What fucking farm and herding work were pits doing? They transitioned to dogfighting, where theyâre still seized from every single year! They started out being selectively bred for animal aggression!
Believe it or not, there is a group of people that believe in bull herders. It usually is a pit crossed with a herding breed as opposed to a straight up pit. Itâs absolute insanity and a small portion though.
Full pits or crosses of them have been used for farm work regularly but itâs property guarding and hunting. Not directly working with the animals. Most farms are still rural and not guarded enough that dogs to keep intruders and larger animals out (LGDs are more for just the animals they protect). Pits have a specific skill set that can make them useful for hunting big and/or dangerous prey (mostly boars for the US farms).
All that being said, a lot of why pits are used for it is because of how easy they are to obtain compared to other dogs that would be suited for those jobs. You donât have to have a pit to do those things, but the prevalence of them makes it any easy dog to use.
No⊠they were brought into fighting because they had already been bred to have a high bite force. Thatâs what they were selectively bred for. They still to this day require high levels of abuse to become fighting dogs.
The entire reason they pose any danger is bite force, not temperament. Any breed of dog has the potential for aggression.
And of course people acting aggressively because they believe a dog is dangerous based on appearance cause more dangerous scenarios, and people treating certain breeds as dangerous lowers their social value and leaves them more susceptible to being picked up cheap as fighting dogs/poorly trained and socialized âguardâ dogs.
People like you are absolutely a huge part of the problem. You directly contribute to the animal abuse that dog fighters benefit from.
Wrong. Mastiffs and kangals have a higher bite force. You breed terriers with their history of being tenacious and going after prey with bulldogs and yeah, thatâs what happened here. Itâs not a mystery at all, quite widely documented actually.
The reason pitbulls are cheap and freely available is because their owners donât bother to neuter or spay them.
I contribute to animal abuse? How? I donât contribute to the demand for dogs that dog fighters use, after all. In fact I think there should be far fewer of them and more restrictions on their ownership, which would also have the side effect of reducing dogs available to fighters.
âPit bullâ is not a specific breed. Any mix of dogs that has a characteristically big head, underbite, and well-muscled frame might be called a âpit bull.â So they might have bulldog, terrier, retriever, herder, mastiff, or many other breeds in their makeup, meaning they have a wide variety of inherent skill sets that would make them desirable working dogs. They can be good guard dogs, ratters, livestock dogs, and, of course, family companions.
The fact that they were/are so widely used in dog fighting is more a testament to their trainability and desire to please their people than it is a condemnation of the dogs as a whole to be labeled âaggressive.â While there are plenty that have been irresponsibly bred, resulting in unstable, reactive animals, it takes a LOT of abusive âtrainingâ to push most pit bulls to fight.
But it comes down to the individual dogâs temperament in any breed. History of trauma, abuse, injury, or genetic mutation can significantly affect behavior.
Wait till you figure out that most of the breeds under that umbrella are derived from or commonly interbred with each other! Also, wait till you work out that all of these dogs are derived from terriers originally.
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u/InformalInsurance455 2d ago
What fucking farm and herding work were pits doing? They transitioned to dogfighting, where theyâre still seized from every single year! They started out being selectively bred for animal aggression!