For Halloween, dress your Pitbull up as a blood-thirsty Vampire and I bet a lot of people will think that your dog didn’t change at all! Or maybe, you could dress them up as a brain-eating zombie, even a sharp-toothed, vicious dragon, and people would still believe that your pitbull hasn’t changed a bit. Many people have a false sense of knowledge when it comes to the dog breed, the Pitbull.  Contrary to popular belief, Pitbulls that are adopted by kind people, and not people who just want to use them for dog-fighting, are actually very kind and not scary at all. As said in an article on Time, they quote a line from the movie, How to Train your Dragon, “Good dragons under the control of bad people do bad things”. This quote from the movie is such a good example of Pit bulls and how they’re sometimes mistreated. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Pitbulls used to be considered the perfect “Nanny Dogs” for children, until the media turned them into monsters.[/perfectpullquote]

Let’s Talk Pitbull History

For a while, Pitbulls were considered a super nice dog that was really good with children. In fact, in Alternet’s article, they say that Pitbulls used to be considered the perfect “Nanny Dogs” for children, until the media turned them into monsters. Pitbulls are super friendly and kind dogs, if you don’t raise them in an environment that is so harmful that they have to rely on their self-defense mechanisms. From the 1980s to now, Pitbulls are seen almost as Vampires, blood-thirsty and ready to kill, but there’s actually not a lot of factual information to prove that accusation. 

People Have Issues, Not Pitbulls

A study in 2009 in a Journal of Forensic Science found “vicious dog owners reported significantly more criminal behaviors than other dog owners.” Pitbulls seem to be a favorite for dog owners who participate in dogfighting activities, although they weren’t originally bred for that, obviously. Pitbulls were originally bred to be a catch and retrieve dog to hunt, drive livestock and to be a loyal family companion, now, people are breeding them for dog fighting. With this information, we can gather that the main reason for harmful Pitbulls is because of the owners, not the dogs. In fact, Pitbulls were known as the most children loving dog breed around, people even said that they would not be a very good guard dog because of their extremely friendly nature, even towards complete and utter strangers. Many Pitbulls are just not properly cared for and are neglected and abused, thus making them either extremely skittish and afraid of everything or making them feel like they have to rely on their self-defense skills and not trust anything, and this doesn’t even go just for Pitbulls, it’s any and all dogs that have had to go through abuse or neglection from abusive owners. Obviously, Pitbulls are innocent, people just have issues.

Statistics, Statistics Everywhere!

Everyone looks at statistics if it’s for what they’re biased towards. People rarely look at statistics that aren’t towards their bias, don’t tell me you don’t, I do it even! Some people even go as far to look at a website that has NOTHING to do with what they are looking for, but for some reason they still did stats on it, I mean it’s like they’re going up to a teenager who works at 7 Eleven and asking them some question about the percentage of aliens on Earth. They have no idea! That’s just like what people do with Pitbulls, people always skew numbers and mess everything up when they are so biased that they try to use anything to prove that they’re right and you’re wrong. Dog bites and attacks are all effects that had a cause. Whether or not the person understands why it happened, there’s always a cause to a bite or attack, two leading causes are pain and fear.

By Sean Davis on Flickr

Secondly, dogs get misidentified all the time! Pitbulls are always misidentified for bites or attacks that they didn’t do. Greyhounds, Boxers, French Bulldogs, and Presa Canarios all come in brindle colorations but brindle colored dogs often get labeled as Pit Bulls. So when you are looking at statistics make sure you’re looking at the right statistics! A good statistic is in 2018, the American Temperament Test Society tested 931 American Pitbull Terriers, and out of the 931, 814 passed their TEMPERMANT test, the Pitbulls average score was 87.4%, Golden Retrievers scored 85.6% during this test. The Pit bulls did better than people’s most favored dog in all of America! Another place you could go for some super good and amazing Pitbull stats is Valliabos Rescue Center, Tia Torres and her workers rescue approximately 100 dogs a month and on average they have about 300-400 dogs in their center. Now those are some swell looking statistics.

A Horrible Magic Trick

If people were to make this beautiful, wonderful dog breed disappear from America, they would not understand the full extent to what they have done. Pitbulls are working dogs. They can provide a large variety of job-related work and they are generally wonderful athletes. A lot are not just companions for families everywhere, some are search and rescue dogs that find missing people. They are diabetic alert dogs, seizure watchdogs, comfort nursing home residents and offer a plethora of services to the human race. They help children read when they don’t want to read to adults, but to a dog. Making Pitbulls disappear will affect more than families, it will affect the larger number of the population that these wonderful dogs help.

So What IS the Answer to the People Issue (Not the Pitbulls) 

Adopting any breed of dog isn’t like purchasing a beautiful vase that you get to show off at family dinners, you’re bringing in a new member to your family that has feelings and a personality. Dogs require proper balanced training, maintained from a health perspective, should be well socialized and taught proper human and dog social behavior, and treated with compassion. Dogs need a good leader just as children need good direction from the dog owners on how to interact with the dog. Dogs don’t like sharing their food or sometimes do not like a lot of physical contact as people do. Also, avoid behaviors that could possibly make your dog aggressive, like tying it to a post outside and leaving them, and training with forceful correction. And all in all, be a responsible dog owner, don’t pin things that happened on your dog.

Final Thoughts

Pitbulls are very friendly dogs, when you treat them correctly. If you don’t know how to treat them correctly, just don’t get a dog of any kind! 

Featured image via RescueWarrior on Pixabay