The problem with that theory, is that it's not just XLBs that are abused - dogs of all breeds, shapes and sizes get abused and mistreated (unfortunatley) yet none of them attack and kill people with the same frequency as the XLB.
Arguably few of them have suffered the same extent of abuse or as widely as the XLB, either.
It's not a theory, though - There is a direct correlation between frequency of abuse and frequency of attack.
Care to guess what the most abused dog in the world is?
Pitbulls which, as you know, have the highest statistical KSI rate.
You'll find that most of the breeds high on the KSI count are similarly sensitive and also high on the abused rankings.
It's similar to
@dowie 's example earlier on - if you take 1000 abused dogs from rescue centres, give all of them to the worst chavs on a council estate, 500 of them are abused labradors, and 500 of them are abused XLBs...
The difference in risk and harm to people is ten-fold.
Do that and you'll start to find similar results, even if the 1000 dogs you start with were not abused. In fact, if they grow up in an abusive environment, they're
even more likely to end up as problem dogs.
Labradors respond badly just as readily to abuse and can do a fair amount of damage or even kill. Don't make the mistake of thinking they're all Andrex puppies...
You might also want to familiarise yourself with dog attacks in general, and the factors that have existed even before the XLBs rose to prominence:
The results of a 10-year study sheds light on the complexity of human attacks by dogs. It identifies preventable factors that are far more significant than breed.
www.petmd.com
How do you think dog breeds are created, that the XL Bullies have come from other breeds doesn't then mean that they're suddenly a far wider group (they don't get some extra large genome FFS!) they've since been bred for multiple generations with each other.
Actually, they do. That's the very definition of genome, ie the complete range of genes in an organism, which is unique to the individual.
The more breeds and lineages you include in the breeding, the wider the range of genes in the resulting genome.
This is basic science - How are you justifying ignoring this?
Eh? How are you confused by the concept of a group of things being similar to each other?
You had not previously specified whether you meant similar to each other, or to other related breeds, or to something else. In discussions that address both the differences and similarities within, between and across breeds, it's kinda important to be specific.
You don't seem to grasp the issue highlighted earlier re: 50% of them having some known shared ancestor - there's an insane amount of inbreeding going on here too with these breeds:
I understand what you're saying.... but you are
shamefully inaccurate.
50% of the UK population has a shared ancestor.
That ancestor has over 600 offspring, and we're now on/around the 4th generation since.
Hereditary traits lessen with each subsequent generation, and by the 6th generation there is often almost no discernible influence.
Even inbreeding, the lineages still require regular inclusion of more diverse bloodlines, otherwise the results would exhibit more undesirable and problematic mutations (by those breeders' standards) than what we're seeing here.
As is, the examples you've posted have phenotypes far more like Bulldogs than Pitbulls, or American Bullies, never mind XLBs...
So with just these factors in play, precisely what impact do you think shared ancestry has in this instance?
Furthermore, that 50% of just one country's population does not reflect the entirety of the breed as a whole... and since you're so insistent on judging a breed in its entirety, you perhaps ought to be more comprehensive in your approach.
Anyway, this is the conundrum you fail to address repeatedly - you conceded that there are some breed differences w.r.t behaviour now, you repeat that it's genetics that are responsible for behavioural traits (something that wasn't in dispute) but when confronted with this "breed" (aka a group of genetically similar dogs) your go-to excuse currently is that they're not "pedigree".
Again, there's no confusion but your own projections and assumptions.
Behavioural differences are not down to breed, nor are they specific to or especially variable between breed. They depend on genetic lineage, which is frequently shared both within and between breeds.
If anything, it's more important with XLBs because of the different admixture breed lineages included in both common breeding and by individual breeders.
By referring to this group of dogs as a "breed", you're deliberately mislabelling them, ascribing to them the status of pedigree which they quite clearly do not qualify as by any definition of the term, and subequently basing your argument on unfounded assumptions from false premises, using measures that do not even apply here.
In short, you're trying to judge a non-pedigree dog using pedigree standards.
