Probably training. But I have zero experience with those breeds. I've seen gun dogs work hard for 3 days to the point of exhaustion so that doesn't surprise me. I carried a dog to a crate after 3 days of hunting. She gave it everything she had and then some. After a few days of rest she was fine.Originally Posted by Coyotesfan97
Last edited by Borderland; 08-26-2022 at 11:40 PM.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
I've known a lot of Pits and Pit Mixes over the last 40 years or so, and none of the ones I was around had any real negative qualities. The worst thing they did was head butt people (including me) a bunch of times, or step on a little kid's foot. I'm around three of them a lot these days. Great dogs all of them. My problem breeds have been German Shepherds, A St. Bernard, and the meanest of the bunch, a Toy Manchester Terrier who just hated my guts. She belonged to my best friend's mom, and "Missy" wanted me dead.
I had a Pit mix (Gus) for over 14 years. A total wuss. He was scared of just about everything. But even the biggest wuss will fight if pushed too far. We walked three miles most days, unless it was winter, and when it was raining. He was scared of rain. He wasn't scared of other dogs, which I still think was odd, since he was scared of just an insane number of things. I took him to the car wash with me a few days after we got him, and I thought he was going to die, he was totally terrified from the water spraying, the noises the machinery made, and the blower at the end. It took him hours to recover from that. The fourth of July fireworks and the lead in/out period were horrible, he was a shaking mess from about June 15th, until July 15th every year. He loved almost everyone, and a lot of people knew him his entire life and had no idea he was a Pit Mix. Other dogs were his friends, unless they attacked him. He always seemed to be shocked when a dog attacked him. Gus had insane bite power. Way more than most Pits, and more than a lot of Rottweilers. He was the only member of the F.A.T.(Finger amputatin' Teeth) +++ "club" at a vet we went to in Columbus a few times. A few dogs had two plus signs, but only Gus had 3, the last one given after the vet gave him some sort of toy and he destroyed it in about 10 minutes. His head was "magnificent", as our old vet used to say. a 27" neck and a 19" skull. Very thick teeth. When he was put down due to cancer at 14, the vet remarked, "I've never seen a dog that old without any dental disease!". All that chewing of rawhides kept his teeth spotless.
We, well, he got attacked several times on our walks. If we got them apart before Gus got angry, it wasn't too big of a deal. He had a lot of fur on the back of his neck and in a short attack, hair getting yanked out was about the only thing that happened. If it went too long, his entire face would change. Mom was a Pit, and when he got angry, he went from a hound dog look, with eyes like this:
To eyes like this:
And if his eyes changed, it was not going to be good. It would usually take about 4 or 5 bites from the other dog to finally push him over the edge. Once he went over, it got ugly. A German Shepherd would never look the same after he attacked Gus one Sunday. His people left him in a truck parked on the street with the windows open. As we passed it, he jumped out and instantly jumped on Gus. He outweighed Gus by at least 40 pounds. As he grabbed and shook Gus, I tried to get him off, but he tried to bite me. I was alone on the street, and I remember seeing Gus's eyes "Change" and thought, "Oh boy, here we go!", and suddenly Gus had the Shepherd by the side of the face and shoved him into the wheel of the truck he came out of, then he slammed him into a tree. All the while biting his face "Pac-Man Style". Finally, the Shepherd decided it wasn't going as planned, and he bailed. His folks came running out of the house they were visiting, and for some crazy reason, their dog decided to go back for another round. As soon as Gus latched onto his face again, he started screaming, and I yelled, "Grab your dog before mine kills him!". That's what was going to happen, if we didn't get them apart. The teenager finally grabbed the other dog and I pulled Gus away too. Gus was at a maxed out angry at that point, and was shooting pink foam out of his mouth and he wanted to keep going. The other dog ended up being taken to the Pet ER hospital, where he had a bunch of dead (crushed) skin removed and his lip reattached on one side. He would need more dead skin removed a day later back in Ft. Wayne. The vet asked them, "What dog did this?", and they described him and me, and where it happened. She was sure it was the Gus she had known for a long time, and said, "I know Gus, he's a sweetie!". She was shocked at the damage he had done. She wasn't 100% sure it was my Gus until she asked me a couple weeks later, when she was filling in at my vet's office. She said, "That other dog is never going to look the same again!", which was no surprise to me. It was easily the worst fight I had ever seen in person. His last bite came about a month before the end, when a neighbors Rott got loose and got rough with Gus, who at that point was kind of like a very large snapping turtle. One bite to the Rott's face stopped him cold. Of all my dogs, I would bring Gus back if I could, hopefully minus whatever happened to him to make him so scared of everything.
The cat wasn't scared of him:
BTW, The cat weighed about 25-27 pounds, and was a handful himself if pushed. At the time, he was considered the "worst patient" at the vet.
Last edited by Hemiram; 08-27-2022 at 06:01 AM.
@Borderland
The point of the questions is not to get conjecture and suppositions...but to obtain information from those who have been down that particular road.
We all know that dogs have a strong olfactory sense, but guessing or surmising whether pepper spray will work or not is not the same as hearing from those who have employed it and found that it either does or doesn't in various instances.
