Spay Pit

How did offering free spays and neuters for pit bulls work in San Francisco? Seems that the free, but mandatory, fixes have really brought down the number of pit bulls the shelters have to euthanize.

Are there less pit bull puppies now, or just more careful breeders?

http://www.dogsbite.org/blog/2008/09/flashback-sf-pit-bull-sterilization-law.html

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Loose Pit Bulls

Pit Bulls kill man out for a walk. West Virgina calls it a misdemeanor, but may soon change the penalties.

At the least, it is negligent homicide. People know that pit bulls can kill, letting them run loose . . . what kind of careless is that?

And a chained big mean dog in your yard? Like a swimming pool in your yard or worse. People can’t always see a mean dog on a long chain. And, like a swimming pool, little kids can walk up to a chained dog and die.

Chained dogs need a fence around them to keep the children apart from them.

And a pack of dogs? Keeping a pack of pit bulls and letting them run loose? If I get a pet tiger and let it run loose, and it kills your kid? A pack of pit bulls, surely people should know better than to let them run loose.

http://www.wvnstv.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=71577

People with pit bulls to sell often say they are nice dogs, but so a Labradors, beagles, foxhounds, Golden Retrievers, and mutts. Why buy a pit bull, if your aren’t looking for a mean dog or a mean dog image?

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Pit Bull links

Terrierman did a very good post on pit bulls today. Check it out. But here is a link to one of my favorite post he did on pit bulls, and it has a bunch of comments, which he replies to.

http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/10/pit-bull-rights-verus-pit-bull.html

A site with statistics on pit bulls, as well as information about people is:
http://www.dogsbite.org/

Myself, I have watched the neighborhood I moved away from, go downhill, mostly due to pitbulls. These dogs, owned by 3 different homes, made it unsafe to walk to the neighbors, and sometimes unsafe to get out of the car and walk up to my own door.

The pit bulls were smart enough to hear the dog catcher coming and hide. They had been chased before.

Were other breeds a problem? Yes there had been dogs who ran loose who made a habit of running up to children and nipping them, but they did not bite hard enough to break the skin.

And there was a territorial Akita that ran people off one street. And a Shar Pei that attacked other dogs. A few purebred bird dogs that attack other dogs (rare, most bird dogs were not mean).

But there was only one other breed of dog than ran loose and rushed adults in their own yards – a purebred chow.

But of the dogs that personally rushed, stalked, or stared at me growling while I was at or near my own home, all of them (except the one chow) were purebred pit bulls.

Odd, but now that I think about it, the dogs that were a problem in other areas that I visited, were purebreds too.

Maybe the people who bought mutt puppies did not have the money to bail their dogs out of the pound when they got picked up? But mutts were NOT a problem where I grew up.

I didn’t realize that until just now writing about it. All the nasty dogs were purebreds. None of the mutts were.

I have always liked mutts, that must be why. I knew enough, even as a kid, to know which were purebreds.

I must of realized, on some unconscious level, that the it was only purebreds who were a problem. I never thought about why I liked mutts more.

For a while, I did raise purebreds, because you could not sell mutts for money- people were into the purebreds then. But I gave up purebreds because too many of them had health problems, or weird temperament problems.

I doubt that mutts are really that much nicer – I suppose that it is just a money thing – that people who pay 350 dollars for a puppy are more likely to bail it out of the pound than someone who got a free puppy. So even the nasty purebreds who ran loose were bailed out.

There was one mutt who ran loose near where I lived (before the pit bull became popular) and it was a nice dog. Maybe I am wrong, maybe the purebreds who ran lose were meaner because they were inbred, or for some other reason.

But a dog that bites and hangs on without letting go, is far more dangerous than a dog that nips and runs.

Still, no dog should be allowed to run loose in a city.

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Pit Bulls

People sure say a lot of stuff about pit bulls, pro and con. Most of what you read about pit bulls are simple statements – but it is a complicated subject that can’t be expressed in one post.

Wolves do have instincts – inherited knowledge, drives.

Dogs are modified wolves (modified ancient wolves). Different parts of the wolf’s genetic code have been damped down, or turned up – with different adjustment for each breed.

Like if you looked how a hundred different musicians adjust the bass & treble type controls to customize their music, you would find that different songs and different types of music are adjusted differently. Same with dogs.

People who bred herding dogs bred to up certain traits, and to dampen down other traits.

People who fought dogs turned up the aggression and tenacity, and dampened down submission and going through ritual greeting (canine language codes usually done instead of fighting).

Each type of dog was customized by the profession that started it. Pit Bulls were made by dog fighters – that is a truth that can not safely be ignored.

Beagles were bred by people who kept them in packs. Bird dogs were bred by bird hunters who wanted a dog with a soft mouth (soft bite – gentle pressure), who would help people get birds, but not try to eat the bird themselves.

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Bully Type Dog

Dog breeders need to focus on breeding healthy, fit, dogs, that fit into our society.

They need to produces dogs with all the wolf instincts (programs) which would be harmful to the dog or to society, bred out (genetically deleted).

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What about this dog? He seems healthy & fit. He doesn’t look inbred.

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He doesn’t have hair growing down to the ground or a pushed-in nose. His coat looks relatively trouble free. He is the kind of dog many men like the look of. He looks protective.

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But dogs like him are killed every day in shelters, because nobody wants them.

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A shelter worker told me, that big dogs, especially bully breeds like this one, are only in demand when they are young puppies.

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That’s because people are often frightened to take a big dog home, especially a bully breed. They feel safer taking home a small dog, or a puppy who they can watch as he grows – so if he starts to go bad, they hope to catch the problem before it explodes in violence.

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Dogs have been know to kill their owners or their owner’s friend or family.

