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!

"The assumption that the inner life of the dog is analogous to the inner life of humans appears to be ubiquitous!"

No, I'm pretty sure it's very very different, I have no idea if there are complex abstract thoughts going on in a dog, I suspect not...but that doesn't take away from the recognisable intelligence and communication that does happen between two different species.

Oh and going slightly more back on topic...I don't think many responsible dog owners would disagree with a proper licensing system, it would benefit us too as bad dog owners cause problems for people whether they own dogs or not.

This is what my Stafford thinks of your post..............

Chiggers

If all dogs were muzzled in public, they couldn't give me or DD doggy kisses. That would make us very sad.

Don't approach strange dogs without the owner's permission, don't harass dogs, neuter your male dog unless you're planning to breed him, and if you have a snappish dog, keep it on a leash. Unfortunately, it's hard to legislate common sense.

I like the idea of the system of dog licensing in Australia, where it costs more to have an unneutered male dog. I suppose you could even have the costs scale by weight, so that dogs that were bigger and more capable of attacking people cost more to license.

I got attacked by a pit bull when I visited Wales (well, it was a dog that, if I'd seen it in the US, I would have described it as a pit bull, I don't know what its actual breed was). It tried to lick my face off!

It might well have been a pit Geeky, you can have them legalised here. They do have to be muzzled in public and are on a register or approved pits (they're temperament tested) probably a very staffie looking staff though! They are similar at first glance or if you don't know the physical differences.

I was in a pub years ago and there was this lovely, big fluffy akita. he'd lick you to death, honestly. Such a softie. But he was fluffy. Like, really fluffy.
One day, there were loads of kids running about the pub (it was past 8oclock but their parents didn't care) and the dog was sleeping next to his owner. One child then jumped on the dog while it was sleeping. the dog cried out something awful and bit the childs arm and threw the child off.
The dog had to be put down. I was so upset, but it was NOT the dog NOR the owner's fault. That dog loved attention, but what do they say? "let sleeping dogs lie" which in this case can be taken literally. DO NOT jump on a dog while it is sleeping. That was the child's parent's fault for not taking their children out of a pub after 8pm. and just going "charlie, sit down" half-arsed, instead of what my mum would do, grab me, whisper in my ear "If you don't SIT down NOW, NICELY, you're NOT going to have tea, DO YOU UNSTERSTAND ME?!"
These parents clearly didn't care, that was the problem. Dogs get wound up extremely easily, especially if a child keeps hitting it with a toy it will try and grab the toy and play with it. Unfortunately, tiny hands get grabbed too. then the dog gets put down.

I really, really don't understand this. keep an eye on your children, just as I have always done. We had a cat that would probably maul you before the dog did.
Deed, not breed.

"The assumption that the inner life of the dog is analogous to the inner life of humans appears to be ubiquitous!"

No, I'm pretty sure it's very very different, I have no idea if there are complex abstract thoughts going on in a dog, I suspect not...but that doesn't take away from the recognisable intelligence and communication that does happen between two different species.

Yup, I too think dogs think differently from humans. That doesn't mean I can't assess a dog's mood - is it scared? Is it friendly? Is it supremely indifferent? It also doesn't mean that I cannot know that dogs have long memories (why else does my terrier want to duff up all dogs of the breed of one which duffed her up as a puppy? Why else does she stay much nearer to me in unfamiliar woodland?)

DOGS AREN'T PEOPLE. Sensible dog owners know this. We also know that dogs are endlessly interesting and mentally complex.

YANBU

We have adopted rescue Dobermans for years. Only one had to be euthanized due to it having been trained by others for dog fighting. Some come to us with ciggy burns, ribs showing and general neglect. People like us are concerned about the cruelty often meted out to these dogs. No need to ban Dobermans.

