This is Nathan Winograd’s pet campaign and it is a good one. I think he hates the lack of science behind the banning of a dog breed because they are aggressive and dangerous. The title to this post sums up the issue.
The recent banning of XL Bully dogs in the UK is a case in point. This dog breed has become synonymous with aggression and danger to the public while, ironically, the founder of the breed in the US has consistently said that the XL Bully was created to be mild-mannered.
The problem is that there is a segment of society who want to keep an aggressive dog. Breeders tap into this commercial market and create aggressive dogs with a stereotypical aggressive appearance. Add to that the desire of some XL Bully owners to train their dogs to be aggressive and you have created the image that XL Bully dogs exude aggression which is their purpose from the standpoint of the owner.
The only reason why the XL Bully is synonymous with aggression is because some humans want it that way.
I think the point to make is that whether an individual dog is aggressive or mild-mannered comes down to how they have been socialised and raised in general. It is about moulding a dog to behave in a way that is acceptable to the people who live with them.
The classic pit bull dog need not be aggressive. If they have been raised to be unaggressive, they’ll be unaggressive.
The issue is that almost everyone by now associates the pit bull type appearance with aggressive dogs. If a pit bull is aggressive, it is not due to its appearance but how it has been socialised/raised by humans. Hence the disconnection between appearance and behavioural traits.
Small, completely acceptable dogs can be just as dangerous as pit bulls. Admittedly when a pit bull is aggressive, they can do more damage as they are much stronger.
As usual, this story is about how humans behave. It is all about human behaviour at core and not about dog behaviour.
We create the aggressive dogs. We don’t have to. The dogs are the innocent victims. It appears that the citizens of Aurora, CO, decided to repeal their ban on pit bulls which affected their community because they agreed with Nathan Winograd and science.
A quote from the above-mentioned study:
“Among behavioral traits, biddability—how well dogs respond to human direction—was the most heritable by breed but varied significantly among individual dogs. Thus, dog breed is generally a poor predictor of individual behavior and should not be used to inform decisions relating to selection of a pet dog.”
