Seems like it would have been more humane of the cops to just "shoot them on site," rather than hose the dogs with pepper spray, engage in further combat, and finally take them to the pound where they'll be destroyed anyway. Yeah, I'm sure there's policy involved, and no one (sane) wakes up in the morning wanting to violently put a dog down. Just saying if this is outside of Albuquerque instead of Seattle, those paragraphs will go differently.

...and because 99% of the time, their owners are stupid assholes.

That pretty much covers it. Treated as normal household pets, PB's are usually just that--normal household pets, no more aggressive than any other well-treated canine. Well-treated canines with Really Strong Jaws.

Most of the genetic component isn't the result of how the breed arose, but of the more recent haphazard inbreeding for bad-tempered fighting dogs, done by assholes. Like a certain NFL player in the news of late.

You know it is really a shame when things like this happen. I have only known one Pit Bull Terrier in my life, her named was "Froggie" and she was one of the most friendly and docile dogs I ever knew.

While I am no great fan of the breed, they get their bad rap because of incidents like this, and it is incidents like this that make the papers. I find it odd that this woman has a dog door and yet didn't have a dog of her own. Even the other dog that was killed belonged to a neighbor.

I am not sure if the "predator" angle is justifiable reason for the behavior or not Rachel. While dogs and wolves have common ancestors, so do Monkeys and Humans, and I know plenty of Humans who are just as non-arboreal as they are non banana eaters. I mean after all, you never read stories about anyone ever being mauled to death by a teacup yorkie or pomeranian. You never hear about brutal Bison Frise attacks right?

I am no Dog expert but Pit bulls being terriers are bred for their aggression and alway have been. They were breed to be rodent hunters, and many shipping lines used to use them at ratters. Pit bulls are called pit bulls because they were bred for dog fights.

It might interest you to know the following:

Pitbulls were banned in Ontario Canada in August of 2005-Pit bulls are not allowed to be imported into or brought through Ontario. Severe fines are in place for bringing new pit bulls into Ontario. Pit bulls owned prior to August 29, 2005 are grandfathered in. All grandfathered pit bulls of over 36 weeks of age are required to be sterilized immediately. Grandfathered pit bulls must be muzzled and leashed on a leash of less than 1.8 metres while in public. Sale of non-grandfathered pit bulls to denizens of Ontario is illegal.

France 1999-Ownership restricted; non-pure-breed animals resembling pit-bulls are to be surgically neutered

United Kingdom- Banned in public places, under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991

New Zealand-Must be microchipped, muzzled in public, and cannot be publicly advertised for sale

They are outright banned in Australia and Norway as well.

In the United States they are banned in the following cities/counties:
Delta and Springville, Utah
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Royal City, Washington
Denver, Colorado
Prince George's County, Maryland
Yonkers, New York
Springfield, Missouri
Miami-Dade County Florida- Section 5 Code 17: "It is illegal in Miami-Dade County to own any dog which substantially conforms to a pit bull breed dog, unless it was specially registered with Miami-Dade County prior to 1989. Acquisition or keeping of a pit bull dog: $500.00 fine and County Court action to force the removal of the animal from Miami-Dade County."

The breed is pending banning in 8 other major cities including New York City, and for the entire state of Oklahoma.

You can however still own a Beagle or Border Collie in all of these locals. So I daresay it is something more than just the predatory nature of dogs and their relationship to wolves that is behind all this. I mean cats share ancestory with Saber Tooth Tigers and Cougars, and practice their predatory nature whenever the opportunity arises, I have yet however to have ever heard of anyone ever being mauled to death by "Mr. Fluffykinsington" the Marauding Maine Coon.

Have fun ;)!

When I was overhearing a dog trainer in the pet store one day, he was explaining to the people there for their dogs' obedience training that Pit Bulls, treated properly, are no more likely to be overly aggressive than any other dog. However, he said, they were easier to raise improperly than other dogs.

An example he gave was:
Let's say that you're playing tug-of-war with your dog. Let's further say that you normally just let go of the rope and let the dog have it when you are done playing, but today you have company coming, so you want to put it away. Instead of letting it drop, you take the rope away from the dog. Most dogs will try to grab it and get it back, but the Pit Bull may get violent over it because he's more territorial than most.

