A final word on Pit Bulls and other aggressive breeds

Thanks very much for all of your responses. I appreciate your sending along your opinions. I understand your passion for the Pit Bull and your concerns for the dilemma it faces in our society today.

I want to clear up several misunderstandings about what my position is and what I have to say about your breed and other aggressive dog breeds.

I did not express any dislike for the Pit Bull whatsoever. My comments were in regard to the breed's purpose. Dog fighting of any kind is banned and illegal in every civilized country in the world. Watching dogs slaughter one another is no longer considered entertainment. The Pit Bull therefore can no longer serve its original function, unlike other breeds that still retrieve, point, protect, herd, do scent work, hunt large or small game, rescue, or are ratters, etc. The original purpose of the Pit Bull is obsolete and no longer acceptable in a civilized society.

I never stated nor would I support the position that the Pit Bull breed should be banned.

The answer I gave was given in the context of a local family tv show during which I was asked which breeds I would recommend for easygoing people and which breeds I would recommend such people steer clear of. I think that my answer was a fair one given that the Pit Bull is a fighting dog that is not appropriate for the average family, who would be better off with a Golden Retriever. I also think it is fair to say that rough and tough active people usually own a rough and tumble dog, just as soft and quiet people tend to own soft, easygoing dogs. This does not represent a condemnation of anyone.

As to banning breeds of dogs, as much as I don't agree with nor would I participate in these bans, I would not fight against them either, even though one of the first breeds to go would be my beloved German Shepherd, which when poorly trained is without a doubt one of the worst offenders when it comes to serious dog bites. In places where the Pit Bull and German Shepherd Dog, for example, have been banned, or there are muzzle restrictions in place, serious injuries due to dog bites have dropped to zero and bites in general decreased 70%.

It is hard to argue with these facts. When push comes to shove, I care more about the safety of children than I do about my own favorite breed.

The Pit Bull fancy has much less to fear from me than they do from many Pit Bull owners themselves. If the majority of the e-mails I received, full of misrepresentation, hatred, and personal attacks, are any indication of the majority of Pit Bull owners, you have much to be concerned about. I think it is time that the Pit Bull fancy stop describing their dog as docile, harmless, loving and caring, which is a description that I have never used for the German Shepherd Dog. In fact I admonish everyone who owns a German Shepherd to take full responsibility for their dog and its aggressive tendencies.

We as dog lovers owe it to the general public to be clear and forthright about the true nature of our dogs, because it is this very nature that we admire about them.

I think that my book has a lot to offer the Pit Bull fancy, and condemning me and my book will do nothing to solve the problem that Pit Bull owners have created for themselves. In fact my book would do a great deal in helping Pit Bull owners to train their dogs properly and eliminate much of the unwanted aggression these dogs exhibit.

Society has changed and is changing and we dog lovers need to change our attitudes toward public responsibility if we are to avoid being left behind. Society does not have endless patience and will sooner or later eliminate all "problem" dogs if we do not act in our own best interests. The Pit Bull fancy's organized response of "attacking the messenger" -- misrepresenting any comment they perceive as negative, and pretending that the average Pit Bull is as gentle as the average Golden Retriever -- may produce reluctance in some people to speak out about dogs, but this is a double edged sword. If the owners of aggressive breeds like the Pit Bull, the German Shepherd, and the Rottweiler, among others, do not acknowledge their aggressive tendencies and train accordingly, in the end it will be the dogs themselves that will pay, with extinction, for the actions of those who claim to care about them so much.

Pit Bulls Pro and Con

On Thursday, March 8, on “Breakfast Television Vancouver,” during an interview about my book, LET THE DOG DECIDE, I was asked what sorts of dogs I recommend as pets for easygoing people. I mentioned the Bichon Frise as a small dog and the Golden Retriever as a larger dog that would suit such people, although a number of other breeds could also be mentioned in that regard. And then I said that German Shepherds and Rottweilers and working dogs in general are bred to be aggressive, and that people who are interested in owning such dogs need to understand that and take responsibility for training and controlling them properly. I also said that we should stop being shocked and surprised when dogs of these breeds are involved in incidents that result in nasty bites. I added a remark I make in my book, that we never hear about a pack of Irish Setters attacking and hurting someone, but we do hear about such attacks by German Shepherds, Rottweilers, and Pit Bulls.