At least here in the US, "pit bull" isn't a breed. It's a description that gets used to describe dogs with a particular look. They have a reputation for being vicious, but I've met lots of pit bulls that weren't at all vicious. There used to be one living down the street from me that would jump on you and lick you if you gave her a chance. I like dogs licking my face (puppy kisses!), so I didn't mind, although I didn't let her get too close to DD. I don't think she would have bitten DD, but she might have jumped on DD and knocked her down. She could jump on you with a fair bit of force.

The one I saw in Wales was not muzzled, otherwise it would have had a hard time licking my face.

'If all dogs were muzzled in public, they couldn't give me or DD doggy kisses'

And that would result in...?
Why would anyone want to be licked by a strange dog in public? I wish dog owners would train their dogs not to approach/lick/jump up at people. I hate it when random dogs run at me or DSC, even if they are 'just being friendly' or trying to give us 'doggy kisses'. How do I know he hasn't just licked a dead animal or sniffed dog poo? Please keep your dogs away from young children, they may be balls of harmless fluff in your eyes but not everyone sees them this way. I don't want my DSC being licked by your dog!

I would be delighted if a law came in stating all dogs must be muzzled in public. At least people wouldn't fear being bitten, and police could confiscate any dogs not muzzled.

I disagree with all the posters saying certain breeds are not more aggressive/unpredictable. Temperament is influenced by genetics as well as how the dog is raised. Breeds were developed for certain desirable characteristics eg to gaurd property, see off intruders, herd livestock, protect livestock from predators, fight other dogs, restrain bulls etc. Not only has selective breeding resulted in certain physical characteristics, like powerful jaw, it has resulted in temperament changes. Anyone denying this is deluded. Of course there are exceptions (before anyone tells me how soft, cute and nervous their Rottweiler is)... but the impact of selective breeding can't be underestimated.

before u start your slavering its a shame u don't know any FACTS, staffies are 1 of only 2 breeds that the kennel club will recommend for family's

www.pickthepit.com

How many attempts will it take you to find the pit bull out of all these scary breeds :-)

ffs i didn't say all labs are harmless i said the ones my PILS had are harmless which is why it is a single dog that can be problematic not the entire breed

A lot of people will probably pick the cane corso as 'most pit like' even though it's a completely different breed with a different 'look'

Chiggers I can't believe how irresponsible you are being.

Those shelves look like they need serious attention!

"I disagree with all the posters saying certain breeds are not more aggressive/unpredictable. Temperament is influenced by genetics as well as how the dog is raised. Breeds were developed for certain desirable characteristics eg to gaurd property, see off intruders, herd livestock, protect livestock from predators, fight other dogs, restrain bulls etc. Not only has selective breeding resulted in certain physical characteristics, like powerful jaw, it has resulted in temperament changes."

Different traits, yes absolutely, not aggression though - random aggression is useless for anything.

Dogs bred for fighting for instance, while you need them to be capable of fighting other dogs, you also need to be able to grab your injured dog mid fight take it away and treat it - you can't do that if it'll bite you.

So while those breeds are more likely to have the potential for dog aggression, they're also bred to be very respondent to humans and training.

Rottweilers are bred to guard and round up cattle as well as other odd jobs like pulling carts...again, what use is aggression in a dog that needs to be ok with your cattle and that you're going to use to take you to market in a cart?

So the traits that are different from say a gundog is that they're more cautious and independent, they will decide for themselves what to do in certain situations if they haven't been taught what to do...but, as pets they're exposed to normal situations and know then how to behave in a park or walking along the street or all those pet type situations. They're also harder to train because they aren't automatically eager to please like a gundog, if you're not willing to build a positive relationship with them as an owner it does show in their behaviour.

So if you don't do your homework and take on a trickier to train breed, then are a bit inept...yes there are breeds more likely to have problem behaviours - but not all the breeds popularly regarded as dangerous are harder work and some of the breeds people commonly get as pets without even thinking about it are also not suitable for inept owners.

