Dog owners need to be aware of what they are buying and why. Anyone going out of their way to buy a XL Bully (what does the name even mean? XL = extra large and Bully is not a word that most civilised people would want applying to either themselves or their animals. It is specifically designed to conjure up a picture of aggression) is looking to project a certain image. If they just wanted a friendly family dog they would have gone for something with a bit more of a track record in breed traits, performance and personality.
However, it’s not just the Bully owners who have given very little thought to what they are bringing into their family home. If I see one more out of control cockerpoo I will scream - take one of the most intelligent, high energy breeds of dog with a strong drive to pick up birds, and cross it with an extremely high energy hunting dog bred specifically to spend an entire day sniffing out and flushing birds and small animals from even the thickest undergrowth, and you have a highly intelligent dog which needs a job, with an extremely well developed prey drive, bottomless energy, a need for constant interaction with their humans, and an ability to push through or jump over any sort of barrier. And then they are sold as being family pets. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it is only the fact that both spaniels and poodles are generally nice natured that more problems don’t arise.
I ride horses, and I can tell you there are very few breeds that are immune to being out of control around horses. I generally stand my horse still until the stupid owner had managed to catch their dog. The only thing that separates out the idiotic owners who have not put any effort into training their dog is how afraid I am of how much damage the dog could do to much horse. A poodle is far less likely to have the jaw strength to break my horse’s leg than a Bully is. My horse has been trained to tolerate barking dogs (he started his ridden career as a hunt horse in a bloodhound pack and has actually developed a great fondness for dogs) but he has been bitten more than once. I was told by one owner who I was trying to persuade to get his dog off my horse’s hind leg that if my horse kicked the dog it would teach the dog a lesson and he wouldn’t do it again, so he was happy to let nature take it’s course. The ignorance in this was astounding - firstly, in order for my horse to kick a dog he would have to rebel against all the training I had put into him. Kick one dog, might as well kick them all because horses are not clever enough to differentiate between which dog they don’t know that is likely to be bite them and which is not. Finally, it is very likely that the dog wouldn’t bite a horse again if my horse kicked it, because it would probably be dead. And then I would have the problem of having a horse (who at the time worked with dogs) who had form as a dog killer.
Every dog owner should have their dog trained and mannerly in public. If you cannot instil good manners (ie not jumping up and snapping at people running or at other dogs) then you really shouldn’t have a dog. Whatever the breed is. But think really, really hard about buying a breed that can kill a human - one slip up in training and you could be responsible for a very devastating situation. For the majority of people it is just simpler to buy a dog that cannot inflict this sort of damage. The only way to regulate the more dangerous dogs would be to have very strict breeding and ownership licensing laws in place for all dogs. This would probably reduce the number of terribly bred brachycephalic dogs too, but that is a whole nother soapbox issue!