Natural History

Posted in dog breeds | Tagged breed specific legislation | 21 Comments

21 Responses

1. on August 19, 2012 at 4:55 pm EmilyS

   1) ” Second, geneticists, veterinarians, breeders, and pit bull companions for years have talked of breed specific behaviors as if they came with the pedigree. In this case, that translates into “pit bulls are fighters.” ” and “If, like the kennel clubs say, aggression has been bred out of them, then they are no different than any other show dog bred for looks and not performance, and they are worthless as guard dogs. People who have them are engaged in an elaborate fiction, a bluff.”

   You’d expect Mark Derr to have a more sophisticated understanding of “aggression” as well as a more accurate understanding of what “pit bull” people say. A breed-specific behavior for the ABPT/AST does NOT translate into “pit bulls are fighters”. The behavior doesn’t need “translation” because the AST standard describes is “keenly aware of its surroundings” and having “proverbial courage”. Like most terriers, their willingness to respond (or initiate) a threat towards another dog is heightened and yes.. in the past, this trait was used for pit fighting as it had been used for bull baiting and for rat-pitting and as it is now used more legitimately for hog catching. Considering the enormous numbers of APBTs and APBT mixes in the USA, there are virtually NO APBTs currently bred, or used, for dogfighting, despite the efforts of HSUS to hype this as a huge societal problem.

   It would be nice if he were able to make a distinction between a purebred dog and the “landrace” he later refers to, by which he can only mean all the NOT -purebred APBTs/ASTs, but all the shorthaired, blockheaded dogs that people love to call “pit bulls” though they may actually have ZERO component of either APBT or AST. There obviously can be no “breed standard” for such a dog. But in any case, “Aggression” and “fighting” are in NO pit bull breed standard. The APBT and the AST have not been bred for “fighting” nor for “aggression” in 50-100 years (if they ever were). Do we really have to educate Mr Derr about the history of the breeds.. and how much of their history had NOTHING to do with the fighting pit? And neither breed was EVER a guard dog so that part of his argument is completely besides the point. It doesn’t matter that stupid people get dogs they call pit bulls to be “guard dogs”. Stupid people get dogs for stupid reasons all the time.

   2) “There are people who have these dogs to fight or to be aggressive guards. Pit bulls are identified in the popular imagination with that kind of thuggery”.

   Bleh. The vast majority of people who own a “pit bull”.. however you define that.. do no such thing. The fact that the popular imagination thinks they do is testament to the media’s hysteria, not reality. Yes, the vote to repeal the Miami ban failed… many votes fail… including recognition of gay marriage for example.

   If Mr Derr DOES want to talk about “breed specific behavior”, that would be a good thing. But he’s off to a bad start if he’s going to deliberately conflate purebred dogs (which have breed specific behavior) and mixed breed dogs, which… don’t.

   
   
   • on August 20, 2012 at 3:01 pm Jessica

     Although I’ll have to disagree that mixed breed dogs don’t have behaviors specific to their component breeds. I’ll speak of herding dogs because that is what I know, but many herding dog mixes can herd, some Border Collie mixes have significant amounts of “eye”.

     Just because they’re mixed doesn’t mean they’ve lost the genes for those traits. Many cattlemen prefer an F1 or F2 herding dog cross between herding breeds because they acquire more flexibility in their herding style and temperament.

     
     
2. on August 19, 2012 at 5:50 pm EmilyS

   to refer to a “classic fighting breed, the bull terrier” is no more accurate than if he had typed the words, “the classic bullbaiting breed, the English bulldog”.

   
   
   • on August 19, 2012 at 10:56 pm Jana

     If that’s a classic fighting breed, my show-bred collies are indespensable farm dogs! They have some herding instinct, but it amounts to “yay, sheep!” and some mild-mannered rounding behavior. Enough to earn a HT, but probably not enough to be useful in a farm situation.