Anecdotes which do not address the matter do not get us the answers we seek.
(Nothing personal...)
There's nothing civil about this war.
I cant answer that question but I will say Ive recently watched a video, sorry dont have a link, and in the video it said to pull your arm into your body, dont let the dog thrash your arm about at extension as you risk a dislocation at the shoulder.
After seeing the bruises through the bite suit after a training session Im not sure how someone is going to keep that presence of mind.
Last edited by UNK; 08-27-2022 at 12:56 PM.
I'll wager you a PF dollar™ 😎
The lunatics are running the asylum
I wouldn't think it would be personal. I don't know anyone here personally. Cheers.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
Went to the dog park today with my GSD. She was friendly to all, but kept a sharp eye on my son and eye, always watching other dog’s interactions with us. She is an excellent watchdog and family dog, never had a twitchy moment. I will continue to stick with the breeds I know, because these are the results I get - a stable, protective family dog I can trust to watch my family and not get me into a lawsuit, not to mention easy to train and intelligent.
#RESIST
80% of the time I can sometimes tell. But I did recognize the Patterdale terrier in the collage above.
*Pats self on back
What’s ironic about your statement is that if your dogs are trained as you listed, then they’re indeed extremely well trained. Probably in the top 95 percentile (if not more) of dogs in the US.
People take these conversations personally, but anybody taking the time and energy on an internet forum to read and respond about dogs doesn’t fall in the normal dog owner demographic.
Anybody who takes the time to do any type of training, as well as making sure their dog is socialized and exercised, is somebody who is going to be a good dog owner to any breed of dog.
Instead of saying “pit bull” with all of connotations, let’s just substitute ‘working dog.’ Any breed of working dog isn’t a good choice for people on two opposite ends: people who want a get it and forget it dog, or people who just want a friend.
I've had a few good bites off different dogs. Here's a couple that spring to mind and that I have pics handy for:
The bruising was a pit mix that surprised me from behind one day. Luckily I had these really heavy-duty ripstop nylon pants on and the dog slid right off; that bruise was the initial strike. It was a solid hit. The doctor thought the pants had saved me a lot of damage. The second bite was my left wrist which I put out to fend him off, and it crushed my watch, and the dog slid off again. By that time I was fully engaged and the owner was running over and the dog began to back away.
The little poke-and-drag was a lab, and I was helping his owner beach a boat. He went after me twice but the second time, obviously, I was ready and he didn't get a grip on me that time.
I had a purebred staff for fifteen years; she was a wonderful dog. Very gentle and loving. Not big by today's standards; I think she was 42-45 pounds for most of her life. But it was 45 pounds of muscle and biting force and speed and I loved her but for sure she had the ability to hurt people, and if something had given her the desire to do so she could have laid on a bite that would have been comparable to the crushing force applied in that first pic. It'd do damage. Just playing with her, you knew she had a built-in sense of how to use the tools. That's inherently dangerous, because she wasn't an inanimate object and she made decisions based on her own drives that wouldn't necessarily align with modern human expectations.
Granted a lot of that, other than the biting and the weight, is true of her owner as well. I loved that dog, anyway.
I personally suspect that basically everyone is at least partly right on this subject, as is often the case with contentious subjects. They're strong, agile, fast fighting dogs. They can mess you up better than most dogs and they probably know it.
They're also a breed, or mix of breeds, that appeals to dirtbags and thugs; I'm living proof. I adopted mine from people I knew who both had really nice staffordshires, left in adjoining rooms during a visit. The intervening wall was not a sufficient obstacle to the male, and that's how I ended up with mine. But as both a dirtbag and a thug, I had no hesitation about owning a pitbull.
Enough dogs get rescued from even worse dirtbags that I do think the "rescue" provenance of a lot of these dogs makes them a greater risk than average even if you took out every other factor. But a rescue chihuahua might (and probably does) desire to kill you every moment of every day, and just lack the ability to do anything about it. The rescued fighting dog might only want to hurt you once in a fit of rage, but it doesn't lack the ability at all.
When I see them on the street, I keep myself between them and my kid. Of course I do that with any big dog, but any of the big prey drive breeds I treat with serious caution. I have alienated a number of dog owners in this town because when they say, as they always seem to, "oh he's really friendly" as their large unleashed dog approaches, I always shrug and say stuff like "well, I guess if you're okay with betting his life on that, so am I." If it's someone who looks sketchy, with a pitbull, you better believe I'm ready for that to go sideways. More so than if they had a rottweiler? I would say not. I don't think there's a magic special factor with pitbulls that makes them worse than other similarly-tasked breeds. But the PBs seem a lot more common.
So I think treating them with extra caution is warranted, AND they're inherently dangerous, AND they can be great dogs if treated well, AND I don't generally trust them if I see them on the street.
This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff
I always tell people that police dogs a la Mals, Dutchies, GSDs are some of the most intelligent highly trained dogs around. The drawback is they’re bite trained and they have the impulse control of a toddler. Sometimes it’s a bad mix.
That’s why as a handler I liked to be the one making the decision whether someone got bit. Find and bite vs guard and bark.
Just a dog chauffeur that used to hold the dumb end of the leash.
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