AIBU to tell you about the XL Bully I met today?

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I suspect I am BU and that this thread will descend into breed-bashing madness but as an antithesis to all the recent big dog-hating threads I'm going to tell you anyway.

I was walking my Beagle cross and Chihuahua when I noticed it walking with two (stereotypical bull breed owner looking) young men. I pulled my dogs to the side of the path partly because we were being harassed by an offlead obese chocolate lab owned by an old lady who either didn't notice or didn't care that her dog kept getting tangled in my Beagle's lead, and partly because my Beagle is a pup and I like greetings to be controlled as he can get over-excited.

The lads politely asked if the dogs could greet each other and I agreed. The first thing I noticed was how utterly stunning this dog was. It had a gorgeous, shiny blue coat and was clearly very well taken care of.

The next thing I noticed was how impeccably behaved it was. It stood between it's owner's legs as it was told to and politely greeted both my dogs with perfect, relaxed body language and didn't bat an eyelid when the obese lab tried to mount it.

Its behaviour was so calm and confident that my chihuahua, who had so far hidden from all the offlead spaniels, JRTs, and Labs who tried to greet her, ventured out from under the Beagle and said hello to it.

The lads told me it was only 11 months old and they've been socializing and clicker training it every day since it was 12 weeks old and it's just passed its Good Citizen bronze award.

It's the first time I ever met one of these in RL and I am besotted. It made a refreshing change to all the "friendly family" dogs who run at my on-lead dogs without invitation and jump all over us. I would much rather encounter a hundred of these dogs than one more out-of-control, off-lead springer spaniel.

Anecdata, I know, but it does support the theory that it is the owner and not the breed to blame for the recent rise in attacks by these dogs.

It's nature and nurture, surely?

Jack Russells have a rep as barky, bitey little shits which is not entirely underserved (I say this having owned a JRT). They were bred to go to ground after foxes and kill rats in farmyards, and so the ones in the middle of the JRT behaviour bell curve are independent, barky and bitey. Nobody argues with this. (However, the show ring has its hands on them now, so some of the little shit genetics might now be ameliorated, because the the more placid ones will be easier to handle and won't bite the judge.)

Bring up a proper farm JRT as nicely as you like, and while it might be a joy around people, it will still, on the whole, be utterly fearless towards other dogs and eager to kill any rat or rabbit that crosses its path.

Some of the bull breeds were (in fact, some still are) bred for dog-fighting, and were selected for the clamp-and-shake bite style (which you also see in terriers), and for dog aggression. If they decide to bite a person, they are going to do a lot of damage.

Bring one of those up as carefully as you like, and you may well find, when it hits social maturity at about 2-3 years old, that it doesn't like other dogs after all.

Somehow this is controversial.

That's lovely that you had such a nice encounter. I'd not heard of the Good Citizen bronze award before.

We have rather an opposite problem. Our small, very cute looking rescue dog is still under intense training but because of his breed everyone assumes he is super friendly and wants to be touched and loved on, when in reality, he finds that very frightening! So many people have touched him without asking, even people walking past us in the street have done a sudden pat on his head as they've gone past. Sometimes I wish he was a stereotypically "scary looking" big dog and then people might bugger off 😂 (We have a clip-on sign that says "STOP. Rescue dog. I need SPACE") now haha!

I think it's very naive to say it's not the dog it's the owners. Yes there are steps that can be put in place to "bombproof" any dog, bite inhibition training, socialisation and habituation as well as regular, effective training and obviously these things (done correctly) will greatly decrease any dogs likelihood to cause any damage to person or animal. BUT if large, powerful dogs are put into a position where they feel their only option is to bite (which can happen to any dog regardless of previous experience and training) the end results can be catastrophic! They are so powerful they could easily take down an adult so a small child doesn't stand a chance.

Any dog can bite, and even a small dog could kill a child but not every dog is so strong and powerful that an adult or even multiple adults couldn't pull them off in an attack and that is what makes them potentially so dangerous..

It sounds like these men are doing an excellent job with this dog and doing all the right things but I would never, ever have my children anywhere near an xl bull dog and I say this as someone who has studied anima behaviour to a fairly decent level and worked with dogs all my working life. The potential for damage is just too great in my opinion.

The problem is if one day they do turn the damage to a baby or child would be devastating compared to another breed.

I sometimes meet someone walking two of these dog where I walk my dog.

I'm fine around any breed of dog usually, as is my small breed dog, which contrary to pp is extremely well trained and very calm, but seeing these two huge intimidating looking dogs running off lead near to where I'm walking my dog always makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and I generally take my dog somewhere else; I know that several other dog owners who walk their dogs there feel the same.

The fact is any dog can be unpredictable and a dog attack can be nasty but if one of those dogs attack a human or another dog, the damage isn't just going to be nasty it's going to be horrific.

I once looked after a chihuahua for a friend while she went abroad for a wedding. You had to put gardening gloves on to pick it up because it bit your hands. Everyone just laughed it off, but if a larger dog behaved like that it would have been put to sleep

I would say a large breed reaches maturity at 2, 21/2. The real character starts to really show consistently at 2 years of age.