     It’s back there, but way way back. When was “The Bar Sinister” written, a hundred years ago? And the BT was already well on its way to becoming a dandy show dog, not a pit fighter. The breed does have a reputation for dog aggression, but that’s pretty common with terriers.

     
     
3. on August 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm massugu

   With certain breeds (and w/ certain specific dogs as well as specific types of dogs), early socialization is a necessity. But having said that, I think that all dogs should undergo early socialization. Its a basic part of dog/wolf nature to live as part of a society and thus socialization makes them happier, healthier and better balanced.

   
   
4. on August 19, 2012 at 10:06 pm justanotherbyb

   I’m sorry, but the Bull Terrier has got to be the ugliest breed ever created by Man.

   
   
   • on August 19, 2012 at 10:17 pm retrieverman

     When I was in my late teeens, I wanted one badly.

     Because Alby Mangels had one!

     
     
   • on August 20, 2012 at 4:11 pm massugu

     My wife agrees–tho I’m kinda partial to ’em (like attracts like perhaps.)

     
     
   • on August 20, 2012 at 7:51 pm Pai

     A modern BT head on the original BT-body of 100 years ago would be perfection, imo.

     
     
5. on August 20, 2012 at 10:06 am Jen Robinson

   They’re not retrievers, but I don’t associate the bullie with strong anti-social behavior in the boarding kennel. Standing their ground, yes. Attacking, rare if at all.
   If someone is going to go after bull terriers, I’d save my breath for the miniature version, which has severe health problems and, despite being small (AKC height of under 14″, their life expectancy is only 6-7 years.

   
   
6. on August 20, 2012 at 10:22 am megrim43

   A close friend of mine bred English Bull Terriers for years, before turning to Afghans. She said they were delightful, and great with her children: they taught her little girls to walk by letting them hold on and toddle along with them.

   BUT

   She also said that they have a little switch in the brain. It flicks between “Good Dog” and “Psychopath”.,,,usually in the presence of other dogs, even ones they have known for years. You could sometimes see it coming, but could not stop it or control it. Sounds like the “seizures ” Derr mentions.

   Elizabeth

   
   
7. on August 20, 2012 at 11:41 am M.R.S.

   First, the Bull Terrier is a different breed than the American Pit Bull Terrier and the American Staffordshire Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Whle some ASTs are cross-registered with UKC as APBTs, the (so-called) “English” Bull Terrier is quite different. The two at the top of this column are Bull Terriers, not APBT or AST.

   Secondly, there definitely are still people who breed/use dogs for organized pit fighting. ( Don’t you remember the Michael Vick story?) Those dogs are almost certainly not registered with UKC, which has very stringent rules against any such participation and bans people who do. And there are numbers of less organized fights or “rolls”, as any Animal Control officer in Detroit, and many other cities, could attest to.

   The majority of APBTs, ASTs, and Bull Terriers that I’ve met have been delightful dogs but if they do bite, they have the capability of doing serious damage (and so do some of other breeds). As, my friend’s dog that removed half the siding from her garage while hunting a mouse that took shelter there.

   But BSL is not good legislation. It’s rather like banning/impugning anyone with Italian/Sicilian ancestors because “they are Mafia and thus dangerous”.

   
   
   • on August 20, 2012 at 4:15 pm massugu

     Other breeds can be just as destructive. A single friend of mine had a Lab that he used to leave in the house when he went to work. After it chewed thru a few doors, he built a chain-link kennel to hold him during the day-time. After the dog chewed though that fence (and after major vet bills to fix his mouth), he just left him outside in the yard when he went to work.

     
     
     • on February 2, 2013 at 10:43 am kittenz

       I had a wonderful big German Shepherd Dog who was the friendliest and best behaved dog one could ask for – unless I left him locked in somewhere alone. By “locked in”, I don’t mean “caged”, but simply, in a room with a door closed, a kennel run, etc. If other dogs were with him he was fine, but if he was alone, he would just … tear the door off to get out of whatever room he was in. He tore the bottom half of a hollow-core wooden door off the grroming room at the clinic when I had to unexpectedly leave him to go out on an emergency & the kennels were full. He tore the chain link door off a kennel – just pulled the hinges right out of the concrete blocks – when I left him in a kennel the next time. When he was freshly neutered and woke up in a stainless steel cage where he had been overnight, he pulled the cage door into a “V” and was waiting in front of the cage the next morning. He just did not like being confined alone.

