This is the part where I get to say that anyone who has been doing this whole breed thing for as long as you claim wouldn't be the kind of person with the lack of class to use profanity on a public forum. I happen to know a lot of old people, and they are all classy, respectable people who use their vocabulary to communicate their ideas. So, while you claim these things, you hide behind a keyboard and I really don't believe you at all.
First of all you WILL respect Debby. Period. You will respect her because she is an admin here. You will respect her because she has been in the breed for her entire life. You will respect her because she knows what she is talking about. You don't have to agree with her, you don't have to like her, but you will respect her. I don't care if you believe her or not.
Second, please refrain from using profanity at all. I'm not a moderator, but "ignorant" is not
profanity and I can't find it in my to respect anyone who will stoop to that level.
You're not a moderator, and don't ever act like one again on MY forum. Got it? If you don't like profanity then turn your word filter on.
Thirdly, you say you don't want to get involved since there is such a strong difference in opinion, but by posting up to begin with you have indeed become involved. Just like I was told, you must either participate, or stay out of it. If you say something, be prepared to say something again because you've just become involved.
On this, we agree.
Thanks for your words though, I find them to reinforce my opinion that people are seriously motivated by paranoia and fear, and they're puppets of the media because of it.
And again, you tread on very thin ice here... no one
here is paranoid. We are realistic.
Please watch the dogs in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPRT-DXQhts 99% of people watch that and say how friendly and happy both dogs look and wonder why the owners are so mean to not let them romp around the yard! See the dog on the left? That's Riggs. His version of "play" is not quite the same as Inara's - and few people see the difference in their body language. My parents
insist that Riggs "just wants to play with other dogs" every time a loose dog wanders up to him when he is on the zip line at their house. It's been three years of the
same discussion over and over again.
My dog Ruby is
not dog aggressive. We were at a dog show when we were blind sided by a Leomburger - a 100+ pound, furry shepherd. He went after her with full intent to kill. I threw her backwards and got in the middle of them - stuffing my forearm in his face for him to bite (yes, seriously, it was instinctive I've done decoy work for a long time and I did it automatically, thank god he didn't bite it, he probably would have broken my arm), and then he was pinned to the ground by the woman who was running the show. Ruby had large slimy bite "marks" on her chest and completely
around one of her back legs where he had gotten ahold of her but she got away from him before he managed to close his mouth. She was
on leash when that happened, and barely escaped
serious injury. Had she been loose, there
would have been a dog fight - a
serious dog fight. Period. And this was just a regular old dog show. Things happen. And it took a very very long time before she was not aggressive on sight towards any large furry dog, which is not ideal in a therapy dog. It only takes once. So please, don't tell me that you could prevent something like that at an
off leash park, because there is no way on earth you could. Ruby was 3 feet from me and I barely managed to keep her safe, and had Jeannine not body slammed the other dog to the ground he probably would have bitten me, Ruby would likely have been attached to him somewhere, and Demo's arrival on scene would not have been pretty.
What I'm gathering here is that most of you seem to want to hide from the fact that your breed has been DEMONIZED by the irresponsible acts of others, and the irresponsible reporting by journalists and news anchors. The ONLY way to battle that stigma is to become involved with the COMMUNITY... not just your perfect little circles of friend who all say in a backyard someplace.
Huh? Have you looked in the gallery, the sports section, the training section or the main section at
all? You just might notice that there are threads all over the place with our members doing stuff with there dogs
everywhere. Liz and I placed with our dogs at a multi breed obedience tournament this summer. Demo competed in protection at the same tournament. Demo and I have competed at that tournament for the past four years. Erin competes all over the east coast in flyball with her dog Score and he's one of the best dogs in the entire region. Matt is active in weight pull. Noel's dog Birdie is her service dog. Aimee's dog Grant is one of the dogs that gets read to by kids at the library. Airwalk has Scooter all over the place with her... and there are about 50 other examples. Who exactly is hiding their dog?
We don't take our dogs to the DOG PARK to let them run around with a PACK OF DOGS. That's
hardly "not letting them out in the community." \
Furthermore, my dog park (as commented on SPBR) is NOT 60-70 dogs running around willy nilly as they say. It's maybe a dozen, max. And when there's too many, I leave.