The host, Simi Sara, then asked me, “What about dogs you should steer clear of?”

I said, “I don’t believe that the Pit Bull is a dog that we should have around anymore at all. Its purpose is to fight to the death, to kill. This is something we do not engage in anymore. It is not an entertainment.”

Simi Sara asked me, “Are they trainable?”

“They are certainly trainable,” I said. “It’s just that their genetics predispose them to act in extremely aggressive and violent ways. When you stimulate a dog by choking, pinching, or making him uncomfortable, he will discharge that aggression somewhere. If he cannot discharge back at his rough, tough owner – people who own Pit Bulls tend to be rough, tough people – he will discharge it against something he thinks he can do it to. And that’s why we get attacks on children. These dogs go looking for someone who they can attack safely. And it’s usually little kids.”

That’s what I said on the air. In addition to many positive e-mails about this and the rest of the interview, I received the following e-mails from fans of the Pit Bull. I want to thank the senders for writing to me in a friendly spirit of concern for the dog.

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From: Hello Bully
Date: March 10, 2007 2:18:38 PM PST
To: dale@precisiondogs.com
Subject: Dog Training

Mr. Stavroff,

I am writing to you in reference to your comments about Pitbulls on Breakfast Television. I was very disappointed to hear that someone who is looked to as an expert would make such statements.

When I checked out your website, I was further shocked to see that you follow the teachings of some of the great minds in dog training. It seems you've decided that compassion should not include Pitbull type dogs. How quickly we forget that not long ago it was the GSDs that suffered the unfair reputation of being "dangerous dogs."

While what you are doing in training is nothing new, it is something that should be brought to the public in light of the popularity of Cesar Millan. But why would you take such an ignorant position on Bully breeds? In the community of PR Trainers, I find that more often than not, people have a level of education and an understanding that breed discrimination is a horrid injustice.

I am asking that you rethink your stance on Pitbull breeds. As civilized beings, we decided years ago that it was wrong to judge an entire race on stereotypes and individual instances. The same should apply to our canine counterparts. I am attaching a copy of "Bully 101", it is an educational handout that we use to try and open people's eyes about Pits. Please take a moment to look it over? We need people like you on our side so that we can repair the reputation of these wonderful dogs. There is also a wealth of information on www.pbrc.net

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Daisy Balawejder
Hello Bully
Rehabilitating, Rehoming, Repairing the Reputation
www.hellobully.com

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From: "Lisa Bruning"
Date: March 11, 2007 9:42:06 AM PDT
To: dale@precisiondogs.com
Subject: Pitbulls

sorry I don't subscribe to your point of view about Pitbulls all being bad.. Yes they are a dog that not all people should have and I really believe that the ill-educated and people in this world who think these dogs are status symbols are to blame for the bad rap these great dogs get. And you should also realize that I have been around these dogs my whole life and have a great deal of experience with them from a small child.. As early as the age of 7 I was walking 3 SBT's all at once and had complete control.
So again I am really really sorry that you have never seen the great family dog that these animals are and only ever seen from the Media's view. Breeders are also to blame for the misrepresentation of the breed. They inbreed, or breed the more aggressive dogs to gain a stronger fighting dog.. they put puppies in front of them as young dogs to train them to fight.. (I own a dog that was used as such).
So don't slam the breed, Slam the deed.. these dogs are devoted and loyal (and also part of our heritage and history) and only want to please and if that means that they have to fight to do this that is what they will do to if that is all they have ever known.
Please talk to the real and responsible Pit owners, like myself, who deeply care about animals and would not wan't to see the good dogs die out.