Basically, the upshot was that you have to be VERY careful with Pit Bulls to treat them consistently, and it's probably a good idea to teach them at a very young age that everything (except maybe his bed) is YOURS, and that none of it is his. In the example above, it means taking the toy and putting it away EVERY TIME, not just when you want to clean up.

He was also saying that this is the way to teach all dogs, just that you have to be more careful with the Pits.

It seems like every time I hear about a Pit Bull attack the owners turn out to be some moron who wanted a "tough" dog.

I don't know about the rest of the cities but I lived in Denver when the Pit Bull ban went into effect. The main reason was idiot gangbangers teaching them to be aggressive then denying ownership if someone got attacked forcing the poor dog to be put down.

These people shouldn't be allowed to have a pet rock, they'd probably mistreat it.

I suspect the cops didn't shoot the dog right off not so much out of concern for the dog as for the fact that it's dangerous to fire a gun at a relatively small, rapidly moving target indoors, with a civilian victim and other police officers nearby. If the dog is, say, biting the other officer in the leg, you don't want to just haul off and shoot it as a first resort, because it would be all to easy to miss while the dog is lurching about and hit the other cop, instead.

The main reason was idiot gangbangers teaching them to be aggressive then denying ownership if someone got attacked forcing the poor dog to be put down.

That's been our experience around here as well. Almost all the Pit Bulls that end up in the pound are "non adoptable" because of maltreatment, and end up euthanized. No one shows up to claim them. (Imagine that...) Because gangbangers and dog-fighters are the ones breeding them and raising them, even starting with a puppy can be chancy unless the puppy came from a good breeder who loves the dogs, and not the mean. Choose wisely....

That they're not inherently bad dogs doesn't change the fact that when an officer encounters a Pit Bull, it's most likely going to be one that has NOT been raised as a normal family pet. It'll be one behaving badly.

Not only that it's dangerous to discharge their firearms...but no sane cop wants to shoot a dog! It's horribly depressing. My hubby had to shoot an injured deer once and he was very upset by it. It's the only time he's ever pulled his gun. :(

Even Siberian Huskies can be violent if not properly trained. Yes, those cute fluffy little puppies grow up to be aggressive, territorial monsters. They've even killed newborns brought home by "their" parents. People have to be Alpha and too many people let their dogs run all over them.

When I play tug of war with Trooper (Malamute) he NEVER EVER gets to win. EVER. He's too big to let him win even once. I say "drop it" and he lets go and then I give him the rope to do as he pleases. But he is never allowed to pull it from my hands. It would be the same way if he were a Pit.

I feel bad for the lady...but why have a dog door with no dog? That just seems odd.

My own anecdotal evidence:
Our neighbors had a pit bull mix, they never trained him, never played with him, never walked him, just kept him in their yard and I assume fed him from time to time. They also had two young sheep in another yard, separated by a chain link fence. The dog bit the tail off one of the sheep when it got too close to the fence one day, and it bled to death. And still, they kept the dog and no training of any sort occured.

One morning, as I was leaving for work, I pulled my car out through our gate, got out to shut the gate, and saw that the dog was out. He saw me, his tail went straight up in the air and he charged. He got a hold of my leg, but I managed to twist away and was dancing around wildly, trying to get back to my car. What I can only imagine was divine intervention appeared in the form of police K-9 unit happened to be driving by. The officer got on her loudspeaker, startled the dog and pulled her car in between us yelling at me to get in my car. Within 5 minutes, every emergency service for 15 miles was in front of our house and the K-9 unit had left, following the dog and getting animal control on the scene. It was the most terrifying experiance of my life, it still makes me shake to think of it. I have two dogs (Cardigan Corgi and Golden Retreiver), I love dogs, and I've never been afraid of a dog before. As we approached our house, after coming home from the hospital, I got the sickest feeling in my stomach that I would have to see the dog again. Luckily, the owners, obviously scared that we were going to sue, assured us that the dog would not be returning home. What's even more horrifying is that there is a school bus stop in front of our house. If the dog had been out just a half hour earlier, it could have been a kid who was attacked.

