If you own an X-L Bully (or similar breed) why did you get it?

[Kinut]

I’m not trying to cause a pile on, I’m genuinely curious to hear from owners on here.

I would guess the vast majority of owners on Mumsnet consider themselves responsible owners and their dog to be no threat. I often see it said that the dog is harmless/more likely to lick you to death/soft/great with the kids etc. but why did you opt for that breed?

You obviously wanted a family pet, and obviously care about the safety of yourself and loved ones, and you didn’t want a guard dog or to intimidate the public.

So why opt for a bully type and not another large dog with less surrounding controversy and innate risk? As I say, I don’t want a raft of insults towards owners, Im just curious as to why otherwise normal and responsible owners opt for these breeds?

To me this comes down to risk-reward. The reason I wanted a dog is to have a companion, a reason to get out of the house for some exercise, and something for my son to grow up with learning about care, gentleness and compassion. Also, a snuggle on the sofa, at the dogs choosing.

My reward is that I get all these things, and he delivers them in spades. But I am not naïve enough to think that there is no risk he would ever snap and bite if provoked, so I don't leave my boy alone with the dog. But even if I did, my choice of dog, the westie, would give a short sharp painful nip, that might break the skin at the very worst case scenario. There would be tears, maybe even a tetanus jab and a stitch. But no loss of life and limb.

If the worst case scenario is deaths, and even deaths to adult males in good health, how warped must your risk calculation be?

If you are someone who owns one of these dogs and honestly don't do so with the image of being some kind of hard case in mind, I wish you well, but your risk perception and ability to balance risk/reward is way out of whack. There are so many breeds that will bring you the same reward without the risk.

I'm a dog owner, over the years different dogs, different personalities, all manageable size mongrels with ability to nip, not lock their jaws on bone and drag. All have been fine around children , although care was taken, and children taught how to treat animals well, they have been best friends to the children. After a certain age/height/confidence I have left my kids alone in rooms/walks with the dog and felt all would be well, which it was - maybe luck who knows.
An above poster said about friends having, no kids, space, no visitors to allow bully type dogs to be rescued/homed...... I know people the same, creating an environment around the dog, not training the dog to its environment. Doors always needing to be closed, animals kept separate from kids, only walking at night ect this is unfair on the animal, all it's triggers are kept away from it, but they can still smell and hear them.
if a dogs too strong for you to walk, and keep others safe, if you have to lock it away to keep others safe, if it can't interact with other dogs! It's not a safe animal

Not quite. Rottweilers have never been banned. They have the potential to be extremely dangerous but also to be extremely useful. They also haven’t been implicated in the deaths of numerous otherwise fit and well adults. Most Rottweiler victims are children.

I know vets are great, but how do you think a vet can examine a dogs muzzle, teeth, mouth, tongue etc... without taking a huge heavy muzzle off?

The vets examination room and behind the scenes areas of a vets premises are not 'a public place', they're the private areas of a business. The muzzle laws apply to public places.

But there has been two fatal attacks by a Cane Corso, two by a Malamute, zero by a Belgian Malinois, zero by a Caucasian Ovcharka. That’s amongst all of these dogs to have existed in the UK since 1980.

And seven deaths caused by an XL Bully since this time last year.

No I’m not. I’ve answered this 100 times. Read the thread.

There have been fatal attacks by Belgians,and CO not in the UK though - same human demographic applies however.

There have been many very scary attacks by all the breeds I mentioned, but they won't be in the statistics, they weren't deaths but did involve serious injuries and in some cases (frighteningly, not all!) euthanasia of the dog as they were not first 'offences'... But these involved adults within the 'train scary breeds to attack people' industry and are swept under the carpet, hushed up etc. In at least two incidences I am aware of, hospitals were told a random dog ran up and did it, not that their OWN dog/friends dog did it.

It is only that these breeds are not so popular or easy to get hold of that we're not seeing more of this in the media.

Then we should ban all those kinds of dogs.

I really think we have to have a smaller pool of breeds to choose from, and that must be it - no exceptions. I am obviously aware all dogs bite, but there is a difference between a bite, and a proper attack where they are treating you like prey.

So you remember the press about Devil Dogs at the time? Or that they were used as guard/attack dogs for many, many years with all that entailed both here and overseas? That it was attacks by them (combined with references to The Omen) that led to the Dangerous Dogs Act?

After rotties and GSDs, it was ridgies and the like, then Pit Bulls (the 'type' being able to cover mongrels with staffy/boxer/greyhound in the mix) and others.

They were the scary, risky, massive, strong dogs of their time. Somebody using your rhetoric now would have said 'it's not as if they're necessary, why would you want one when you could have a labrador, a St Bernard, an Old English sheepdog or a Newfoundland if you want something big?'

My cousin and his girlfriend had an XL, it killed there neighbours dog. To this day they're adamant that it was 'playing' and the other dog must have had underlying health conditions. Their dog died as he ate something poisonous.
They then 'rescued' an XL from England before the ban. God knows how that's going but it's apparently 'soft'. They're both horrible. My cousin is actually in prison now and I hear the gf has the dog alone.