       For all his, um intense dislike of solitude, though, he was a terrific dog. Twice he warned me of situations which would have caused a house fire, had he not smelled the fire in time, once he saved one of the horses from a serious barbed-wire entanglement by telling me that something was wrong in the back pasture, and he was a real ambassador for the breed – everyone who met him loved him. I miss him so much, even though he passed away nearly 17 years ago.

       
       
8. on August 20, 2012 at 2:15 pm Greta

   I’ve thought for many years about “pit bulls” and the hows and whys. I have a theory and I think it stands up to scrutiny. For purposes of this post, I’ll say up front that I’m referring to unregistered “pit bulls” (and I’m going to stop adding quotation marks after this), intentionally game-bred pit bulls, and mixed breed dogs AND pure breed designations that descend all or in part from dogs bred to fight other dogs.

   First, I think that pit fighting behavior is not “aggression” in the sense that it is not social agonistic (conflict resolving) behavior. I think that, instead, it IS predatory behavior. It looks predatory — quiet, directed, no screwing around with ritualized posturing, teeth flashing, barking, growling, minor injuries around the face and ears, just directed attemps to maim and kill. To my mind, the accurate description is: “predation (hunting and killing) directed toward a specific prey, other dogs.”

   We modify predation (NOT “prey drive”) in many breeds in many ways. Some breeds are meant to chase and kill but not eat. Some are meant to chase and nip, but not kill or eat. And so on. And we manipulate the prey object of these sequences very successfully. Small terriers are turned on by rats. Labradors are turned on by ducks (and often uninterested in, say, crows). Border Collies are turned on by sheep and often pretty uninterested in horses. It is perfectly plausible that we could select for predation directed toward other dogs.

   I think that this specific dog-game behavior is as hard to maintain by breeding as any other highly specific working predatory-based behavior. Even a carefully game-bred litter with generations behind it will probably include a puppy with not much gameness, or another pup showing aggression toward human handlers — in an old fashioned breeding program, these pups would be culled.

   In modern times, these pups might be pawned off on neighbors or friends or wannabe tough guys or whatever, who in turn may go off and breed them based on the “glamour” of their lineage. If breeding is not careful and focused, the incidence and expression of the working trait will start to scatter and dull. Some pups will be fantastically game, natural fighters, some will be dog friendly and uninterested in fighting, ever; some will be nasty to people (just like in any other breed); some will show social aggression toward dogs (just like in any other breed); some will be fearful (just like in any other breed); and so on. The more generations away from a selected game breeding, the more scattered the proper temperament (game to the death with dogs, socially gentle and loving with people) will be — we will see fragments of it, or the wrong side of the coin starting to appear and propagate. If it goes more wrong, the predation target starts to get less specific, too. And that is probably the main reason that we tragically see a few young kids killed by pit bulls each year in the U.S. (also a few more, often in Canada, by huskies — same problem, IMO).

   To my mind it is not correct to call the “aggression” problem that is generally specific to pit bulls “dog aggression.” The gameness and predatory behavior is quite rare in other breeds, and it is not social aggression. My Aussie’s dog aggression is dog aggression — it’s highly ritualized and snarky, she has never done damage past a scrape or nick when attacked back. That is what dog social aggression looks like. If a neck is torn open, or there is a big bite to the belly, that is predatory behavior.

   To complicate matters, social aggression can trigger predatory behavior (“pit bull gameness”). But some pit bull gameness can be triggered simply by a dog behaving like prey, with zero social aggression preceding. Some can be triggered by a dog just being there, or just being small and fluffy (ancient limbic predation trigger — this can happen in other breeds, too).