Here's a little secret...
I've been to dog parks they have fences around them, and a gate. That gate has a latch. If you are inside the park area with your dog, someone else can enter that gate and let their dog loose - and if that dog charges your dog
it is too late. That is not paranoia. It is
fact. Your dozen friends might be the most trust worthy people in the world, their dogs might be the nicest dogs on the planet, but the day that one of those dogs is grumpy and gets snarky for no reason you will
not be able to get to your dogs fast enough. Twelve dogs is a pack, and in a pack things can get very ugly very quickly. Three or four dogs have a very different dynamic than twelve, go watch videos of doggy daycare some time.
I have a Great Dane in my brats class that was cornered at a day care by a bully Labrador (or maybe a Golden, I can't remember). She was already shy, but now she's a mess. Too many dogs, too much stimulation, too much too much... it just went
wrong, and it wasn't the first time she was there, it was just a bad day and no one realized it until it was too late.
TheRedQueen wrote:Furthermore, my dog park (as commented on SPBR) is NOT 60-70 dogs running around willy nilly as they say. It's maybe a dozen, max. And when there's too many, I leave. SO, fundamentally, it is NO DIFFERENT THAN HAVING A PLAY DATE IN YOUR BACK YARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yeah, it still kinda is. When I have dogs over in my backyard...they are dogs that I know/trust. I know if Freckles and Fig don't get along, I can leave one in the house when we're out back. I know that Jake and Inara might have issues with the soccer ball, so I can leave one of them inside or put the soccer ball away. I know that Score gets upset when Henri steals his ball...so I can leave one of them inside. Much different than a dog park, where it's harder to rotate the troops around. If I have friends over with their dogs, I know I can trust them to watch their dogs and to know what they see...and I can trust them not to get angry at me if I step in and stop their dog from something rude/nasty/potentially dangerous.
The other difference is Erin's back yard is
Erin's back yard. Who runs the dog park? Can you say to someone "Hey John, your dog is really being rude today, you need to take him home." What if he doesn't want to? What if you were there first and your dog is having a great time and needs the exercise? All the other dogs are fine and John's dog is ruining it for the 10 other dogs - but you can't "make" him leave. Well, Erin can in Erin's back yard.
Megumi-Oni wrote: I'm doing none of the irrepsonsible things you imply I'm doing, other than going to the park to begin with.
And that is enough.
Megumi-Oni wrote: I'm so done trying to convince you intolerant, arrogant, narrow minded elitists that I'm not getting my dog involved with a giant doggie cluster bomb at some public place where there are just ignorant fools haphazardly shooing dogs around.
I think I told you already about name calling. Do it again and you can go back to SPBR where you came from - and yes, I know that that's where you're from and that you've been defending them all over twitter.
DeeNtheChillas wrote:Granted, I didn't read all of every post in this thread, but I browsed them, and I read your thread on PB-Smiles. You are very passionate about YOUR park and YOUR situation. Fine. We are very passionate about the good of the pit bull breed. Usually, that includes no dog parks. Leashed in a park, that's fine, it's a way to show your dog is a good ambassador for the breed. There is a huge difference.
Exactly!
maberi wrote:I think you are missing the fact that although we do not agree with taking our dogs to dog parks to play off leash, we have no problem taking our dogs out in public in a safe fashion.
Fun, creative obedience in playgrounds and other places is good for the dogs as well as for people watching. It adds a sense of humor to the dogs, which is good PR all on its own.
maberi wrote:None of us are hiding inside our houses with the curtains closed (well maybe on weekends when we wake up with a hang over or when we are wearing Vibram Five Finger shoes).
Megumi-Oni wrote:Really people. I'm not saying you're wrong. And I'm not saying I will always have success in every situation. I'm reacting the way I am because I'm being cornered and attacked for having a different opinion. That opinion could change, over time, if I thought we were discussing the point. But instead, I feel like everyone is just very snobbish about offering their experience and trying to pawn me off as someone I'm clearly not, if you'd bother to see the bigger picture.