Thank you

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From: "Kim and Mike"
Date: March 11, 2007 12:26:10 PM PDT
To:
Subject: Police Dogs
Reply-To: "Kim and Mike"

Hi:

I'm sorry I missed your appearance on Breakfast Television. I am forwarding this website address to let you know that not all Pit Bull owners are criminals. Some of them are Police Officers.

http://www.lawdogsusa.org/k9neville.html

I volunteer with a dog rescue group in Ontario. One of the dogs rescued by this group is now a K9 Officer in Washington state. APBT are working dogs. When owned and trained by knowledgeable people they are some of the best working dogs. They are also great companions.

Two of my close friends own APBT's. Both of them are university educated professionals. They are not criminals.

Banning a breed won't stop the criminals from owning dogs. They'll get a different breed. The breed is not the problem. Two of my family members have been bitten by German Shepherds and both times the owner was clearly the one to blame.


Kim

#

From: "Zoe Lees"
Date: March 11, 2007 4:33:10 PM PDT
To: "dale@precisiondogs.com"
Subject: Fwd:


Dale,

After hearing about your spot on Breakfast Television I was utterly appalled to hear your stance on pit bulls. As an owner/lover/foster/advocate of the breed, I have spent the last 16 years surrounded by countless pit bulls and
I have never been harmed by a single one, nor have my children. In fact, the more pit bulls I meet, the deeper my appreciation for them grows. While we spend so much of our time battling the stereotypes inflicted not only on the
breed, but us as owners, by the media and the ignorant, it is more than disappointing to have someone who is supposed to be educated in dog behaviour, slandering us and our family members and perpetuating the myths.
In this time of Breed Specific Legislation, where we are ALL at risk of having our breeds of choice legislated out of our lives, we should have each others backs. When I hear people making negative comments on the breed, I always wonder how much personal experience they actually have with them. Take it from someone with an abundance of personal experience with the breed, you are obviously grossly misinformed about these wonderful dogs as
many people are.

I'll share some photos' with you of the REAL pit bull. Enjoy.

Zoe Lees

#


Although all these folks assume I have had little experience with Pit Bulls, in fact I have had a great many interactions with them and other aggressive dog breeds over the years, including training dogs for protection work. Based on that experience I would say that the exceptions to a general rule don’t disprove that rule.

To answer the comment about Pit Bulls working as police dogs, a dog’s being used for K9 work does not guarantee that it will be reliable and safe in its contact with the public. An RCMP German Shepherd recently escaped from its handler’s home in the Vancouver area and savaged a harmless eight year old boy, who had to have 80 stitches.

The violent dog training methods commonly used on Pit Bulls and police dogs are loading them up with aggression that they all too often discharge against innocent, vulnerable people. The difference, again, is that whereas the other aggressive breeds have been bred to fight until the other side submits, Pit Bulls are unique in having been bred to fight to the kill. As I said on the air, and as I emphasize in my book, all dogs that have had aggression bred into them need special handling and represent a special responsibility for their owners. But Pit Bulls represent an even higher level of threat and responsibility. It is reasonable to ask whether that level of extreme threat has a place in our society.

Are there “good” Pit Bulls and responsible Pit Bull owners in the world? Certainly there are. But this is not the point.

I cannot for the life of me find any other dogs, besides Pit Bulls, that have been bred purely for the so-called “sport” of fighting, and killing, their opponent. This would not be such a concern if it weren't for the fact that this "sport" goes on in Canada, the USA, and Mexico, as well as the rest of Latin America to this day. So there is no assurance that any particular dog has not either fought itself or come directly from fighting lines.

With no Pit Bull breed registry, and from the looks of it none forthcoming, a prospective owner cannot research the background of any of these dogs. This is easily done with other aggressive breeds, such as the German Shepherd Dog, the Malenois, the Rottweiler, and the Doberman Pinscher. These and other aggressive dog breeds can also regularly be seen demonstrating their reliability and stability in competitions such as Schutzhund. However, there are no sanctioned competitions held by Pit Bull enthusiasts to demonstrate and prove the reliability and stability of this breed. Given the extreme levels of aggression that have been bred into Pit Bulls, it is surely not unreasonable to ask why Pit Bull breeders and owners do not hold such competitions and demonstrate to the world that their dogs can remain reliable and stable in a wide range of circumstances.

