Agreed. Very well said. Could have been a fight between the dogs that spilled over onto the family
From my personal experience pitbulls are socially/handler sensitive. This was to keep them complaint on hunts and during matches. Depending on how you train them this could be bad or good. They also have low thresholds for social arousal and quickly get spun up. Due to drive and gameness it is harder to bring them back down to a calm state. Pain and rapid prey like movements can trigger responses from the dogs. The running around and fidgeting of children is a big one.
I think one of the biggest issues of dog ownership is people lying to themselves about what kind of dog they own. These breeds have jobs some are more congruent to being pets than others. Hell the AKC even has a “companion” breed category for dogs that have no real job other than to be family pets.
It’s like people who claim “it’s not the breed it’s how you raise them” no sorry you aren’t going to change the genetic makeup of the dog. I have a buddy who just purchased a Jagdterrier. For those who don’t know these are awesome little game terriers with a sky high prey drive. They want to hunt not sit at the house. He told me he got it because it was small but spirited. I told him they already make a small dog for families and it’s called a Yorkie. Give the dog to a hunter before it rips a groundhog to pieces in-front of the kids.
Having grown up around true game bred APBTs that were used for hog hunting I know that many lines are extremely inbred. Outcrossing to other APBT lines was rarely done. Outcrossing is CRUCIAL to developing mentally and emotionally stable dogs. You go to other working line breeds and see lots of outcrossing. You can breed to type and still have strong genetic variation. The APBT community does not “get” this fact because dog legacy is tied to fighting performance.
The men I grew up around kept their dogs in large kennels and dog runs and only took them out to hunt. They used to refer to them as livestock. My uncles house dog was a German Shepherd. He kept his pitbulls outside because according to him they were “working dogs not pets”. He often let one have run of the backyard to ward of Javelinas but that was about it.