Pets are family, so people have a knee-jerk reaction to anyone badmouthing their pets even if the other person has a point.
My sister has a rescue pit. He’s the sweetest dog ever - he was afraid of men for a while due to his previous owner, but gradually warmed up and now runs up to everyone he sees for cuddles.
However, when they took him to visit someone in a nursing home he ran off and bit one of the staff unprovoked. It turns out how a dog behaves around family versus around strangers are two completely different things, and dog owners rarely see the latter so judge their pet’s personality based on the former.
A dog can be an absolute angel around people introduced to them by someone they love and trust, but if their little doggy brain registers someone as a threat (or even just an intruder in their space) things can go very wrong, very quickly.
This so much. I’ve had dogs snarling at me, and the owner is like “Oh, don’t worry, he’s friendly.” Like no, he’s friendly towards people he knows, not random strangers!
This got severely exacerbated by the pandemic too. A lot of people who had zero business having a dog found themselves with a bit too much free time and decided a new dog was the solution.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but if you get a dog as a quick fix to your own problems without putting a LOT of thought into it first, you might not be the best person to have a dog.
That’s why these discussions generally come down to understanding/misunderstanding ‘instincts’. Certain breeds have at least broadly understood instincts when it comes to offensive/defensive postures, and those instincts may never be triggered in their day to day, even year to year, routine…but extrapolating that to mean ‘my little Cuddles would never X if Y happened’ is dangerous and selfish.
Lots of dogs are like that too, but most don’t have tools to kill like a pit. You basically have all the aggression of a Yorkie and the bite of a bear. It doesn’t help that are pack motivated too. God help anything that looks like food or a toy when 2 of them are out.
Pets are family, so people have a knee-jerk reaction to anyone badmouthing their pets even if the other person has a point.
My sister has a rescue pit. He’s the sweetest dog ever - he was afraid of men for a while due to his previous owner, but gradually warmed up and now runs up to everyone he sees for cuddles.
However, when they took him to visit someone in a nursing home he ran off and bit one of the staff unprovoked. It turns out how a dog behaves around family versus around strangers are two completely different things, and dog owners rarely see the latter so judge their pet’s personality based on the former.
A dog can be an absolute angel around people introduced to them by someone they love and trust, but if their little doggy brain registers someone as a threat (or even just an intruder in their space) things can go very wrong, very quickly.
This so much. I’ve had dogs snarling at me, and the owner is like “Oh, don’t worry, he’s friendly.” Like no, he’s friendly towards people he knows, not random strangers!
This got severely exacerbated by the pandemic too. A lot of people who had zero business having a dog found themselves with a bit too much free time and decided a new dog was the solution.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but if you get a dog as a quick fix to your own problems without putting a LOT of thought into it first, you might not be the best person to have a dog.
That’s why these discussions generally come down to understanding/misunderstanding ‘instincts’. Certain breeds have at least broadly understood instincts when it comes to offensive/defensive postures, and those instincts may never be triggered in their day to day, even year to year, routine…but extrapolating that to mean ‘my little Cuddles would never X if Y happened’ is dangerous and selfish.
Lots of dogs are like that too, but most don’t have tools to kill like a pit. You basically have all the aggression of a Yorkie and the bite of a bear. It doesn’t help that are pack motivated too. God help anything that looks like food or a toy when 2 of them are out.