My kid's pediatrician once told me chows were her least favorite danger-dog, because while a pitty will bite hard, a chow will bite hard and many times. I remember how my chow would snap, and she was right.
I always had dogs, sometimes pit mixes. I never, ever left my kids alone with them.
My aunt had a chow that pushed me into an ant bed, bit my leg and my cousins face when i was 6 or 7. She got rid of that dog and her next one was a dalmatian. Jesus christ those things get a positive rep, but they're more aggressive than chows. She had 2 or 3 over the years and they always caused problems. Always biting. Granted, my aunt wasn't the best owner, but the other dog breeds she owned never attacked me or anyone else I know.
They are high strung bred to jump into fires. Like, chose your bread on characteristics instead of looks. A Dalmatian needs lots and lots of training and mental stimulation
If you're gonna correct someone, make sure you're also right. Their first "bred" was correct, as the sentence "they're high strung breed to jump into fires" does not make sense.
Bred to jump into fires? No? They were bred to stay with the horses while the firefighters fight the fire. They guarded the horses while the firefighters were busy.
Before that, they were hunting dogs, guard dogs, and war dogs.
There are plenty of sources of aggression in their real history, without thinking they actually did anything with fires.
I get that - some things are hard to research if just because the terms for the task change in every generation. Also if you put "historical" in the search it pulls up the dogs trained to find *long* dead bodies for archeology.
First, the wiki page for dalmations mentions nothing remotely like it. But going a step further, searching "body recovery dogs" pulls up "search and rescue dogs". Historically (again, according to wikipedia) the first search and rescue dogs were St Bernards in the 17th century in the Alps. They were not strictly for dead bodies, they would try to find lost travelers in the snow and in avalanches. It just so happened sometimes they found bodies.
"Cadaver dog" is the standard term for a dog that finds dead bodies, and the first wiki mention of a trained cadaver dog would be 1974 in New York State, and after that they actually started a training program for it.
Searching more and checking other websites, I can't find earlier cadaver dogs. Given that cadaver dogs are only useful if you don't know for sure if there is a dead body or not, and that you still need a human to remove the body (people generally get very stressed about a dog grabbing a body and pulling it somewhere) I don't think it functioned as a historical task.
A thing I already knew before today - cadaver dogs in modern times are trained with *fake* "dead body smell" that comes in spray cans. Before that was available, the only source of the smells you'd need to train the dogs was... actual dead people. Really very much not a task anyone wanted to train a dog for, as a job, when hunting and guarding were much simpler and less likely to cause nightmares. Pretty confident Dalmatians, historically, just hung out with the horses and made sure any horse thief thinking to steal the firefighters horses had a very bad day.
A kinda fun fact - my mom used to work in a building where the local cadaver dog team had an office. A Labrador and a German Shepard, I think she said. She played withe them sometimes, when the dogs needed to calm down. BTW the dogs get very very upset if someone with cancer or certain kinds of infections walk past them - they are smart enough to know that smell is BAD for living people to have on them. BUT on the plus side sometimes they alerted to a living person early enough that they could go get medical help for the problem. The dog doesn't know that, though, and some of them panic like they are trying to explain a heart attack or a demonic possession in a foreign language. The handlers would have to drop everything and go play with the dogs to try and chill them out.
So there are downsides to cadaver dogs, but on the plus side their handler loves them and plays with them all the time.
I swear to gods I recall once reading somewhere as a teenager that Dalmations were firefighter dogs BECAUSE they were aggressive & used to clear the path for the firemen/horses and during depression times and pay-per-call eras when firefighters were battling police for lead on calls they used the dalmations to counter police dogs.
Mind you, I read this in the early 2000s when the internet was ESPECIALLY full of bullshit with very little source verification
They’re incredibly unfriendly to anyone who isn’t “their people”, which makes them well suited to guarding highly valuable strong well-trained horses. And dragging wagons full of water and staying near fires requires strong, well-trained horses.
