[quote=outtamojo]”No human or canine is born to kill. No human or canine is bred to kill. The idea a ‘pit bull’ is alien to such concrete evidence and data, is absurd”
Huh? What data? If canines weren’t born to kill, I wonder how they managed to survive all those years before humans domesticated them because they are, after all,carnivores.
“Breeding for a predisposition does not guarantee behavior, i.e. a male and female human are tenacious business people, so they breed to pop out offspring who run fortune 500 companies.”
How does this relate to dogs? Ever watch a pointing dog work? Now try THAT with a rottweiler!
Btw, welcome to the Piggington board : )[/quote]
I think you’re both kinda right. Though I do take exception to the sentence preceding that which you posted.
Aggression is a behavior. Behavior is learned. Behavior is a response to outside stimuli.
Let me start by saying this is a subject that is dear to my heart and one with which I am quite familiar. I spent close to 20 years training dogs. That doesn’t make me an expert. There are lots of people that have done it longer than me that I think don’t know shit about dogs. And they may think the same about me. As far as I’m concerned, there is one expert in the world on the subject, and I’m reasonably sure he doesn’t post nor read here.
But here’s a few things that I do know about dogs and pit bulls more specifically.
Dog behavior is controlled both by what they’ve learned and what they were born with. Instincts are strong in some breeds, less in others. Pointers point. Retrievers retrieve. My dog (an Akita, which, by the way is probably a breed you do not want) will not retrieve. He will chase a ball and sniff it. And never bring it back. Dachshunds will dig (and probably be the alpha dog in any multi-dog household). Aussies will herd. In some breeds those instincts are quite noticeable in their behavior, in others not so much.
At up to 50 generations a century, undesirable instincts can be bred out pretty quickly with conscientious breeding. They can also be bred in. Most, though not all, pit bill breeders have been conscientious. Specially when compared to, for example, beagle breeders.
The breeding history of pit bulls is diverse. It is not an AKC recognized breed. It’s history includes bull dogs, bull terriers, staffordshire terriers, and probably a handful of others. The Am Staff is the closest there is to a pure bred. And many, if not most, Am Staff owners would never call their dogs pit bulls.
When it comes to most objectionable behavior, like biting, temperment is more important than obedience training. Temperment is individual to each dog, but breeding does have a strong influence. Dogs bite for two reasons. Fear and agression. Pit bulls breed (and i use that term loosely), based on their source stock, is one of no fear. They are almost always fearless dogs. Agression, however is not so common. (Not never. But anecdotal evidence does not prove much of anything about rate of occurence. Nobody publishes or tells stories of dogs NOT biting.)
The only published comprehensive breed temperment testing that’s been done in this country is done by the American Temperment Test Society. As of the most recent test data available, pit bulls test at above average, with over 85% pass rate compared to around 82% based on the testing of almost 30,000 dogs. (As compared with Shetland Sheepdogs which have a pass rate below 70%) They test slightly better (though probably insignificantly so) than American Staffordshire Terriers.
