here we go, story about a pit... long read, sorry.
Posted by
colin (aka colinski)
Nov 14 '14, 09:43
|
last summer, we rescued three dogs:
-Bill, who is now loving life in Chicago with a shiba inu.
-Nell, who we just gave to her new home (don't get me started.. I'll just cry again)
-Sam (not our name), who went to some friends who are very loving dog owners
Sam is about 2 months younger than Nell. Nell for all her problems has manners, sits, knows her commands, and you can control her very very well. Loving dog, trust her around anybody, any animal (although she does like to sit on cats...), and she does very well in public. Sam, on the other hand is WILD.. jumps on you, goes nuts, barks when she doesn't get what she wants, won't sit, can't be taken out to a coffee shop or something like that. She's out of control until she decides to calm down. Her owners have no control over her and crate her when she's being "annoying" or they can't control the situation.
Sam is a pit. If you don't know pits, they're stubborn, smart (they'll take advantage of you if you let them), and very VERY stoic - they don't experience pain like a normal dog. We explained this carefully, talked about setting boundaries, making sure the dog is the lowest member of the household with no rights or privilege. Told them how to train.. on and on, yes they said they got it, but never saw it in action despite constant coaching.
So we see them for the first time in a few months the other night. They tell us Sam had an incident. They were dogwatching for a friend, one of the dogs made a move for Sam's food bowl, and she latched on. Wouldn't let go. They hit her, tried to pry her off, yelled, NOTHING would stop her. Then she started shaking, which created even more damage. Eventually let go, wandered off... no shame at all over what she did or being yelled at, punished. Nothing... just like "yeah, that's what I do." Almost killed the dog. As we're discussing this, they tell us that she got hold of their cat a few weeks before that and if they hadn't have been there, cat would have been killed.
We have very VERY strong stances on our dogs. If they unprovoked attacked a dog or person, we'd put them down immediately. They're not people that can change their ways and rebuild trust - we could NEVER trust that dog again and we're not willing to keep an animal that may be harmful. Truck, our other pit, had a time where he was mad at the cat for some reason. Never went for the cat, but we even went to the point of punishing him for growling at the cat. No tolerance at all.
We told them.. well.. you can try to train, but you have to be absolutely strict from this point on. But the honest opinion we gave them was.. put her down. You can't have her around dogs, she could attack you, and you have no control over her. That's incredibly dangerous.
They were NOT happy about that. They seemed angry at us for even suggesting it was a problem. That to me is insane...
So that's my story. I don't think it reflects poorly on the breed, but it does show what no training will do to a dog. I trust my dogs completely and I believe if we had owned and trained Sam, this would not be an issue. She's smart and very trainable, even was as a puppy. I'm just frustrated that their training ended up in allowing a dog to get like that.
|