Pitbulls: The Most Misunderstood Dog In The World

Words: 1130
Pages: 5

Pitbulls are the most misunderstood dog breed in the world. But why are they like that? There are many reasons why Pit bulls are looked down upon by most of the world, especially in America. Gang affiliation, media slander and just plain ignorance of people is what gave these dog a bad name. This essay is to show that it is humankind's fault for the suffering of the good name off the dog, not the dog themselves.

In early America pit bulls were a loved breed. They were viewed as courageous, loyal and patriotic. So what changed? “The popular media commonly portrays pit bulls as demonic animals - unpredictable and savage in their behavior toward humans “ (Twining, Hillary, Arluke, Arnold, Patronek, Gray P. 25-52) The media only covers the stories
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It’s not that it doesn’t happen, rather the media is bending the viewer's mind against them. A lot of places even ban these breeds. If someone with a pit were looking for an apartment it would be hard to find one willing to accept one: “Pit bull bans involve a category problem, too, because pit bulls, as it happens, aren't a single breed” Which is true. A pit bull is any dog with a muscled body, squared head and a short stature. But these bans aren’t being used for what the dog looks like but because they think any dog that looks like that could have the potential of hurting someone because they are of a pit bull breed. It doesn’t matter the breed, any dog can do damage to a human, “the dog that recently mauled a Frenchwoman so badly that she was given the world's first face transplant was, of all things, a Labrador retriever.” A lab is considered to be one of the best breeds of dogs yet we see this extreme case of violence yet the entire breed hasn’t been considered dangerous. A test was done and a man put over a thousand pits through it: “Eighty-four percent of the pit bulls that have been given the test have passed, which ranks pit bulls ahead of beagles, Airedales, bearded collies, and all but one variety of dachshund” (Gladwell) A breed that is scrutinized constantly doing so well in a test is odd if everyone believes them to be demon dogs. But that leads back to people being uninformed. It is also stated in Gladwell’s article that many pits are taken into training to become service dogs because of how much stability they have. Proving that pits have a lot of potential and are not actually going to kill everyone in sight if they can be service dogs. He goes on to say, “It is usually a perfect storm of bad human-canine interactions—the wrong dog, the wrong background, the wrong history in the hands of the wrong person in the wrong