I still love dogs, but hate dog owners who don't control their dogs. We can leave our gate wide open and our Golden will not go outside it. People walk by all the time with their dogs, and he'll run along the fence, barking like mad and as they cross in front of the gate, he'll go around it to fence on the other side and keep on barking. He'll let his ball roll through it, and won't go get it unless we explicitly tell him he can. It's just not that hard to spend some time with a dog and teach it what is acceptable and what isn't.

I feel terrible for that poor woman, but I, too, don't get why she had a dog door that opened in, and also had no dog. My dogs are sweet as can be, but if someone tried to hurt me, they would be on them in a flash. Them and our two guard geese keep us safe :o)

Dogs are not descended from wolves, they are wolves. Inbred, infantilized mutant wolves, but they can still crossbreed with wolves, sometimes with delightful results. Pit bulls can be dangerous because of their strength, but other overly popular breeds, notably cocker spaniels, can be prone to attack if not properly selected and trained.

Right, Casto. You get the rope/frisbee/toy back at the end of the game of tug of war or fetch or whatever and THEN give it back to the dog to play with.

Most of the time, of course, positive reinforcement is all it takes to make a dog behave well. On occasion when I find an overly aggressive dog, though, I'll quickly respond to the nipping at my heel or too-rough play by taking the dog, turning it on its back, putting my hand around its neck (not choking, just holding), and glare at it, while exposing my teeth. I've found this is a very effective way of reminding the dog of its place in the social hierarchy. It's not at all painful, but the submissive posture and exposed neck seem to touch an instinctual response.

Apparently it wasn't a dog door that was left open; the woman left her sliding glass door ajar. Where she lives, she could just as easily have been attacked by raccoons (which is not as cute as it sounds). Also, the pit bulls escaped from the neighbor's fenced yard by chewing through a rope that was holding a fence to a post. I saw the owner interviewed on TV and he did not appear to be your typical aggressive idiot. But only one of the dogs is his; he was dogsitting the other for a friend, which makes me wonder if that dog was the instigator.

FWIW, we adopted two pit bulls who came to our front door Christmas Eve of 1999 (yes we tried to find the owner, but it appears that they were dumped off at a local park and just wandered up the hill to our house). One, in fact, looked a lot like SaraK's dog Rowdie. Even though one showed indications of prior abuse, they were the absolute sweetest dogs ever.

Back in high school, my best friend's brother had a pit bull named "Boris". Boris had been bred for show (don't get me started on the real "sick puppies", the breeder/owners) and was abused as a puppy b/c one toe on one of his paws was shorter than the others and therefore "deformed". Peter picked Boris up sometime later at a no-kill shelter where a kind person had taken him after rescuing him from his abuser.

Boris was one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met. He liked to lay on your lap, especially when he'd get stomach aches as body warmth would help calm his sensitive digestion. I never once saw that dog do anything agressive, but Peter was always very careful ( As WayneB noted, consistency is everything with pitties), and knew which actions tended to push his buttons. Whenever the gas man would come to Peter's place (in St. Paul, MN your meter is in your residence, not on an outside wall like they are here in Chicago), Peter would put Boris in the upstairs bedroom with the lock secured. He also kept him on a short leash, not those silly retractor leashes that are unsuited to a stronger dog.

There was only one time that Boris killed another creature, and that was when a dog broke out of the yard its owner kept him in (much like what happened to you, Lucy) and lunged at Peter and got his arm in his mouth. Boris took one bite to the dog's jugular and then let go. The owner of the other dog declined to press charges against Peter and Boris, as he witnessed the incident and knew Boris was only protecting Peter.

The worst part of dogs is idiot owners, just as the most frequent cause of accidents on the road or in the air is the nut behind the controls of the vehicle.

Oh langtry! What a wonderful dog. I love it when dogs protect their owners! And what a smart owner...to know your dog's limits is supremely important when owning a dog.

