Читать книгу American Pit Bull Terrier Handbook - Joe Stahlkuppe - Страница 18

Throughout this book, the name American Pit Bull Terrier or APBT refers only to actual dogs that are of that specific breed. “Pit” or “pit bull” (used here only in lower-case letters) is used to indicate dogs of less certain heritage. Anyone can choose to call his or her dog anything. This misnaming has greatly contributed to the bad rap legitimate APBTs have received. When any medium-sized, short-haired mongrel is misidentified as a “pit bull” or as a “part-pit bull,” that information may be the only thing that the listener or reader remembers.

Pit dogs could conceivably be of any breed. The irresponsible street pit fighters of today are constantly crossing, recrossing, and cross-crossing to gain some sort of perceived or imagined fighting advantage. Because the key ingredient in any pit dog must be gameness, this resorting to non-game breeds is foolish. Where, in years gone by, the APBTs of actual fighting strains were aggressive only toward other pit dogs, the mixed pit dogs of today are often aggressive toward dogs and humans. These dogs account for a vast proportion of the terrible dog bites and fatalities that so greatly contribute to the “pit bull terror” that seized the American psyche.

Certainly there have been horrible attacks by dogs said to be “pit bulls.” Some of these, especially involving children, have indeed been gruesome and tragic. Strangely though, even as the reputation of these dogs headed into the cesspool of public opinion, the popularity of the “pit bull” in some elements of the community grew at a phenomenal rate. Most of these new pit people wanted vicious dogs for a variety of unwise, unsavory, and illegal reasons. They began to indiscriminately breed their dogs. Viciousness and aggressiveness became prized commodities in a new type of pit dog. Soon, human-aggressive APBT-type dogs became fairly common. Human-aggressive APBTs and similar dogs had been extremely rare until the 1970s. Poorly bred, poorly socialized, and poorly trained animals suddenly grew into many thousands of these powerful and temperamentally unsound “pit bulls.” These poor imitations of the true APBT are responsible for the vast majority of the actual dog bites and attacks blamed on this breed.