Let me point out that Pit Bulls are not banned from Schutzhund competition, for example, but rather that Pit Bull fanciers do not enter these dogs in competition. In forty years of involvement in the dog world, I have seen only one Pit Bull at a Schutzhund trial, a lovely little bitch who did a fine job of work. But one dog is not enough to prove the soundness of a breed. Against the documented statistics on severe injuries inflicted by Pit Bulls on people, especially helpless children, anecdotal evidence from a few good and caring owners is just not a convincing argument. No other breed of dog is involved in anything like the number, and the severity, of dangerous incidents that Pit Bulls are involved in.

We could analogize here with the car. I have been driving for forty years without harm. Does this mean that cars are not dangerous? Certainly not! The trail of tears that flows from the automobile is long and full of tragedy. However, there is no substitute for the car at this time.

There are, however, many worthy breeds to substitute for the Pit Bull, such as the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. A prospective owner can research the pedigree of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier for many generations, and can also observe Staffordshire Bull Terriers demonstrating their reliability and stability in dog competitions. The pedigrees of German Shepherds, another aggressive breed that has proven its ability to work with people in a reliable and stable way and is available almost everywhere on the planet, can be traced back for a hundred years.

One can claim forever, "It's not the dog, it's the owner." And you would find me well on your side in this. However, no other dog bites as hard or as ferociously as the Pit Bull by even half. We don't need a dog that bites like this. Quite frankly, I think the same concerns apply to the South American/Canary Island "guardian breeds" as well. People have enough trouble with the proper handling of Labrador Retrievers! If the dog goes wrong, and dogs do go wrong, I'd rather it didn't have a chain saw for a mouth.

The Pit Bull is just not worth the risk it represents at this time. If those who love this dog wish to secure a place for it in civilized society, they should establish a breed registry, train for and hold public competitions that demonstrate the ability to remain reliable and stable in challenging conditions, and so prove that the Pit Bull has value. Until then, it is no good to point at the misbehavior of individual members of other breeds that have proven themselves, when properly trained, to be reliable and controllable on both the competition fields and in the parks and neighborhoods in which our children play.

Finally, Zoe Lees included a number of pictures of Pit Bulls with children in her e-mail. I have not reproduced any of them, because in fairness I would then also have to show photographs of children who were savagely mauled and even killed by Pit Bulls, usually ones belonging to their immediate family. The fact is that how a dog behaves around children when an adult is present and snapping photographs is no guarantee at all of how it will behave when there is no physically powerful and imposing adult present. In England on New Year’s Eve this year a typical such incident occurred. The adults went out for the evening and left their beloved Pit Bull alone with a five year old girl and her frail grandmother. When the adults returned from their partying, the little girl had been killed and the grandmother badly injured by the Pit Bull. Afterwards the family and neighbors alike said that they had often seen the child playing happily with the dog, but that was under adult supervision.

These tragedies occur because of a combination of the aggression that has been bred into the dog and the additional aggression and resentment that the dog gets loaded up with through improper training and handling, using choke chains and pinch collars, by adults who are trying to “be the pack leader.” Again, the dog may not feel it can discharge this aggression back at the “pack leader,” but it will feel free to do so when left alone with a vulnerable person like a child.

I would NOT support breed specific legislation as it now exists on Pit Bulls or any other breeds, however. Such legislation becomes a political football and an excuse for those who seek to enact indiscriminate anti-dog measures disguised as "public concern." What I am calling for is better education of the public on the pros and cons of Pit Bulls, and thus better informed decisions about owning, training, and controlling them. And I urge all those who love Pit Bulls, if they wish to counter concerns about them, to establish a breed registry and take the other steps necessary to demonstrate the value of the breed.

For those interested in the statistics on attacks by Pit Bulls compared to other aggressive breeds, www.dogbitelaw.com is a good source of information.

