Pitties aren't even the most dangerous dangerous dog I have interacted with.

These things are used in Africa to hunt lions.

https://www.marvelousdogs.com/wp-con...-Ridgeback.png

Truly awful and very very sad. I’m not fan of pitts or any of the large working dogs personally. I might consider one later in life when I don’t have small children in my home though so I’m not writing them off completely. That goes for rotts and gsd but I’d probably never take a pit.

Every one of these stories - “they never did anything like that before!”

I wouldn’t say stupid. I would say ill-informed. They wanted to believe and they had 8 years of evidence to support their belief. But nature doesn’t always work that way.

You want to hear about stupid? My wife is a nurse and one of her classmates got a job with a pediatric practice. One of her duties was to check on babies after they had been born. This was almost 30 years ago so I don’t even know if they would do this now but this classmate would visit parents at their home after the birth of a child. So she went to the apartment of a couple in San Diego. Their baby was about 3-4 weeks old. So when the classmate gets there, the baby is on the floor on her back on a blanket as the mom is getting ready to change her diaper.

The nurse sees something out of the corner of her eye on the top of the couch. She looks and it’s a large snake - about 6-7’ long. Boa/python/some type of constrictor. It is just loose in the house! And it comes down to the floor and raises its head up and looks at the baby. The mom says, “He’s been doing that since we brought the baby home and we don’t know why.” The nurse was like, “What the ever lasting ****?!?” She called animal control and got the snake out of the house and told the mom what was happening and the mom had no damn clue!

I swear that our modern “safe” society has prevented some people from being removed from the gene pool that 100+ years ago would have been removed. And they are now free to pass on their stupid genes. Or modern medicine means that of 12 children born, we can expect 11 to reach adulthood and puberty. Our own intelligence has worked to weaken our species.

Tragedy.

I have had dogs loyal as they come, but when my toddler kin and young ones were near I was always on alert. Animals sometimes go animal.

Saying so today is undoubtedly racist and speciest and ablist and all kinds of bad words but you are 100% correct because nature will always triumph over nurture. Genes are a bitch.

Can you explain where racism plays into my post?
Genuinely asking.

Sure. I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but your post, which I agree with, can be reduced down to nature > nurture. That is, our genetic code will trump whatever training/education/background we go through.

But today there are many who disagree with that philosophy and call it all kinds of names. I don’t agree that believing nature trumps nurture is racist but it is routinely branded as racist.

Consider the following example:

Among humans, males are taller than females. While this is generally true, many today reject this as sexist because it posits a biological difference between the sexes. Further, arguing about genetics and nature has in the past been used for some really ugly uses, such as eugenics. Recognizing this truth, though, does not lead to eugenics.

And along these lines, even though it is objectively true that men are generally taller than women, most people do not understand statistics. As a result, when confronted with a statement like “Men are generally taller than women,” they respond with, “Well, my Aunt Sally is taller than my Uncle John,” and view this as some sort of refutation of the general statement.

Notice how in this discussion most people are arguing using stories, anecdotes or personal experiences. Nothing wrong with that. But when looking at statistics, there always exceptions, outliers on the Bell curve if you will. Basing an argument upon the outliers is logically fallacious but is frequently done.

Anyway, to argue today that nature trumps nurture opens the door to allegations of racism or a whole host of social ills, which is unfortunate because it shuts down debate.

I think you can generally apply nature over nurture to some extent with animals. With reasoning people though its much much murkier.

Thank you for that explanation.

I feel like owning a pit bull is like having 3 kids with 3 different strippers.

You can, and it’s fun for a while, but is it ultimately worth it??

My parents had a German shepherd. When they were having a crew build an out building, she was worried he’d go nuts and think the men were bad, so she briefly introduced him. The very first thing he did? Grabbed the hammer from the foreman’s tool belt and played a game of keepaway.

Great dog, and yeah, he certainly patrolled their property well from things like deer, but he was too goofy and clownish. My parents swore he was secretly a retriever in a shepherd suit.

Horses and dogs are most dangerous animals in the United States.

It is murkier.

We face some very real tensions in this issue. The discussion involves people, which makes it resonate with us much more. Further, arguing that nature > nurture has led to some really bad results. But the more we study genetics, the strong the argument is, in my opinion, that nature does trump nurture. Look at the studies done on twins, particularly the studies done on twins separated at birth.

But even if nature does trump nurture, each individual has rights and they cannot be abridged just because of biological happenstance. Put another way, if Jeffrey Dahmer had a twin, the twin should not be imprisoned just because of his relation to Jeffrey. But if Jeffrey Dahmer had a twin, how comfortable would you be going to his house to watch a football game? That is why such comparisons are murkier when applied to people.

these dogs can start declining fairly rapidly around 8 years old...


Ive known dogs that completely change personalities when theyre old, and get grumpier...


We had a rott that started biting when it got old, and had to be kept away from kids...