I think before you accuse people of being unintelligent based upon their chosen profession or intelligence quotient, you should probably take a look at the character you presented us with in your first post. What I gleaned from it would be that you are initially on the offensive, while not being aggressive, you are being accusatory. You fail to present any form of reliable statistics to us, and on top of that, you will probably find very few reliable statistics between rumors and media hype on the web. and these are often fallible. You also claim people with high paying jobs are all stand up citizens, and sure some are, but look at many companies today who cut corners and save a little money at the expense of a large number of people, that’s politics, and this is not what this thread is about. My point being is that you are using a very biased approach to the topic of pitbull ownership and haven’t seemed to be gaining information, while being respectful and polite, but possibly ignorant of facts.

You also don’t consider the statistics of what you may have read in terms of the many variables behind them and their potential falibility. Media sells stories people want to hear, and more often then not they misconstrue figures and hide facts to tell a story that will lead to a winning headline worthy of catching someone’s attention as they pass by a newsstand. While some people throw out ratios such as 2% of dogs owned are pibulls but 1/3rd of dog attacks are by pitbulls, less scientifically break down the possible errors of such a statistic. For one, I highly doubt they are excluding bite counts from strays or animals with unfortunate pasts with neglectful owners who leave their dogs out when they lose a fight or they can’t train them properly. These bites would get counted to embellish this disparity between the two numbers. Furthermore, we have incompetant owners who don’t train their pitbulls properly, as with any breed. the difference is they are powerful, more so than many breeds, the difference is that they might be able to commit an act, whereas a “loveble lab” or “harmless yorkie” might not have the opportunity. To say a dog is more dangerous after it commits a deed than one who is restrained is understandable, but the fact that the drive is there in the restrained animal is often overlooked. I digress, further fallibility would lie in how many times an attack may be repeatedly reported by the “so-called statistician”. I’m guessing alot would have to do with number reported by a news company and I’d wager quite a few would have duplicate stories since pitbull bites tend to travel a bit further than the tiny pinch of a bichon. I’m not saying I’m right, but the world of statistics is so easily twisted.

How many people in these “successful” proffesions do you think really have time to train a dog properly? As for the people at home, what do you think their significant other might be doing? possibly cooking dinner or taking care of children. When you consider the time and effort involved in training and caring for a dog, you have to alot for the fact that these people probably aren’t spending quality dog training time with their pet. Now let’s throw a dog’s natural instincts in there. A dog may be more apt to dominance than another, and it takes a decent amount of time investment to show that the owner and humans are dominant over the dog. Look it up on google.

Small dog syndrome is another point I’d like to address. People don’t acknowledge that small dogs often get their way as they are “cute” when they exhibit signs of dominant behavior and end up thinking they are in fact above the humans they live with in their “family pack”. The yipping, constant attention grabbing, furniture climbing and aggressive barking towards strangers is not what a properly trained dog should be allowed to do. Apply this to larger dogs, if they were to show signs of these behaviors, they would be corrected and likely chastized, my point being the dog does not often take into account it’s physical size, as it is not aware, it is the mentality of the dog and it’s surrounding family/pack that cause it to show signs of dominance or submissiveness, and is unfair to judge them for that trait alone. Now, I don’t say an owner should not account for this, by all means they should absolutely understand “for the dog” that it is larger and behave accordingly, but when you have an owner who is permissive with a small dog, and then it has a larger dog, it would be very easy for things to get out of hand due to human incompetence.

I’d write more but I think you should seriously take some time to learn about these dogs from reliable sources instead of, as you might say “emotion driven bigots”. Learn how to pose a question instead of hiding behind misinformation and poorly thought out methods to demean people you don’t know.

IQ 147, profession: Engineering and Management

I’m quite nervous about taking my little guy to a local park even though it was suggested but from reading the experiences here it seems like my decision has been made for me. I don’t think I’ll be taking him to the dog park, it doesn’t allow leashes and I’d be quite fearful for something to happen. He’s been so well behaved when meeting other dogs and when I tell him to sit as a new dog approaches on the street while walking he will remain still as the other dogs investigate and will not move until I give him the go ahead. He even treats the neighbors dog like a dream and it’s not much larger than a squirrel.

I want to socialize him but I would not want to take a chance with so many strange dogs running around as I have no idea what their temperament may be toward other dogs, specifically mine. I have grown up in an area where all the dogs knew one another and you could let them out in the yard and they’d play with each other and you knew the owners and the dogs well.

Now I own a home in the city so things are a little different. Add to that this is my first dog after having moved out of my parents’ home for school. I’m fairly experienced but I’m pretty worried about other people and the way I have seen so many dogs raised. I really want to socialize my dog properly but I’m not about to jeopardize the community with a poorly though out choice.

I will go ahead and say that I am a new owner of a 6 month old pit (rescue) and I couldn’t be happier with my choice. I read about them extensively and tried my best to filter through the absolute garbage that seems to be the accepted norm about APBTs. From what I gather, all the statistics are so biased it’s not even remotely scientifically reliable. For one there are far too many variables in play such as how they were raised and what the quality of the owners, not just the current owner, has been for a particular animal. When you consider how many are in fact from bad backgrounds, and how many are from hell-like homes of “thugs and gangsters” as it seems most owners of the breed are (sarcasm there) you cannot rely on ratios of dog ownership percentages in relation to attacks. I’m not trying to defend something that isn’t true, I’m saying scientifically these statistics are a complete sham. Think of dog psychology, the alpha runs things, as an owner, you are responsible for being the dog understanding you are the alpha. This is the case with any and all breeds of dogs. The unfortunate truth is this, little dogs are viewed as cute and adorable when they jump on furniture without asking or climb into your lap without invitation, or bark at newcomers relentlessly. Should they bite, the fact that it doesn’t hurt makes it acceptable and laugh worthy. Let’s let the same scenarios go through using a pitbull or any number of large dogs or “aggressive” breeds. one bite, and they are off to the big yard in the sky. This is utter bullcrap. the pathetic thing is no one seems to understand this and they end up treating dogs as humans and applying human characteristics to dogs. Do you walk your toddler on a leash and have it go outside to relieve itself? Unless you are a terrible parent, you do not, so why would you treat a dog like a child, it just isn’t the way their brains have been designed to work. You need to understand the instinctual inner workings of the canine brain before you can start rumor mongering about agression in dogs and start educating yourself on important training techniques.

I apologize if that was rather ranty, but I’ve seen too much misinformation, distorted facts, and facetious statistics out there recently in my gathering of quality information to not pass by this thread without getting a little peeved at the garbage the poster brought to light. By that I mean the poster is a smart person and the article is garbage, just so there is no confusion.