Another dog attack, man killed, can this just go on?

[IthinkIamAnAlien]

Just on the news - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-66817795

Week after week, there is something wrong with dogs (and the owners) today, I grew up with them and this never, ever happened. Maybe because dogs were treated as dogs and not trophy animals. Awful for everyone.

I think they should look more at why each person wants one of these dogs, and if they have the time for a dog. That they will take them to training classes until they are about 2 years old past the crazy young age. People always seem to say yeah we took our pup to the 6 week puppy class but it finished. My dogs went to training classes each week, and every one including the small dogs got to do agility courses too. And both the owner and dog went home happy but tired.

OR…maybe a more sane approach would be to have some kind of licensing.

So people have to be vetted and have an authorised licence to own a dog. It may help to reduce the amount of dipshit irresponsible dog owners.

I think they need to stop letting ppl sell or give away pets on social media sites. A guy on fb is giving his Rottweiler away to a guy. He says he lives in a flat, and his dog is too strong because it pulls him over. And he never realised it would grow that big.

Like this sort of thing.
People are so reluctant to PTS even when it's clearly the correct choice.

Whoever wrote that comment doesn't seem to have a good understanding of the difference between being reactive to dogs and to humans. They're usually entirely different things, especially with bull breeds.

Pitbulls were specifically bred to be dog aggressive and 'game' but most people don't know that an equally important trait was that they needed to not be aggressive to humans. This was because it was important that the owners could separate the dogs once one had 'lost'. Any dog that bit a human would not have a long career as a fighting dog.

The comment in the photo, that is.

Agreed.

I think the answer is in your question. Most men have them to portray an image. Same as why some men like to shave their heads despite not thinning, and also obtain lots of muscle.

It's a defence/deterrence mechanism and not surprising given the rate of male violence. Tackling that issue may help but it's not going to happen anytime soon. There are endless threads about the safety of women walking around at night (one in AIBU right now) and yet people still seem to struggle with why a demographic 4x more likely to be attacked by a stranger might want a big scary dog walking next to them.

I did laugh at the men shaving their head when not thinning. My DH shaves his hair because he's gone grey and looks younger with shaved hair.

He's got a good job and is not a thug. He doesn't go to the gym though. We go hiking.

Most men have them to portray an image. Same as why some men like to shave their heads despite not thinning, and also obtain lots of muscle

😂so women don't dye their hair when they aren't grey or go to the gym to look toned? This is the most stupid comment I've read in a long time. I'm a woman but aren't men allowed to look after their appearance?

I did too. There were 3-4 adult men trying to beat them off with sticks, bins etc and it made no difference. They were all terrified, because that is how intimidating those dogs were. I can't think of many breeds that resistant to being whacked around the head like a pit bull is. There is no reason anyone needs to own an animal with such a developed attack response as a pet. None. It's like dating a psychopath and thinking you've cracked the code because he seems very calm initially. Except you know there's always a risk he could turn on you, because it's his nature which you don't understand. No one really understands these Franken-breeds and it is madness to be so arrogant at thinking you can control them forever.

Do women dye their hair to look intimidating?

Here we have an upstanding young man 'looking after his appearance' on the way to a game of rounders. 😂

And the fact the dog was being hit etc and did not stop does not surprise me.

These are game dogs, bred for perseverance no matter what is thrown at them. Not only that but they enjoy it. Game dogs have a disregard for any threat, injury or exhaustion when doing their job, in this instance tearing a man to death.

Initially ‘game’ in fighting dogs was selected by watching for or in some cases deliberately injuring the dog who was clamped on (to say a bull) and breeding from those who endured the fight to the bitter end.

It’s these genetics (as bully’s are essentially pit bulls in disguise) that cause this behaviour and make them so lethal. It hasn’t been hard to channel that genetics into being aggressive to anything particularly as the human aggressive ones have not been removed from the gene pool (instead are some of the most prolific studs) Being so horrifically inbred hasn’t helped either, breeding human aggression to human aggression adding in a tonne of health issues and then allowing complete low lives to own them and parade them around to intimidate the public.

But don’t worry, just listen to the bully excusers because cuddles and kisses can erase all of those hundreds years of breeding and fine tuning 😊 That’s exactly why criminals sourced pit bull genetics from underground banned breeds and imported semen from America to create them…for cuddling and kissing purposes.

If you have no access to spaces where you can safely let your dog off lead WITHOUT bothering other people, you shouldn’t have a dog.
Big dogs are not appropriate pets for people who live in small homes in urban areas.

Well he looks like a thug.

The men shaving their hair when not thinning was hilarious.

I agree. The amount of people I see letting their dogs off lead, that have no recall ability is astonishing.

But I do think licensing should be enforced and mandatory training should be included in that, in order for someone to own a dog in the first place.

Back in the early 90’s when I was 14, a friend and I walked past a guy walking an Alsatian.
Despite the dog being on a lead, it crossed in front of its owner and bit my leg. (Luckily, along with my reflexes, the thick tights I had on under my thick jeans helped create a better barrier and prevented it from taking a big chunk out of my thigh and instead I walked away with ripped jeans and tights, a huge teeth mark shaped scratch and some blood drawn). So that was from a dog ON a lead!

😂

He's definitely got a bully dog.

Interesting we seem to accept that some dogs are simply aggressive by genetics. Presumably human DNA avoids such problems ?

Could be problematic

Some have already tried claiming particular groups of humans have specific traits

@SerendipityJane it’s not that some dogs are ‘aggressive’ but some are more prone to certain behaviour than others, the same way a collie is more prone to herd than a greyhound. Otherwise what would be the point in breeds at all? If the breed didn’t fulfil its purpose it wouldn’t have been created in the first place so of course components of behaviour must be genetic.

Some dogs have lower tolerance to certain situations or environments than others. I tend to find a cavi for example would be more tolerant of a bad experience than a GSD, some dogs just don’t have the ability to shake things off easily.

I expect there are many people who can tolerate certain experiences better than others or who are more prone to developing certain behaviours or conditions than others. We don’t breed for traits though, generally!

Do you not think that certain breeds of dogs have certain traits which have been bred for?

The issue with genetics is that the aim of breeding in animals is to enhance specific traits be that speed, temperament, size, etc.

When people breed from aggressive dogs there is a higher chance that the offspring will be aggressive too (though obviously there are no guarantees) and if you keep breeding aggressive dogs together the chances are higher and higher each time.

The reverse happened when we domesticated dogs thousands of years ago - we encouraged the friendlier animals to breed together as they made for better companions.

The same can of course be applied to humans, it's just that we don't use the theory and instead opt for (usually!) love. Tall humans having children together will usually (again not always) have tall offspring. Genetics are just as strong in people, we just pay less attention to them until things start going wrong like in the case of the Hapsburg family (How Inbreeding Doomed the House of Habsburg - 23andMe Blog) or the high rates of infant mortality in some Amish communities (No one knew why some Amish children were dying suddenly, now researchers have some answers | CTV News)

I work in horseracing, pedigree and bloodlines are EVERYTHING and it is not uncommon for people to overlook things like temperament when trying to achieve their end goal of breeding a champion.

Of course you have the nature v nurture argument but I've been around racehorses long enough to know that certain families just have a nasty streak in them and that cannot be put solely down to nurture.

I learned a long time ago that what I think matters not a jot.

However, as I suspected, once we agree (and it doesn't have to have any basis in reality) that dogs can and are bred for certain traits, it's only a nanosecond before some folk make the connection to humans.

Hence my use of the word "interesting".

You are the ‘folk that had made the connection to humans’ though

Others have tried, it’s problematic.