I suspect this dog will be completely different dog by then, acting on its natural instinct which was bred into it. It cannot be altered, trained out of it. Not his fault, it's just the way it is. Hopefully the owners will be prepared and able to handle the dog responsibly from that stage onwards.

You are responsible yes - my last rescue dog was a bite risk but lived 17 happy years as we managed her environment so she could never bite - but she was still a bite risk in the wrong situation and nothing we could do would change her nature. Her previous owners did nothing wrong. She was how she was probably due to poor breeding and socialisation as a pup. She was handed in for growling at the children.

You are responsible yes - my last rescue dog was a bite risk but lived 17 happy years as we managed her environment so she could never bite -

Dog was telling you it didn’t want to be picked up. If it had resorted to biting it’s because the humans in its life had ignored the earlier warning signs

I have to ask - why on earth did everyone continue to pick her up when she was clearly telling you she hated it and found it stressful and unpleasant?

She was trying to bite you because she's not a toy and didn't want to be treated as one!

@whataboutsecondbreakfast
Believe me, only when absolutely necessary! To put her in the car, or bring her back into the house after sh’d been out for a pee. She was very affectionate and whined to sit on your lap but couldn’t cope with being lifted

So why did the owners not buy steps or ramps to allow her to get around safely?

Obviously as the sitter you were only doing as instructed but I feel so sorry for small dogs who are picked up and carried when they clearly hate it. You wouldn't be able to do it with a bigger dog!

The dog growling is a warning that should be noticed. Aggressive dog would bite with no warning. Never punish a dog for growling because if you do it won't give a warning next time just bite.

The small dog should have had a checkup at the vets if it was painful to be lifted up.

These lads wanted to stud their dog. They paid a bomb to get him from champion bloodlines, which is why they wanted him to be well-socialized and well-behaved. It's the only way he would be allowed to register as a stud with the breed club.

All this sounds like total nonsense to me and more fool them for paying a bomb for him. As far as I understand, it's not a recognised breed (it's a cross breed for starters) so has no recognised champions, bloodlines or breed clubs. Like a PP said, once the dog is an adult its long term character will be more evident and by then it will weigh 60+ kilos. Not a chance I would ever take.

There is no reputable XL bully line they are a badly bred crossbreed. They are not an official recognised breed no pedigree just made up clubs. They are banned in other states and countries look at the attacks in the USA. Breeding a dog is a lot more than sticking a male and female together. The biggest issue is the breeders it's all about the money. Personally I think laws need bringing out about breeding dogs and ownership. Currently in this country anyone can breed a dog and own one and that's the issue. The wrong people breeding and the wrong people owning them and the one that suffers in the end is the dog.

Sometimes it is bad dogs though. Just like you can get bad people, even from "naice" homes.

It really doesn’t change anything.

No dog should be trusted. None.

This beautifully behaved bully may change in temperament as it gets old, be easily irritated due to an injury or sickness or be scared into acting defensive. The result could kill a full grown man.

An overfriendly bouncy Maltese is not going to do that, is it? Might nip- but rip your throat out, no.

You may as well have written this about a responsible, sensible gun owner.

Exactly.

it is the breed.

the owner, however responsible, doesn’t change the fact that it’s pure muscle with huge fucking jaws.

And now it has been disclosed pit bull semen was brought into the UK to use to breed xl bullies.. Again imo nice ddogs in the right hands. Deadly in the wrong ones. Too many wrong hands spoiling it for the decent owners. And there are some.

That's as ridiculous as saying you saw one greyhound running at a slowish pace across a field and therefore you cant understand why anyone races them

@Branster @EdithStourton @Labtastic you’re all 100% right. My dog is a lurcher and she had very little prey drive until she turned 2, then it was like a switch flipped and she has to be on-lead everywhere except secure fields or she’ll disappear after the first thing to cross her path. She was socialised with as much of everything as we could during lockdown (we have older dogs too, she was a lockdown dog in the loosest sense as we got her early 2021 and everything was pretty much back to normal by the time she was 6 months and the second period of socialising came around) and has a recall command that works perfectly as long as she locked in on something she wants to chase.

We Socialised her with the neighbour’s cats, in and out of the house, and she didn’t really care about them; now she is incredibly prey driven particularly for cats and squirrels. It’s in her nature, and it would be stupid to expect a sighthound to be fine with cats out and about after they hit maturity. (Though they can be fine with them inside, and there are exceptions, the ex-racers with very short careers showed lower prey drive than the other dogs, in some cases, almost no prey drive at all.)

She was socialised with other breeds of dogs (unlike racing greyhounds) and loves little dogs most of all (she lives with a bichon mix rescue) and has no interest in chasing dogs (she prefers to be chased by other sighthounds, as long as they’re not too bitey.)

Her mum was a working border collie and she was collecting her toys onto her bed at 8 weeks old and tried her damnedest to herd me in the garden. Because of this I taught her treiball (exercise ball herding).

Breed traits DO matter, some show up earlier than others, and even if some sighthounds are okay with cats, it would be the act of an imbecile to walk their cat right up to a lurchers teeth.

I'm not convinced personally

And some dogs live happily with cats. But cats outside their home is chased.