Yes, Pat...I only give the toy to my dogs after they've let go on command. If they don't let go and I have to pry open their jaws (Mal jaws are pretty darn strong too) they don't get their goody. :) It only takes a couple wrestling matches for them to get it. And our Mal only growled once...as a puppy...at hubby. :) I AM Alpha! Hubby isn't! ROFL

Oh now you've done it... SarahK is going to just have a hissy over this one...

So Sunny hasn't changed her breed affiliation to Zimbabwean Ridgeback?!

I can't imagine why.

I'm not having a hissy. I agree with Rachl Lukis. But I do need to edit something. "Too bad the victim didn't have a dog like Rowdi." Same result as all that stuff Rachl Lukis said would happen. Except the pork. She has such a sensitive stomach. So it'd be her regular food, but we'd give her a special Kong filled with peanut butter every day for a week. Sure, she'd throw up in her mouth a little every day that week, but she'd be happy about it.

"While dogs and wolves have common ancestors, so do Monkeys and Humans, and I know plenty of Humans who are just as non-arboreal as they are non banana eaters."

Wait, do you mean I'm not supposed to brachiate?

I used to work as a vet tech whenever I needed extra money. The top five list of breeds I was wary of hell of in the office:

1. Chow
2. Dalmatian
3. Jack Russel Terrier
4. Cocker Spaniel (American)
5. Dachshund

All five breeds were victims of popularity, and the Chow, Dal, and JRTs were victims of popularity combined with a basic unsuitability to the average pet home.

The pits? 99% of them were dream clients. They had the huge threshold of pain that you sometimes see mentioned in scare pieces in the media, but for us all it meant was that they were happy to sit there licking our faces no matter what painful thing was being done to them. The 1% that weren't were terrors because their owners had made no effort to control them and they'd gotten used to always getting their own way. We didn't have any stupid clients that tried to make their dogs aggressive, partly because such people usually don't bother with vets, and partly because my boss did not tolerate clients who knowingly put his staff in danger.

Pit bulls used to be the "ideal family dog" in America, precisely for the reasons sarahk has outlined here before- in a sport where dogs try to kill each other and are frequently injured, it is vital to any breeder with a brain that his dogs not show any aggression to the humans who had to handle them. (Animal aggression and human aggression are different things- many breeds that are famous for loving people have animal-aggression issues, like most of the sledding breeds.) This has lessened over time as retards try to breed them for *all* forms of aggression, as well as the instability that creeps into any breed that has been bred too carelessly, but it's still prevalent to the point where something many rescue people love about pits is how much horrific abuse many of them can withstand without ever developing a mean streak. Some of them are just broken, either from birth or through torture or just neglect, but others seem to be unbreakable in their sweetness. As with the Cocker Spaniels that used to be universally sweet and are now just as often terrifyingly unstable and aggressive, breeds- especially popular ones- vary all over the map in temperament.

Twenty years ago it was Rottweillers. Thirty years ago it was German Shepherds. Forty years ago it was Dobermans. All of them played a part in earning those reputations, mostly through careless breeding and clueless owners, but certainly some with the potentials for aggression that were part of the breeds in the first place. To varying degrees, they have recovered. (Dobermans in particular are now overwhelmingly sweet, soft dogs nowadays.) I wonder which one will be next as the poster breed for the stupid and the psychotic?

LabRat, I have a Chow I got as a pound puppy. She had been systematically abused by her former owner. The Sweetest Dog Ever. The vets loved her. OTOH, she had a "twin" who wasn't nearly as sweet who went to the same vet. They quickly learned to put a sign on the cage, "This is not Fuzzy!"

It's all about the owner.

My cousin owned a Chow that everyone hated except him. Bo was the kind of dog that had the temperament of a cat. Which meant that he was a 125 lb. cat. I avoided him like the plague.

We once had a dog that adopted us. He just showed up one day, and never left. We called around and found his owner. The guy showed up and put Bruno (our name for him) in his truck, chained him up, and kicked him repeatedly. Next day, he showed back up at our farm. I got to where I liked him a lot. We called the owner, he came and picked him up again. Same abusive behavior. The third time he came over, we called the owner, and he was like, "hell, he likes you better than me. Keep him."

