When I was growing up, I lived on a dairy farm. And we had an Australian Blue Heeler. We called him “Wimpy”. He was an amazing cattle dog. No one really trained him, he just instinctively knew what to do with the cows.
The reason they’re called “heelers” is because to make the cow move in the desired direction, they nip at its rear feet then duck down so when the cow kicks at whatever is biting its heels, it doesn’t hit the dog in the face.
Nobody trains heelers to do that. It’s bred into them.
True, we taught Wimpy some basic whistle commands, but that’s just so we could have the illusion that we were actually in control of what the dog was doing.
Even without us around, Wimpy would make sure the cows went where they were supposed to go. One morning we woke up to find cow prints all over the yard. Which was strange because all 70 cows were still in their pen. Then we figured out what happened.
Wimpy had discovered the cows had broken down the fence, but not just in one place. The fence had failed on both the north and south sides of the pen. Wimpy had rounded up all the cows then ran around the pen (about 100 yards end-to-end) all night to make sure they stayed there.
So like I said, he didn’t really need us around to tell him what to do. He was bred for a purpose, and he was really good at doing it.
In the U.K. back in the early 1800’s there was a “sport” known as “bull baiting”. Bull baiting was where they put a bull in a ring and had a dog essentially torture it to death. Dogs were bred with the specific instinctual compulsion of biting bulls around the neck and face. That’s where Old English Bulldogs came from.
Eventually bull baiting was banned so the people who enjoyed watching animals kill each other had to invent something new. That something new was called “ratting”. That’s where they put a bunch of rats in a shallow pit so they can’t escape and then they toss a dog in there and bet on how fast the dog could kill the rats.
So, they needed a dog that was both fierce and fast. A lethal combination even if you’re not a rat. To make that dog, they bred the Old English Bulldog with a terrier. That dog is the pit bull terrier, or pit bull for short.
The “bull” in pit bull comes from the Bulldog part. The “pit” comes from the fact that they were bred to fight in a pit. Pit bulls weren’t genetically engineered to nip at someone’s heels. They were specifically designed to do one thing. And that one thing is to kill. So, you could probably consider them an “assault dog”.
My neighbor has a new pit bull assault puppy. It’s an extremely muscular dog without an ounce of fat anywhere on its body. And it loves everyone. The only thing I’m afraid of when I’m near that dog is being licked to death.
But regardless of how well a dog is trained, its behavior is still unpredictable. The fact remains, if cornered and feeling threatened, an assault dog will instinctively go for the face and throat. Because that’s what it was bred to do. That’s why pit bull attacks are so violent. It’s also why the pit bull is the breed of choice for illegal dogfighting here in the U.S.
There is no more bull baiting and no more ratting so there is no reason for the pit bull to exist. And yet each year, the pit bull becomes increasingly more popular and more and more of them are welcomed into homes as family pets for companionship and protection.
All too often we hear about a dog attacking and killing someone. More often than not, the dog doing the killing is a pit bull. Between 2005 and 2019, there were 346 fatal pit bull assault dog attacks in the United States. In fact, during that period, pit bull assault dogs killed 11 times more people than any other dog breed. 53% of those 346 deaths were cases of the dog killing a family or household member. You know, the people it was supposed to protect.
Yet you never hear people calling for pit bull assault dogs to be banned. Nor do you hear talk of rounding up all pit bull assault dogs and destroying them. You don’t hear anyone blaming the dog. No, they blame the person who owns the dog. I guess the thinking is that anyone who owns a pit bull is training them to fight. But most pit bull owners aren’t doing that. Usually, the story told is that it was a loving family pet. Until it wasn’t.
Here’s the thing, an assault dog can attack someone without any encouragement or training from its owner. Because a dog is capable of independent action. The dog could be just lying there on the floor, and then get up and take a bite out of someone. Even without any obvious provocation, a dog can become violent.
Just like Wimpy knowing instinctively how to herd cows, a pit bull knows instinctively how to attack and kill. That’s what it was designed to do. Dogs bred for violence can become violent without any help from a human. And if they’ll do it once, they’ll likely do it again.
Yet even destroying a single killer dog is met with a surprising amount of resistance.
A gun is completely predictable. Without human intervention, a gun is as dangerous as a pillow. A gun can’t become violent. It can only be used in a violent way by a violent person. Not once in the history of the world has a gun suddenly jumped up and started shooting at people. Not without help.
Yet every time there’s a shooting, there are new attempts to eliminate everyone’s legal right to own a weapon.
There are an estimated 4.5 million pit bull assault dogs in the United States. And most of those assault dogs are loving family pets that provide companionship and protection.
So, I don’t think it makes sense to ban so-called pit bull assault dogs. Because the vast majority of those assault dogs never hurt anyone. In fact, we should probably stop calling them assault dogs because that’s misleading. And because there’s no such thing as an assault dog.
When a pit bull attacks and kills someone, there’s no talk about confiscating and destroying all pit bulls. Elections aren’t won and lost on a platform of pit bull reform. Because that would be ridiculous. And yet it makes more sense to ban pit bulls than it does to ban so-called “assault rifles”.
There are more than 20 million AR-style rifles in the United States and most of them haven’t been used to hurt anyone. In fact, we should probably stop calling them assault rifles because that’s misleading. And, oh yeah, there’s no such thing as an assault rifle.
Fun fact: You are nearly twice as likely to be beaten to death by someone using their fists than you are to be killed by someone using a rifle.
In 2019, rifles were used in only 2.9% of all homicides. If you were killed by someone using a gun, you were 27 times less likely to be killed by a rifle than any other type of gun. That includes all rifles, with AR-style weapons making up just a fraction of all long guns in the U.S.
On the other hand, during that same timeframe, pit bulls were responsible for 69% of all dog-related deaths. You were 11 times more likely to be killed by a pit bull than by any other breed of dog.
A pit bull was bred to be vicious and can become vicious on its own accord. Guns were designed to be lethal but are completely harmless unless someone makes them lethal. A gun can’t act on its own. It’s much safer to have a gun in your house than it is to have a pit bull.
Which is why I find interesting that many of the people who would hold the dog completely blameless for being violent, are the same people who are quick to blame guns for causing violence.
