In many parts of Europe dog training is like baseball here. Very common and almost everyone has done it at one time or another. Dogs over there are comonly seen in bars, restaurantes, etc. The craddle of most protection dog sports come from them or are "spin offs" of these. Over there any regional and national championships are overflowed by people.
On the other hand here in the US it's different, to say the least! There're very few public places where you can take your dog, especially restaurantes. Besides Schutzhund, almost all other protection/sport trials like Ring, Mondio, ASR, PSA, etc have numbers that don't get into thousands. If we consider that most European countries can fit into just 1 of our states, we can clearly see why we have many people who are totally against and scared of bitework. It's comprehensible, they haven't had enough exposition to it, to be able to have an unbiased opinion on it.
I think if it was a dog in rescue who had bitten 3 people then yes, it should be put to sleep. Why? Because it has issues and rescues do not usually have the ability to do rehab for the time necessary to be able to safely adopt out this dog
Let me coment on this. There's a famous "sit-com" called Frasier that was the number 1 program for many years. In that series there was an active participation of a Jack Russel Terrier. This was a very well trained dog that had many acting parts in that series. This dog was due to be put down in the shelter he was in because of his agressive and unruly behavior. Yet his new owner/trainer saw the potencial in him and changed him from an aprehensive, unruly, biting machine to one of the most deared dogs ever.
Killing a dog (no matter how "nice" anyone might try to put it by saying "putting it down", "putting it to sleep", euthanizing it, etc) may seem natural for some. But for those of us who see dogs as an integral part of our family, it totally unacceptable. There are always ways to deal with an aggresive dog. Let's not forget the saying: "A handler always ends up with the dog he deserves". Unfortunately a dog can't choose his owner, but if all try to "look through the dogs' eyes", we'll see a completely different perspective of things.
But until we can actually put ourselves in the dogs' place and see things through his eyes, we will not be able to grow. We are very fortunate to have a trainer of the caliber of Chris Fraize contributing here. Yet reading his posts and attending his seminars will only be helpful to those who do so with a clear, unclouded mind. When you look for knowledge you will get it. When you look for excuses you'll also find or make it up. Chris Fraize is sharing his wisdom (knowledge gained by experience and good judgement), accepting and taking advantage of it .... is a choice. Personally, I'll always choose to be more knowledgable.