You're not saying we're wrong? You've protested over and over that we don't take our dogs out
in the same way you do because we're all sheeple that do nothing but blindly swallow that crap that the media feeds us and that if we had brains in our heads we would know that our dogs could safely run and play in dog parks just like any other breed if we just trained trained trained!
No. That's not the way it is. What you have heard over and over since you started this thread is people who have said that dog parks are very very bad ideas for Pit Bulls because the chances for disaster FAR outweigh any benefits they have.
Having our dogs out in the community does not mean having our dogs in dog parks. Frankly, it means having our dogs everywhere BUT dog parks. (Well, personally, I don't bring mine to any large "doggie gathering" and I'm pretty much "anti-doggie gathering" but that's just my opinion.) Your beloved SPBR abandoned a dog at a Rochester shelter this spring because it bit another dog at a Pet Expo. Gee, a Pit Bull acted like a
Pit Bull!!! Introduce an adult male Pit Bull to a Yorkie, and the Yorkie gets grabbed by the head, so when the Pit gets confiscated because SPBR doesn't have shot records with them they don't bother to pick it up, they sign it over so it can be destroyed. There's some good PR for the breed for you!!! Yup! Get those dogs out in public!! Responsible handling all the way - followed by responsible management of the situation! NOT! Woo Hoo!
Megumi-Oni wrote:The issue isn't how we choose to socialize our dogs (though that is indeed part of it), it's now that socialization is reported when it inevitably goes sour, as it can do with ANY breed of dog.
Look at your own words... "when it inevitably goes sour." IF something goes wrong at your dog park, IF your dog gets in a spat. YOUR DOG WILL BE BLAMED. It will NOT matter if she starts it, she WILL finish it, and she WILL be blamed for it. You can write all the letters to the editor you want, if it ends up in the news paper, SHE will be the villan, not the dead Shiz Tzu who bit her face for sniffing his butt. If that same spat happened with a Golden, it would be reported very differently, if it was reported at all; which is doubtful.
Megumi-Oni wrote:when someone else let's their Weim in and it comes after my pup, I tell them to leave. And they leave, because I'm not the only "pit" owner in that park.
And if they don't? What then? And you're not the only Pit owner in the park? There are multiple Pit Bulls in there together? Let me ask you a serious question - do you watch the Dog Whisperer?
Megumi-Oni wrote:So, what solution is there? I say write letters to news casters and journalists when they report something poorly, or don't offer the "full" story. Hold them accountable for their fear mongering, rather than letting it corral us into submission.
I agree with holding them accountable for poor reporting. But what does that have to do with not going to dog parks? The dog park issue has to do with understanding the
fundamental nature of the breed, nothing more, nothing less. You wouldn't keep Grayhounds on a rabbit farm, would you? Jack Russells with pet rats? American Bulldogs with pot belly pigs? People bred
specific instincts into dog breeds. Pit Bulls were bred to kill each other, we made them that way. We also made them not want to give up no matter what the odds, no matter what kind of pain they are in, no matter what they are up against. We made them
game. That tenacity is what draws many of us to the breed, the dog aggression is just something we deal with, it's not "good" it's not "bad" it just
is. Some Pits are "hot," some are "cold," most are in the middle. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell when a dog might "turn on" and sometimes it takes a single catastrophic event to turn a dog on and once that happens they may never be able to be around another dog again.
Many of us have lived that. WE DON'T WANT YOU TO LIVE IT TOO. Perhaps you need to realize that maybe, just
maybe we are speaking from very
painful experience.
Concreterose recently had to have one of her dog's legs amputated after her female redirected on her male in a moment of frustration and in one single bite shattered the bone and Vicki and Solomon
get along. My dog Cleo ripped my parent's dog Emma's throat open from ear to ear
and most of the time they got along. In this thread Matt posted about pulling Yoda off of another dog with blood literally dripping off of his muzzle
and up until then Yoda had no problem with other dogs. Ruby could have been killed by the dog at that dog show, and it took me a year of constant work to undo the damage from one single 30 second encounter. Shall I go on? You are talking to people who have been in this breed for YEARS. We have lived many many disasters - but many many awesome things as well.