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But much, much more common are nasty dog bites that cause weeks of suffering or disability.

How can a person know which dogs will go bad?

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You can’t always know. But a 20 pound pit bull, who goes crazy, is not as bad as an 80 pound pit bull that goes crazy.

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And the statistics show that pit bulls & Rottweilers cause a disproportionate amount of deaths and serious attacks.

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I don’t write the statistics, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) does keep tract, as does:

http://www.dogsbite.org/

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Hiding from the truth wont change the problem. More effort needs to go into understanding what the problems are and how to fix them, because if answers aren’t found, Breed Specific Legislation (outlawing pit bulls, etc), will take out several breeds.

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If it becomes too difficult to enforce breed bans, the laws are likely to just prohibit all medium or large sized dogs, no matter what breed.

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Some areas don’t have a big problem with dogs, but other areas have bad problems.

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photo source:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:100_1347.JPG

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Am pit bull.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AmericanStafforshireTerrier.jpg

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Bully breed dog.

Photo:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mann_smiling.jpg

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Small but tough.

Photo:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Per1.jpg

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Off the bus

Today, there have been two dogs in the news, so far.

One is a lost girl, believed to have been abducted. The news film showed a line of police in flack type vests, all walking behind a bloodhound on a long leash. Even if the dog doesn’t always find the person, they help show where the trail ended. Dog’s can lead the police to exactly where the girl was put into a car.

Learning to read a tracking dog is a rarer art than what it was, like tracking footprints was useful in Daniel Boone’s era, and cub scouts might still learn it, but few people use much woodcraft anymore.

The other dog in the news was a pit bull. Not even a nice little show Staffie, but a full blown pittie with short cropped ears. Ugly as all get out – unless you believe that ugly is bad behavior, and that a dog’s beauty is in a dog’s desire to please – then, the dog would have to be called beautiful.

What does this pit bull do? He helps his owner, a war veteran, maintain emotional calm. I understand fully. Taking a dog with you, means that you are not alone. Going somewhere alone is hard on a traumatized person. The pit bull is his buddy.

This pit bull is also a trained service dog to help him. They were denied the right to get on the bus in Miami – that’s what the news was about.

I have no problem with vaccinated, neutered/ spayed, TRAINED, and clean, bug-free dogs, on a leash in public spots, and on buses.

I’m NOT for a free for all or anarchy, with kids trying to hold onto huge dogs, in season female dogs or excitable unneutered male dogs on the bus, but I find no reason for a complete ban on dogs. Rules & regulations yes. But banning dogs from public places, no.

Ya know, when I first took on this site, I though there would be megabits of news on working dogs. There isn’t.

Ranchers still go about their business, with their sheep and cattle.

Police still take their dogs on patrol with them.

Military dogs work every day. They are very important, and there are lots of good photos of them on the internet. But like our soldiers, much of what they do is outside of the knowledge of civilians.

In the North people are gearing up for winter, and for some people, that means dogs that pull sleds – although snow cycles have taken over for some people.

Sniffer dogs still work the airports, and sometimes the ball parks.

Bed bug sniffer dog.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bedbug-dog21-2009oct21,0,4105965,full.story

Dogs that help the handicapped are a big issue, an issue that often involves military people, because working in the military is more dangerous than working in a store.

Dogs guide blind people and those with impaired vision.

Dogs serve as ears to warn deaf people, and those who are hard of hearing.

Dogs alert diabetics to when their blood sugar is off. Yes dog’s sense of smell is so good, they can smell changes in a person’s blood chemistry. Usefully bred dog have been bred to so focus on people, that they know what we are feeling better than we do.

Dogs can be trained to tell when a person will have a seizure. Alerted, people can pull over, get off their bike, go home, seek help.

Dogs also comfort us. Probably half of the population are, at least somewhat, pet-people, people who can bond with pets. It is in us.

Permission to cross-post.

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Bully for us.

Photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amerikansk_bulldog_blocky_bulldogs_svip_och_smilla.jpg

Are American Bulldogs a type of pit bull?

They are a bully breed. They will bite & hang (lock their jaws) and hold themselves off the ground by their teeth and not let go. They will maul – bite, hang on with their teeth, and shake their heads.

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They are used to hunt feral hogs. They have their role: as pigdogs.

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IMO, most pet bully breeds should be neutered/ spayed. Fixed dogs are easier to handle, not as emotional, and better around kids.

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They have the potential to be dangerous. They are not toy dogs.

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They are said to be good at hunting pigs.

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Pig hunting with dogs is NOT for everyone, but some people love it.

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YouTube, pig hunting with dogs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A46Ndk-ru0U

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Pit Bull Pup

Photo source:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apbt.jpg

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Die Loser Die!

The thing I dislike most about sled dog races, greyhound races, dog shows, and all other competitive events using dogs are “What do you do with all the losers?”.

“What do you do with all those puppies who you know will never become winners in the sport?”

Many breeds of dogs have been bred to be a specialist at a specific job,
if they are NOT good at that job, what happens to them?

Racing greyhounds who try to win, but can’t, have very little value.

Years ago, a breeder of these dogs told me she had the losers “put to sleep” (humanly killed) so that they would not end up being used in medical research or product testing.

Some losers are adopted, but many losers are killed. I believe it would be better if dog tracks became casinos.

In the Vick case, we all read about how the losers were killed for “underperforming”.
But dog fights aren’t the only dog competition where the losers die.

Dog shows are just another competitive event using dogs.

I have talked with many many show dog breeders.
What value does a dog have if the whole point of keeping him has been to own and show a winner, but the pup turns out to be a loser?

He is useless as a show dog because he doesn’t win, and he is usually useless for breeding because he hasn’t won.

To read the rest of this post, click on the blue POST title (not archive title).

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