He was an alright dog. You could get him to sing by howling at him. He was big, too, easily over 100 lbs. I never really thought about it, but I recently saw some old photos of him, and damn if he wasn't a pit, or something like it (maybe Stafforshire...they tend to be larger). None of us even realized it at the time, and he was great around kids. But man, he had some aggressive behavior around other dogs. He damn near killed my uncle's Border Collie, for example. And we never had cats when Bruno lived with us.

He died one day, and we took him out and buried him in the back pasture.

I have a few dog stories of my own to share.

Well, technically they aren't "my own" since the dog doesn't actually belong to me, but I always have to walk him and feed him when I'm over at my mom's house.

My mother's boyfriend, Ken, has a big catahoula named Spencer. He's a good dog, rarely ever aggressive except with this one dog in the neighborhood that just pisses him off for no particular reason. The problem is that he has very little training to speak of. As much as I love him, Ken seemed satisfied with making sure Spencer wouldn't crap on the carpet or attack people and he didn't pursue any further obedience training. About the only thing Spencer knows how to do is to come when he's called. He sometimes sits on command but since I only tell him to sit when I'm about to take him outside, I suspect he's simply learned to associate me holding his leash with sitting still. I didn't know this when I first met Spencer so I when I let him out into the backyard I assumed we'd play a rousing game of "fetch the random object I just threw in the bushes" until he got tired and wanted to go back inside. As soon as Spencer was finished investigating all the interesting smells, I picked up a stick and threw it across the yard. The dog watched it fly past him and stared at me in that slack-jawed way that they do. I shouted "Go get it!" and he just cocked his head and made this sort of moaning sound. I'm sure that in dog-speak what he actually said was "What am I, your slave? Go get your own damn stick! You threw it away, you should have to go after it."

That said, he's a very obedient dog so long as you let him know that YOU are the boss, not him. It's especially important when he's being walked because he is very fast and can go from standing still to a full run in less than a second. On top of that, he's a pretty big dog. I'm a full 6ft 2in tall and Spencer's back comes up higher than my waist. One time my mom agreed to walk him for me after I twisted my ankle. All it took was one innattentive moment and Spencer decided to make a break for it, pulling my mom right off her feet and onto the grass. She hasn't walked him since. :)

Oh, and one time he defended me from an attacker...sort of.

I was taking Spencer out for a walk and I got harassed by this crazy PETA lady because I was using a choke chain. She kept following me down the street, yelling that I was torturing my dog, that she was going to call the police on me, and that I should be locked up for animal cruelty. Spencer, seemingly unfazed by this freakazoid, stopped to take a twosy, forcing me to stop until he was finished. But the woman didn't stop. She walked right up to me, still screaming about animal cruelty, while I studiously ignored her. Naturally this only made her more angry and she actually tried to take the leash out of my hands.

Well, that did not sit well with Spencer and he started growling and barking at the woman, making it quite clear that he wanted her to back off. After she had retreated a few paces I politely informed this woman that the very same choke chain that she objected to so strongly had probably just saved her since it reinforced Spencer not to run to the end of his leash.

When we got home I rewarded Spencer for chasing off a rampaging liberal by chopping up a couple of bratwursts for him.

Yeah that stupid woman leaving herself open to an attack like that. What the hell was she thinking. She should live in a state like Oklahoma where it is state law that if a dog gets on your property without your consent you are required to shoot it. Twice if necessary.

I just saw an interview with the woman on CNN. Her face is TORE up. Apparently, she also has to get skin grafts done.

She does own a dog, a Sheltie, which was on her lap during the interview. She was watching the neighbors' Jack Russell Terrier, and both dogs were sleeping with her at the time the attack occurred.

She thinks the pit bulls were going after her Sheltie, then turned on the Jack Russell. The Sheltie took off out of the room. She said it was horrible what the pits were doing to the Jack Russell (can you just imagine?) while she went for her gun in her nightstand.

She turned the safety off, but the gun wouldn't fire. So she ran to her car.

She thinks the pit bulls should be euthanized, and the owners should face felony charges (I concur). Turns out, she and other neighbors had repeatedly called 911 about the dogs being a menace.

How horrible. And all because of ignorant asshat dog owners.