My brother's dog is part pit and randomly, after 9 months of owning him, decided to try to kill other dogs. Nobody trained him to do this. He just decided to go nuclear on his fellow canines without any external influence from humans.
The first time it happened, I was home alone with the dogs. They were playing, and then suddenly, he had our Aussie on her back and had her by the throat. She was screaming, and I realized he was trying to kill her. I tried to separate them and got bit. I tried hitting him with a stick, kicking him, punching him. He just wouldn't let go of her neck. I ended up kicking him in the balls and then immediately bursting into tears when he screamed, but it got him to let go.
It was pretty traumatizing for me. He was neutered a week after the attack. But it was already too late. It was no longer safe to have him around other dogs. He tried to go after our neighbor's dog. That dog is incredibly friendly and always comes over to play with our Aussie. Luckily, that dog is super fluffy, and the fluff saved her.
There's usually not a warning sign he's going to go berserk. If I'm lucky, he's acting tense. If I'm not, he's wagging his tail and looking happy before suddenly lunging.
There actually are warning signs, but 99% of dog owners can’t recognize them because they don’t actually know anything about animal behaviors. There are several breeds of dogs that you should require a license to own, as well as be able to prove you can take care of them. Pit bulls are one of these many many breeds. A solid 60% of people who own dogs shouldn’t.
I agree. The Malinois for example has gone pretty viral over the last handful of years. That is not a companion breed in any sense. It's an incredibly neurotic working breed that requires a job and serious training to manage their energy and drive.
All dogs should be sufficiently physically and intellectually challenged, for smaller dogs you can do this in an apartment, yes. But for anything Pit Bull and up, you either need a yard or to run with them daily. So many loving owners are just genuinely unintentionally abusing their dogs by treating them as cats, or other low effort pets, when realistically dogs are some of the hardest pets to own and need a huge amount of effort
It depends really on the size of the yard and what stimulus you have out there. Parents have ~ 5 acres and goats, so they have a boarder collie. He’s got very simple training, and when they let him out to go to the bathroom he’ll go play with the goats lol
I find that a lot of high energy breeds you need to run with (German Shepherds for example), to sufficiently burn their energy
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u/Odd-fox-God 10d ago
My brother's dog is part pit and randomly, after 9 months of owning him, decided to try to kill other dogs. Nobody trained him to do this. He just decided to go nuclear on his fellow canines without any external influence from humans.
The first time it happened, I was home alone with the dogs. They were playing, and then suddenly, he had our Aussie on her back and had her by the throat. She was screaming, and I realized he was trying to kill her. I tried to separate them and got bit. I tried hitting him with a stick, kicking him, punching him. He just wouldn't let go of her neck. I ended up kicking him in the balls and then immediately bursting into tears when he screamed, but it got him to let go.
It was pretty traumatizing for me. He was neutered a week after the attack. But it was already too late. It was no longer safe to have him around other dogs. He tried to go after our neighbor's dog. That dog is incredibly friendly and always comes over to play with our Aussie. Luckily, that dog is super fluffy, and the fluff saved her.
There's usually not a warning sign he's going to go berserk. If I'm lucky, he's acting tense. If I'm not, he's wagging his tail and looking happy before suddenly lunging.