i mean, they eat their own vomit. Right?

Just as children are not born with prejudice but must be taught, dogs are not born as biters but become biters because of their owners. Fine and/or jail the owners of biting dogs consistently and the biting will subside.

I know of pit bulls that are the sweetest creatures around and poodles that will rip your face off given half a chance.

Owners should have to take a class on the responsibilities and potential penalties of dog ownership. Come to think of it, we should do the same for potential parents.

The author sounds like the oil company sponsored 'experts' writing that Global warming is a scam.

Look at all the cases of Pitbull attacks over the years.

Pit balls are genetically aggressive.

Current owners need to have a very careful watch on them and, while we certainly must be humane and nice to the ones alive now, the numbers of the breed should carefully be decreased.

And Michael Vick deserves at least 18 months in jail and to be banned for the NFL for 5 years!

I thought the "proper" name was Staffordshire Terrier.

That was the "official" name of the dogs owned by a friend of mine who purchased a condo in Chicago a few years ago. After the closing, a neighbor saw my client walking the dogs and declared them to be "illegal" pit bulls according to the condo rules. After much negotiation my friend was allowed to keep them in the house but had to muzzle them when outside. This is becoming pretty standard in Chicago condos - what about elsewhere?

Unfortunately the author of this article does not give any substantive evidence for or against the behavioral tendencies of any breed of dogs. There is a lot of anecdotal discussion, some ad hominim attacks of "self-described experts", and the implication that the hatred of pit bulls is somehow racist.

The only section with any substantive data is the challenge in providing a reasonable definition of breed, an important issue. Nonetheless, what I still don't know at the end of this rather tiresome article is whether there is any specific data about pit bull attacks, or in fact of dog attacks by any breed.

You can do better than publishing this kind of thing.

I've owned a pit bull mix and my father inherited one from a family member. I have also interacted with pit bulls owned by others. From my personal experience, they generally have a sweet temperament, but are fiercely loyal and will defend their master against perceived enemies if not properly trained. But this is true about many breeds of dogs, and different breeds require different levels of training and socialization.

A pit bull that is regularly introduced to social situations and allowed to interact with others will gain an understanding of what constitutes a threat and will not randomly attack people for no reason. To turn these normally affectionate creatures into fighting machines requires an unconscionable amount of physical and psychological abuse. What Michael Vick did sickens me and to my mind, he is no better than a sociopathic rapist, molester or killer.

Thanks for helping me re-think a dog I've only heard bad things about, and helping me realize the two horse-sized sweeties my friend owns would count under the poorly written laws being enacted.

Right, and guns don't kill people, people kill people.

If you want some statistics, there are some towards the end of this clip, if you have the stomach to watch the beginning...

http://gprime.net/flash.php/thepitbullproblem

Pit Bulls don't kill people, people kill people!

When pit bulls are outlawed, only outlaws will own pit bulls.

You can pry my pit bull off my cold dead body. (http://www.google.com/search?q=pit+bulls+kill+owner)

but they are so damned handsome!

this?

http://garyploski.com/wp-content/uploads/far-side-cat-fud.jpg

I don't like dogs. In fact, I hate everything involved with dog ownership. They're needy. I refuse to deal with crap. And I've been chased far too often on my morning runs (bitten by the notorious golden retriever).

But pit bull "problems" are caused by owners, not the dogs. I shared a house with a roommate and his pit bull, Sugar, for one year. The dog was a complete sissy. She would just kind of hang around all day, and would maybe rest her head in your lap as you tried to read a book.

Sure, there was some violence. The most striking example being the time Sugar got out of the car when we visited my office. She walked up to an alley cat who happened to have a bundle of kittens. The next several minutes involved corralling a screaming dog as it ran away from a ten-pound cat. Yes: a killer, born and bred.

This is about jerks with pit bulls, not the breed itself.

Some pit bulls are cute and sweet and some are killers, like the two that attacked my friend and her daughter and their two dogs while they were walking through their nieghborhood schoolyard before church on a Sunday morning. They eviscerated the guts of one of my friend's dogs, causing $3000 worth of vet surgery bills, and did some other horrifying damage I can't recall.

You can't have paid more than $.03 a word for this garbage. Or was it free?

What's the use.

This whole "it's not the breed, it's the owner" schitck is only partly true. Sure, the way you treat your dog affects its temperment, but genetics and breeding also factor heavily into the equation, and no amount of hand-waving can change that.

My partner works in animal law enforcement. The number of stories he and his co-workers have about good pits gone bad would scare the living shit out of you. They can literally go from tail wagging to full-on attack mode and right back without a moment's notice. It may be a relatively rare event, but the consequences can be grim. Remember, they're animals; they simply are not capable of rational thought.

Mandatory spay/neuter is the way to go. Period.