I'm not at all sure how much selective breeding could alter temperament. Some characteristics are more heritable than others. Something like coat colour in cats is easy to breed for, because it's controlled by one or a few genes. There are other traits, though, that aren't controlled by a single gene, and they're much harder to selectively breed for. If it were easy to breed animals for temperament, we as a species would probably have domesticated a lot more species of animals than we have.

Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel gives an example from botany of breeding almond trees and oak trees that produce non-bitter almonds and acorns, respectively. In both cases, there are the occasional wild trees that produce non-bitter nuts. It was not too difficult for humans to selectively breed almond trees to produce non-bitter almonds, because the bitterness is controlled by a single gene. In the case of oak trees, though, bitterness in acorns is controlled by several genes, and nobody managed to do it. (Cultures that ate acorns usually found some way of getting the bitter compounds out of them before eating them) The result is, you can buy non-bitter almonds at the supermarket, but not non-bitter acorns.

We're pretty sure that temperament in dogs is not controlled by a single gene. We know that things like past and present conditions that the dog lives in, and whether the dog is spayed or neutered, goes into temperament. It's not like breeding for coat colour. Even if it were controlled by a single gene, it still might not be easy to breed a specific temperament into a dog. You could have a recessive gene for a really nasty temperament, the way there are recessive genes for some diseases (in humans and in dogs). Unless you have some way of testing directly for that gene, which we've only had since the 20th century, it's hard to breed out undesirable recessive genes.

Yes, I think it's misleading to think that herder dogs like German Shepherds were bred for aggression. Quite the reverse, an aggressive dog couldn't be trusted to look after sheep.

"You could have a recessive gene for a really nasty temperament, the way there are recessive genes for some diseases"

Which is the most likely explanation things like cocker rage or that there's an issue with resource guarding in show line golden retrievers...(yes I know both issues are debatable in themselves)

Even if you do have simple genetic testing to find troublesome recessive genes (we don't for all problem genes in humans, I doubt we do for dogs), you have no guarantee that every breeder will use it. If a breed is popular, a less-than-ethical breeder has every incentive to produce as many dogs of that breed as possible, even if that means using poor genetic stock. A breeder might even be interested in producing aggressive dogs- there is a market for them, after all.

It's also possible that the gene for aggression has a heterozygote advantage of some kind, kind of like how human carriers for sickle cell anemia have enhanced resistance against malaria. We even have a known example of a gene that can have desirable effects (in some breeds it's considered desirable, at least) in a dog with one copy of the gene but cause problems when there are two copies- the merle gene.

Another problem is, genes are complicated. They don't all just affect one characteristic and leave others alone. The merle gene doesn't just affect coat and eye colour, in a dog with two copies it can also affect hearing and vision. There's a theory that Ashkenazic Jewish people essentially selectively bred for intelligence for centuries, and that side effects from this may have something to do with the large number of genetic diseases associated with Ashkenazic Jews (DH is Ashkenazic and we had him tested for a lot of them before we tried to have children. Fortunately he mostly tested negative and the one he's a carrier for I'm not a carrier for. For the record, DH is very smart ).

I posted b4 that YABVU but this is our staffie

I'm havibg a bit of a problem at the minute MrsDevere will my newly rescued dog only being able to fall asleep if he's either lied in my arms or very very close to me. Anywhere else and he just will not settle, cries, scratches himself very badly...

When we first got him he had a bad skin condition and was itching none stop, his body was covered in scabs and he'd bleed all over. He was underweight, infections in both ears, his claws curled into his pads and he wouldn't look anyone in the face nor would he play. He was very timid and seemed unhappy. He was used to being locked in a room on his own

Took him to the vets and with a lot of work (and expense) we've got him to how he should be. The vet was amazed at the difference in him. His skin and fur is now lovely, he actually plays now and just seems so happy and has giddy moments whereas he didn't before.

it's just the sleeping issue. I personally don't mind it I actually love it, but I know it's not good in the long run so am trying to stop it. Does anyone have any ideas? I asked the vet and she said we've done loads so far so to take it one step at a time but I think it would be best to get it moving...