But as you've pointed out it's genetics that are the underlying thing we're concerned about, why care about whether some kennel club recognises them as a posh breed?
Personally, I don't care, but those are the standards and flawed assumptions to which you're working, and even then you're failing.
I'm merely pointing out those flaws.
The point is that we've got this small gene pool, this group of genetically similar dogs. Why are you taking the contradictory position wherein you accept there are differences in behaviour between some dog breeds but take a blank slate re: this breed?
The point is that a small group within the group of dogs have elements of shared ancestry, to varying degrees, but not the "breed" as a whole.
As for the bit in bold - I'm actually taking all "breeds" as a blank slate and looking at the specific genetic lineages of each individual, rather than judging the entire breed by some similarities of a few examples.
Here's the telegraph investigation too:
Some other choice quotes from the same article:
"Researchers say that dogs related to 'Killer Kimbo' are responsible for at least 10 violent incidents worldwide"
From the sensation, I would have expected more. Needs context - I wonder how many dogs in other incidents were
not so related, particularly those in the UK?
"Extensive genealogy research seen by The Telegraph shows how decades of inbreeding has created a narrow gene pool of unstable fighting dogs that have become responsible for 70 per cent of dog attack deaths in Britain".
The inferrence being that they all come from this lineage, when at least 50% clearly have not.
"She told The Telegraph she was concerned by the number of dogs related to an animal with a history of violence in its bloodline."
I understand the actual animal in question has no such history, and it's only in some of the descendants that problems have been asserted, particularly those where the re-breeders and subsequent owners have loaded the dogs with steroids and subjected them to abusive fight-training methods.
“Kimbo bled into all those bloodlines because he was early on and he was so dominant in breeding. There are some good bloodlines where Kimbo isn’t there, but there are many where he is.”
Yes, but they're all the same "breed", right? Let's just judge them on the traits most convenient to our agenda, shall we?
“Kimbo is known amongst a lot of the breeders as ‘Killer Kimbo’ because his offspring have been documented to carry a rage that is not normal in the XL American Bully breed,” he told the Telegraph.
Not normal? Really?
But I'm reliably informed that the whole breed is genetically bred as murder machines...
"Mr Smith insists the breed is normally docile. He said it was the task of responsible breeders to watch for “anti-human aggression” in specific animals and to act to stop it.
He said there were one of two notorious lines of the animal that had been used to sire animals that had attacked or killed people. He said it was wrong to demonise all XL bullies.
Mr Smith said he once had to euthanise a female dog he had bought to sell because she showed such traits".
Different perspective but with similar inferrences as above, which leaves more uncertainty and need for detailed context.
If breed means nothing at all, then where are all the chavs with ferocious Poodles, Labradors and Greyhounds? Where are all the chavs with dogs that aren't physically intimidating? At the very least the breed determines potential danger from physical prowess. And that alone is astonishing in XL Bullies. Hardly surprising that dogs bred for fighting have physical attributes that make them effective fighters.
Breed is almost entirely defined by physical appearance alone.
Their individual genetics determines behaviour, which in the case of chavs requires high sensitivity and response to training - This is also why Chavs don't have dogs that are physically even more dangerous, because the little retards wouldn't be able to dominate such strong and independent dogs like they do the Bullys.
It's almost as if the dogs were named for the sort of individual who wants them, ie one who will bully them.
Honestly I think the vast, vast majority of us that have no skin in this game are not going to be overly upset by the withdrawal of these kinds of pit fighting dogs. They don't appeal to normal dog owners. They look vicious, they are commonly owned by chavs, there's hardly anything to recommend them at all.
You're not wrong with this. Not in the slightest.
However, the problem lies in how ineffective such bans have been (several thousand new UK Pitbulls every year, despite them all being illegal), and how the previous one actually resulted in us getting XLBs in the first place. The root cause is the sort of people that want these dogs, and the fact that they can do this to just about any other dog breed unless we focus on ******* it up for the rest of us.
