Bully or Bullied?
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Brew the Pit Bull (photo courtesy of Harrison Meyer)
Pit bulls are so common around here that some call them the “Labradors of New Mexico,” so it’s worth taking a closer look at the nature of this infamous pet. But who holds the answers? Depending who you ask, pit bulls are a dangerously vicious type of dog, they’re perfect darlings—or they don’t even exist.
An American Staffordshire Terrier with clipped ears
That is to say, they don’t exist as a distinct breed. “Pit bull” is a term without an official definition, more slang than scientific identifier. It’s often used to refer to terrier breeds descended from bulldogs, including the American Staffordshire Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, but since there’s no hard-and-fast rule for its use, people end up applying it whenever they see features like a boxy head and brawny shoulders.
An American Pitt Bull Terrier
As a result, almost any mutt with “bully” qualities can be considered a pit bull. This includes the offspring of Staffordshire terriers mixed with a wide range of other breeds, lumping together a pretty diverse pool of puppies. Many mutts of unknown origins are misidentified as pit bulls based on their appearance despite lacking even a drop of terrier blood.
But does it matter which blood flows through a dog’s veins? Are certain breeds really more violent than others?
Anti-pit bull advocates claim they are, pointing to reams of local and regional statistics about dog attacks in which pit bulls have tended to top the list. They note that in most attacks a dog will repeatedly bite and release, whereas pit bulls have a “hold and shake” instinct that’s supposedly encoded into their genes.
The trouble is that there’s no such thing as pit bull genes. To quote Kris Irizarry, professor of comparative genomics at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences: “You look at a pit bull’s DNA and the only thing you can really tell is that it’s a dog. That’s why the tests don’t work. There’s no boundary between what genes may or may not be in the breed, and that’s why it’s not a breed. It’s just a general dog and there’s no way to predict its behavior from its appearance.”
A Staffordshire Bull Terrier
This supports the popular pro-pit bull argument that a dog’s behavior correlates to its owner far more than to its genetics. People who want aggressive dogs, whether as guards or as outright fighters, tend to gravitate to certain breeds and types, then condition them to behave aggressively by provoking and neglecting them.
A 2011 study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences confirms this correlation between owners’ style and dogs’ behavior: “vicious dog owners reported significantly higher criminal thinking, entitlement, sentimentality and super-optimism tendencies. Vicious dog owners were arrested, engaged in physical fights, and used marijuana significantly more than other dog owners.”
Malcolm Gladwell reached similar conclusions when he talked to a slew of dog-attack experts and crunched the statistics himself for his 2006 essay about pit bulls, “Troublemakers.” He writes that people who want to own aggressive dogs condition their dogs to bark, bite, and maul with specific treatment and mistreatment. And these same people’s tastes in breed have evolved over the decades from German shepherds and St. Bernards in the seventies, to Dobermans and Rottweilers in the eighties, to pit bulls by the turn of the century.
“The kinds of dogs that kill people change over time, because the popularity of certain breeds changes over time,” Gladwell says. “When we have more problems with pit bulls, it’s not necessarily a sign that pit bulls are more dangerous than other dogs. It could just be a sign that pit bulls have become more numerous.”
And pit bulls have indeed become more numerous. As Tom Junod observes in a 2014 story on the subject, “A few generations ago, the typical mutt was a rangy dog with a long snout and pricked ears—a shepherd mix. Now it looks like a pit bull.” Pit bull populations have grown to the point that they’re the most common type of dog in the U.S. Junod continues: there is “no other dog as discriminated against, no other dog as wantonly bred, no other dog as frequently abused, no other dog as promiscuously abandoned, no other dog as likely to end up in an animal shelter, no other dog as likely to be rescued, no other dog as likely to be killed.”
So is it true that all pit bulls are bloodthirsty beasts, unfit to keep as pets?
Not in the least. Think of German shepherds, who serve both as “vicious” attack dogs and as conscientious seeing-eye dogs. The difference? Not genetics, but training. The same holds true for pit bulls, who can indeed be trained to maul dogs or allowed to attack humans, but who are just as susceptible to a little TLC and a lifetime of loyalty and play.
Brew snuggles and mugs for the camera
And I speak from experience. Brew, the pit bull mix in my life, was already fully grown when my friend rescued him through the Animal Humane Society of Albuquerque. Pale scars on his scalp hint at a violent past, possibly a puppyhood of abuse as a bait dog. But Brew is far more likely to bowl you over with licks and kisses than to bark or bite, and he loves a good lap for long bouts of cuddling. (I can’t say the same for the fluffy little cocker spaniel I had growing up, who had a reputation in the neighborhood for snapping and drawing blood.)
In short? All dogs need to be handled with care to foster healthy social behavior, whatever their breed or type. But at the end of the day there’s no point labeling a mutt by the shape of its features. A humble pit bull could end up being the best friend you ever had.
This post brought to you by reporters Malcolm Gladwell and Tom Junod, DogsBite.org, the National Canine Research Council, and Brew’s drooly kisses.