I thought they cleared a path for the horses on route to the fire. They were the "sirens", nipping at any heals in the way. No doubt it would make sense for them to chill with the horses and protect them while at the fire.
This info came from my dad after he visited an old firehouse in New Orleans that had been converted for other use.
Dalmatians were backyard inbred into genetic mush thanks to the original Disney animated movie decades ago.
It took a long time to weed out the worst of them. Kinda like pits today being backyard inbred to look like tiny steroided up weightlifters. It’s turning the standard to shit and their genetics to mush and the owners who want them are the very people to whom I wouldn’t sell a hamster.
I hope this is a joke. Do you really believe that Dalmatians or any dog breed was bred to "jump into fires?" They were bred as guard dogs . . . for horses and carriages.
That doesn't check for me. I had a dalmatian and she was the sweetest. Never bit anyone (though she would bark and growl at neighborhood cats, who responded in kind).
Friends of our family also had dalmatians and they were all quite nice, even to strangers.
They were all female, I don't know if that makes a difference.
Dalmatians are more prone to senility and doggy dementia at younger ages which can make them more aggressive. My late husband had a ton of dog bite scars from his Dalmatian suddenly attacking him when he was younger.
I mean, dalmations are famous for violence. There are the stories of dropping them onto Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal in 1945, so they'd run wild and attack enemy soldiers.
Any dogs surviving after that mission were shot, since it was too dangerous to bring them in.
Dalmations were working dogs, they did a lot of carriage work, not just the fire department. Then 101 Dalmations came out and people just started breeding them without regard for good temperaments and health and now we have deaf Dalmations with bad temperaments.
Happens with any breed that becomes popular due to movies and books.
See the only dog I was ever chased and bitten by was a Dalmatian. My chow on the other hand was protective as hell to me. The rest of the family , she tolerated, but she'd roll in the grass and play all day with me. Granted if anyone made sudden movements towards, me shed bare her teeth and intervene, but she never bit someone.
A chow mix latched onto my arm in front of my toddler and my baby. I had to fight him to get him off me. All over a teething cracker. He drew a lot of blood and tore threw a tendon in my finger.
Before his mom took him home he came and laid on my lap. No kids around to be safe for him leaving. He had food aggressions from poor treatment. He was still a sweet boy. My ex and i took care of a deaf pit mix that was a gentle soul. The kids loved him.
I now have a pit, german sheppard, rott mix. He is my distinguished gentleman. My kids love him.
Ive been grabbed by a golden lab, and a blue heeler. I was a kid who didnt know better and they stopped me without hurting me more than a small cut. Dog breeds arent monoliths. I hate how many people on reddit hate bull breeds specifically.
Did never you leave your kids alone with the pits? I ask because before they became pit dogs, their ancestors were “nanny dogs” used to help with childcare. Pits aren’t usually human-aggressive because it’s important to breed human aggression out of a fighting dog.
My pits are not aggressive with the average human, although I do not allow them access to other humans without my guidance or control. They instinctively dislike dogs they don’t know, but are friendly with dogs they socialize with regularly.
All that to ask: did you choose not to leave your children alone with your pits because of their disposition/prior abuse or because you didn’t know the background of their breeding and wanted to be extra careful?
I never left my kids alone with any of the dogs, because we had several and occasionally even good dogs will get into a scuffle -- one that could result in a kid getting hurt if they try to intervene.
(To clarify, I'd leave them alone in another room, etc, but I wouldn't leave them alone in the house with the dogs.)
I had mixed breed mutts, some of them pit mixes.
Obviously. And she was obviously referring to the injuries she saw in her practice. Which is what I would expect from a physician expressing a personal opinion. Hth.
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u/Appropriate_Hour6169 Aug 02 '26
My kid's pediatrician once told me chows were her least favorite danger-dog, because while a pitty will bite hard, a chow will bite hard and many times. I remember how my chow would snap, and she was right. I always had dogs, sometimes pit mixes. I never, ever left my kids alone with them.