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In reply to the discussion: Children Need Pit Bulls: A Picture Book [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)I don't think the issue is as difficult to comprehend as people are pretending.
There has been a trend, among HUMANS, of taking a group of larger terrier breeds, street-breeding them, dogfighting them, using them for generalized badass cred and so forth.
Take a burly, energetic, people-pleasing dog, and work on making it nasty for a while, and you get a nasty dog.
The ones that are surrendered may actually be the nice ones that didn't turn out vicious enough for the idiotic people pursuing them. Recall Mr. Vick and his drowning, electrocuting, and beating to death dogs that refused to fight, or didn't fight well.
Thirty or forty years ago no one thought big terriers were mean. The RCA dog. The one on Little Rascals. As someone noted, they were thought of as "nursemaids" in England.
Surely basic intelligence and reasoning can answer the question of why the dogs with the scary name and the big rep for being tought circulate among scary people with scary motives and no real love for dogs?
How seriously stupid would we have to be to conclude that all these dogs, loved for a century or more, still owned and cherished by millions of decent dog people, are suddenly horrible Devil Dogs out to kill everyone?