   So that little switch in the brain — it describes a real thing. It is not seizure activity (responding to M.R.S.’s friend’s comment). It is exactly equivalent to my Border Collie grabbing the sleeve of a child running by — you can see her face switch from “hanging with mom” to “stopping that sheep and by god this is serious business” in that moment. It just happens she’s “stopping sheep” and the pit bull’s behavior has been selected toward “killing that dog.” It’s not any more evil than my dog’s behavior, but it’s scarier since people don’t want their dogs mauled or killed, and if the failure to select narrowly ends up producing a small number of dogs who react gamely toward screaming or flailing toddlers, people really freak out about that.

   By the way, there are absolutely purebred APBTs and Amstaffs that will demonstrate this behavior, though it’s probably getting rarer and rare the longer the stud books stay closed. There are also purebred Siberians, Greyhounds, GSDs, JRTs, and so on that will do the same thing, and in theory, this COULD come up in almost any other pure breed where breeders are not actively selecting for some other working trait AND against “predatory drift.”

   An awful lot of bad dog behavior out there (other than sheer lack of training) results from this scattering and smushing of former working traits as a result of not breeding FOR focused working traits. We used to expect a lot of breeds of dogs to do a lot of terrible things that are no longer socially acceptable. Those genetics are floating around. Just because “APBTs are not bred to fight other dogs” does not mean those genetics can’t appear in some individuals. Sometimes you see something like a BC/Lab cross that can move 100 sheep like a dream dog straight out of ISDS lines, too. Lack of focused working breeding can disable the behavioral brakes that went with that breeding. It’s amazing how many people will not see this.

   Well, this got a lot longer than I intended. I hope someone found it interesting.

   
   
   • on August 20, 2012 at 3:36 pm Suhail

     This is a very informative post indeed.

     Stanley Coran has narrated an incident in his book ‘How to speak dog’ and I have also observed it in a dog park that if a dog gets hurt and starts screaming, other dogs turn on him too. I have never been able to understan why.

     
     
   • on August 20, 2012 at 4:22 pm massugu

     Very insightful. I agree the behavior is the same as that that would be displayed by a wolf-hound against a wolf or coyote, or a foxhound against a fox. On the other hand, some of these same dogs are markedly non-aggressive to people. What do you think is happening in that case?

     
     
9. on August 20, 2012 at 7:09 pm justanotherbyb

   I definitely like your theory.

   
   
10. on August 22, 2012 at 10:37 am Pit Bulls « Just Another Backyard Breeder

    […] think she ever would have made a very good guard dog. But dog aggression was in her nature. (Or dog predation, […]

    
    
11. on August 28, 2012 at 6:29 pm Lorine Dankert

    I seriously really feel that breed specific legislation needs to be prohibited. A puppy turning out to be vicious isn’t based on the breed of dog, but on who raised the puppy, and for what purpose.

    
    
12. on February 2, 2013 at 11:07 am kittenz

    One of the things I’ve noticed about pit bulls (and some other types of dogs that have at some point been specifically bred for dogfighting) is that they don’t generally respond to the other dog’s submissive behaviors when they are fighting. A collie or a shepherd or a Lab, or almost any other kind of dog, purebred or not, will leave off a fight if the other dog rolls over and exposes its belly and neck in submission. But “bull-y” types will just continue the fight, until the other dog is dead, they are forcibly pulled off, or they are simply too tired to carry on. They don’t seem to recognize the “puppy rollover” as the signal that the fight is over.

    In the frenzied attack that occurs when several dogs join in the fray against one, a sort of pack mentality seems to take over, and the dog who is being attacked is lucky to get out alive. It’s as though the dogs perceive the screaming dog as a threat to their “pack” (no matter that the “pack” was an impromptu meeting of dogs who may never have met before) that has to be absolutely eliminated, and I have seen dogs who were actually torn apart in this way. That “frenzied pack attack” type of behavior seems to be common to all breeds; once that kind of attack starts, it’s very hard to stop it.

    
    

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