"Ruff Trade: How to Speak Dog" -- The Complete Interview

"Ruff Trade: How to Speak Dog"

Here's a link to my interview in yesterday's Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/Unassigned/
article/187976.

Out and About with the Dude

The Dude, my family's Wirehaired Dachshund, and I had a great time demonstrating my training method at the BC Book Fair in Vancouver last month, and since then I've been doing a lot of interviews. It's been great to get opportunities to share my new method of dog training and let people know that there is an alternative to ineffective training as usual with choke chains and so on. Yesterday there was a great column on my book, LET THE DOG DECIDE, in the Vancouver Province and an interview in the Toronto Star.

Thanks to my publishers for setting all these things up. They're running the Dude and me hard, but so far we're loving it! The schedule will include some public appearances, and I'll be posting information about them as soon as they're finalized. The Dude and I hope to make your acquaintance soon.

Walk Your Dogs or Medicate Them?

A Diet Pill for Dogs

When people first began to keep dogs in their company, there was method in their madness. When survival was in question, dogs had to serve a useful purpose or be driven out. By the same token, if dogs were going to fulfill our ancestors’ purposes and help them survive, they had to take good care of their dogs. That naturally included appropriate food and rest. The fact that our ancestors were self-interested users of the dog was the very reason their dogs were so healthy as individuals and breeds.

Nothing has appreciably changed since the first dogs wandered into human camps. We are still self-interested users of dogs, but now we mainly use them as pets. When we deny pet dogs proper exercise and overfeed them, that use becomes abuse.

Dogs still have their true friends who work and hunt with them and train them for these tasks, celebrating and cultivating their many extraordinary capabilities, or who, as pet owners, run, jog, hike, bike, walk, stroll, and play with their dogs. The best pet owners have chosen dogs that suit their own healthy lifestyles, from very to mildly active, give their dogs the daily exercise that both owner and dog require to stay fit, and provide good nutrition without overfeeding.

Countless other dogs are overfed and underexercised until they are sadly obese and can barely move. This abuse of dogs by their owners is matched by the abuse of dogs by breeders who flood the pet market with physically and temperamentally unsound dogs.

Back in the day, as current lingo has it, veterinarians might have admonished owners to take better care of their stock, and livestock owners would have listened or lost the services of the only vet in the area. In today’s cities and suburbs, however, with many vets in competition for the same clients, a veterinarian must consider the risk of losing clients to some more sympathetic ear. Just as the peace officer has reluctantly entered into the world of "law enforcement" and no longer keeps the peace, and as the school teacher has been transformed into an "educator and facilitator" who no longer teaches, veterinarians have become independent business people, some of whom can no longer be concerned with the well being of animals as much as the well being of their business if they hope to survive in an increasingly competitive market. Better to give pet owners the quick fix they are looking for, or someone else will. This kind of thinking could not be more apparent in the recent FDA approval of a diet pill for dogs.

Perhaps this should not be considered so surprising an event in a society that treats behavioral problems in children by drugging them. A society that has already prescribed using such drugs for dog behavior problems as well! There is great danger in deferring our personal responsibilities to institutions and professional practitioners. We have seen the terrible outcome of this behavior, and will see more as we continue to leave our problem children, dogs, cats, and the disturbed and vulnerable among us in the hands of others. B.F. Skinner warned years ago that handing off social problems to professional caregivers, without proper oversight, would lead to self interested institutions and persons that no longer regard their original purpose as important and that instead become dedicated solely to their own status and privilege. One need look no further than the local animal shelter or child protective services organization, public or private, for evidence of this tragedy in the making.

The truth of the matter is that, in this climate of total abdication of personal responsibility, how we are treating dogs is just a reflection of the methods we have adopted to disengage from the more relevant problems of our lives. In what other time period or climate could we make a hero of the likes of Cesar Millan, who has single handedly taken dog training back into the Stone Age? Is driving a dog into fearful submission the answer to our concerns about dog behavior? Is giving the dog a diet pill because we now refuse to walk him, both for his good and ours, the answer to our ills? I think not.

An excerpt from my book, LET THE DOG DECIDE