The whole 'nanny' breed thing pisses me right off.
For a start, that originated with dogs that were bred to fight other dogs in the pit. To understand this you have to know this 'sport' was rather like boxing - dogs were matched against one another in timed rounds - split up by a person/persons getting in the ring with them and splitting them physically, and re-matching them.
Winners were determined on points for holding, still being game, still standing etc etc (not in fact on whether one killed the other).
That meant that the dogs HAD to be absolutely handleable by people in the middle of a fight, in a pit, surrounded by yelling humans, probably whilst also injured. They also had to tolerate being stitched up without anaesthetic.
That meant that no matter how good a fighter your dog was, if it wouldn't be safe to handle in the pit or out of it, it was worthless, so it wasn't bred from.
And that selected for dogs with an incredibly high pain threshold, that were incredibly people friendly and tolerant of all sorts of handling.
Most of these dogs also lived in the family home - again, dogs that were a danger around the kids were less likely to be bred from and more likely to be killed.
But that is in the past, there are very very few dog fighting rings like this now and they're so underground not only would you never know where but you'd never meet their dogs anywhere in public either. (good.. but..).
Now, instead of this we have a new breed of macho dickhead who wants to parade around with his dog slavering at the end of a chain, who will meet another dickhead in the park and let their dogs off in the secure kids play area or tennis court to rip chunks out of one another for the sake of kudos, ego, some weird sort of self defence... who knows.
There is NO selective breeding for that super tolerant, super human friendly nature, amongst these unregistered, non-pedigree 'type' dogs.
Just a willingness to use aggression - and yes the owners of these dogs will indeed tolerate being bitten themselves in the course of handling and 'training' these dogs.
It is these dogs that are being sold in pubs, sold as guard dogs to be kept chained in the yard, sold as protection dogs to keep someones drug stash safe. It is these dogs that are bred from and sold cheap in the free ads or by word of mouth. Often, these dogs are sold on when the original owner realises they've fucked up and can't handle the dog.
To put that earlier list of cases into context:
Kellie Lynch was walking two potentially underfed Rottweilers with her friend - two little girls with a pair of dogs that outweighed them both put together. She went for a wee and the dogs came over and her laughs and then shrieks triggered a predatory response. Who knows how they had been trained or raised, but it was the 80's so probably not aversive free (they were walked on choke collars as was almost every dog back then).
David Kearney and his friends climbed into a yard with potentially 4 Rottweilers in it, to taunt the dogs (they claimed they were going after the ball but later admitted that wasn't true). The dogs were unsocialised and alone. The paper reports the boys didn't know the dogs were there but I find that impossible, there is no way those dogs in a 30ft yard did not bark or make their presence known before the boys climbed in!
Cadey-Lee Deacon was unsupervised in a room two unsocialised Rottweiler guard dogs had access to. Another contributory factor is that the dogs owner was not present, the dogs lived on the flat roof of the pub.
Archie-Lee Hirst - was in the care of his 16 year old aunt, as were two other children aged 6 and 7. The 7 year old took Archie-Lee out to see the new dog who was tied up in the yard. She had been bought from a pub as a guard dog, and the seller said she wasn't good with kids and the children were all told not to go near her. The 16 year old ran out of the house and tried to stop the attack and could not. This was again an unsocialised, under exercised, untrained dog with a known issue around children.
James Rehill - it is almost certain that he collapsed/had a stroke/had a fit and his dog freaked out and was trying to wake him (there are other examples of this happening with other breeds too).
So in all but one of those cases, children were with dogs, without their adult owner, dogs were unsocialised, poorly trained, poorly housed etc etc.
The common denominator here is not the breed, but the way these dogs were raised, handled, housed and bred.