Embarrassed to be related.

Yes I remember. As I say, I’ve already addressed this. Have you read the thread?

Or we could follow other countries and ban using abusive training methods, ban the general public from training their dogs to attack (so only military/police licenced to do that) and have some heavy punishments for anyone caught training their dog to do this or using their dog as a weapon/to intimidate.

That would do far more good - because banning types doesn't work, types can be altered avoid fitting the illegal type critieria within a few generations. Bans just aren't effective, they're used because they are easy to implement and make it look to the public like 'something is being done'.

Surely that’s like saying we should ban murder or sexual assault? I’m not saying banning breeds will work either, but people who train their dog to attack hardly do it in public already. I’m also sure it’s illegal to beat a dog so the people who use physical punishment to train are unlikely to admit doing that either. People often say they should bring back dog licenses. But the counter argument is the bad people won’t do that anyway even if it’s the law. So the type of people who train their dogs to attack will just do it anyway in secret. How could you prove a dog has been trained? How could you prove that the owner was the person who did it? They’ll just say they rescued it and it came like that.

How would the law distinguish between a frightened reactive dog and a dog trained to be aggressive? It’s already illegal to have an out of control dog. I’m not sure how you’d word a law that bans aggressive dogs that would know which ones were trained to be like that and by the current owner.

100% agree
( but you'll get soemone talking in a very condescending way about simple genetics in a minute!)

Don’t agree- bullies have inbred dangerous traits. They will be dangerous whatever their environment or whoever their owners are.

They do indeed behave like any other dog. Until they don’t.

The vast majority of these attacks are from family pets. They are not from dogs who were being trained to attack. They are from dogs in whose DNA it is to attack, that is what they were bred for, and those traits remain.

He sounds ferocious. lol. Pug being a bully breed. Duh, especially with no teeth and his tongue hanging out. He sounds like a cute little old man.

Yes they're 'family pets'.. but you are wrong, just hop over to Tiktok to see how many trainers are offering 'protection training' to pet dog owners, and consider how many utter morons think they can do this themselves if they can't afford the extortionate fees the cargo-pants wearing man-bunned macho alpha twat down the road charges... and between the two set ups, you have a LOT of idiots who firmly believe they can and should teach their family pet to bite intruders/baddies/wrong uns, anyone they command the dog to bite.. etc.

They want to emulate the celebs, many of whom have 'family protection dogs' from horribly expensive companies who import cropped eared Dobermans, Giant Schnauzers, Cane Corsos etc and supply them ready trained.

The DNA thing about Killer Kimbo is bullshit, as I have said many times - bullywatch have absolutely no proof beyond some photocopied pedigrees written out by a fantasist trying to increase the price of the stud services/puppies. They can't supply any DNA evidence that any of the dogs claiming to be related to Kimbo actually are (and its possible if they wanted to!).

In the days of the Pitbull, everyone claimed their dog was related to Psycho, a famously dangerous dog. Same story, pedigrees made up by con-merchants ripping off idiot puppy buyers/breeders.

I work with dog owners daily, XL Bullies are just crossbreeds that fit a set of measurements determined by DEFRA. Some will have some very very dodgy genetics/epigenetics, some will not. There is no way to tell by looking at the dog.

It doesn’t matter who the dogs are related to, they are attacking and killing at an unprecedented rate and I think if it was politicians children being killed something would have been done a lot sooner.

XL BULLIES are all bred from shitbulls, pitbulls, bullybreed attack dogs, bred for strength and aggression, to bring down bulls or fight in dog fights. That is in their DNA. They are now making them bigger and stronger.
You can easily tell a bullybreed, measurements or not. I'd put the whole lot down, and stick with the safer breeds.

*ZigZagJigsaw *
I think its because there are Staffordshire bull terriers and then there are 'staffys'

There are a lot of staff crosses. There are also a fair few who fall under BSL when measured and should be more accurately thought of as pitbull. I think these long legged 'staffy' dogs probably have pitbull in their genetic heritage. Before and after the pitbull ban people were cross breeding these dogs. Like XLs who also have pitbull in them. The breeders are keen to create a bull breed dog that can be trained to guard and attack. A real staffordshire bull terrier is no more than 17kg and they are not bred to gaurd, not large enough, and generally can't be trained to do so. But the staffordshire bull terrier is a tenacious, determined and brave little dog with a specific type of bite because of the terrier in them. Yep terrier.....!

The lamb like Bedlington terrier was originally bred as a dog fighting dog. People don't run off at the sight of them.

Staffordshire PITBULL Terriers are indeed just smaller versions of a bigger pitbull, just marginally easier to fend off if you're a big strong man. They are still prone to violence, and are high up on the stats for attacks, both to humans and other animals.

Staffordshire bull terriers do not have pitbull in their breeding.

yep all true , the vets make a personal choice as to whether they want the xl’s muzzled or
not and none of the vet nurses / receptionists were bothered about them being muzzled behind the scenes .