them at 130mph along the public highway, risking other people's lives and limbs.

But hey, it's dogs, not motorbikes, so it's a free-for-all. Let's ban certain breeds! Let's ban all dogs! Let's forget everything dogs do for us, and have done for us. Herding, hunting, guarding, guiding, searching for the lost, for drugs, for explosives. Ah, sod 'em. Just ban 'em.

Yeah, that sounds sensible. Sure. Great idea.
Head=>desk.

I wholeheartedly agree - it's owners that make dogs dangerous.

But it is a fact that the bigger and stronger the dog the more damage it can do. No one gets mauled to death by a JRT.

There have been 17 deaths due to dog attacks in the UK since 2005.
More than 200,000 people a year are estimated to be bitten by dogs in England, with the annual cost to the NHS of £3 million.
Hospital admissions due to dog bites have been steadily rising for the last five years:
2007-08: 4,611 hospital admissions
2008-09: 5,221 hospital admissions
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10429862/Dog-attack-laws-and-statistics.html

Bodicea Fair enough, obviously so would I- although the vast majority of staffies would hopefully give me enough warning signs to evade the attack- whereas if the collie just snaps, there is little you can do to avoid it- especially if you are a small child and that snap is at face height. Equally, though, I don't think a staffie attack is necessarily more dangerous than a Labrador attacking- and equally I am not convinced one is more likely than the other.

Stars, I'm very sorry to say I've never heard of that breed so I just googled them. Bloody gorgeous!

YABVU. What a mean thing to say. I can think of at least one alternative of things/beings that we could ban. But then I'd be just as horrible.

bunchoffives- here: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237532/Pet-Jack-Russell-killed-day-old-boy-escaped-stair-gate-attack-child.html

JRTs are unfortunately able to kill small children, and actually I think "will it kill someone" is the wrong benchmark. Surely being severely bitten is bad enough?

panda thank you! They are quite unusual still I think, but we adore ours

You are totally not being unreasonable. In fact i've compiled a list of all the dog breeds that should be banned, outright;

Poodles- They are known as being fantastic guard dogs, why would someone want an aggressive guard dog in their home?! Anyone that keeps a such a large dog must surely be a drug dealer.
Rhodesian ridgebacks- bred for hunting lions. In fact I saw some of these huge animals the other day, they were walking right next to some young people. Any second that wagging tail could have knocked one right over! Why are people in London hunting lions anyway, everyone knows they're endangered!
Boxers- They are descended from the bullenbeiser, the german bulldog. They clearly can't be trusted around any livestock. Their face is too mean looking and might scare a baby.
Border Collie- A working dog breed that rounds up sheep by snapping at them. They might try and round up children, thats dangerous. Everyone knows all sheepdog breeds are really snappy
West highland terrier Hardy dogs, bred for hunting otters, among other things. Why would anyone need a hunting dog in this day and age, when we buy all our food from Tesco? Poaching is illegal. Anyone owning terriers must be some sort of dirty gypsy deviant.
Chihuahua The most snappy, dangerous dog breed i've encountered. Very mentally unstable. One bit my dog the other day for looking at him.

Cats should be banned as well. They like to sit on babies' faces and suffocate them. When I was little I pulled a cats tail and it scratched me. The cat should have been immediately destroyed, nasty little brute.

Staffies are not large dogs, they are smaller than springer spaniels.

Our Irish setter had one jump at her and try to bite her, when I was growing up. She pinned it to the ground with her paw. That's how not big they are!

there are some frightening looking dogs around though.
I often feel a bit scared of them, just because they are large and powerful animals whose behavior cant be predicted.
We can be very anthropomorphic in the way we think about dogs...treating them as if they were honorary, if intellectually limited, humans.
But they have very different motivations and purposes to those of humans.
is there an upper limit on dog size?

what if someone bred an enormous and absolutely terrifying variety of dog, a huge muscular thing with massive jaws that looked as if it could bring down an elephant>
I understand that there is a special and important relationship between dogs and people but...wouldnt that be a bit much?

Suzanne There is a biological upper limit on dog size. Great Danes and Irish Wolfhounds both usually measuring about 90-100cm at the shoulder and weighing usually at least 7-8 stone are about the biological maximum possible for dogs- their lifespan is usually around 8 years and they are very prone to certain illnesses.

I ride horses- they are large, powerful animals who's behaviour can be unpredictable. Getting on their backs is really a pretty stupid thing to do. The main difference between horses and dogs is that most "horsey" people do learn horse body language etc to predict more dangerous behaviour and usually make a real effort to train desirable behaviour and remove dangerous behaviour. Whereas with dogs, this often is not the case.