Why so many pit pulls?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying to adopt a puppy/young dog for several months. Nearly every dog at the various shelters is a put bull or variation of pitbull mix. Why? I don’t get it. I don’t want a pit bull and frankly I don’t get how so many people have come to get a pit bull in the first place.

Independent rescues pull all the more adoptable dogs from the shelters. These are the healthy, easy to adopt ones, and ones that yield the highest adoption fees allowing the rescue to cover salaries, off set housing and food expenses etc. The pits get left in the shelters.

Wait, how is this even allowed? I had no idea that this was how it worked. So places like Lost Dog Rescue or whatever pull the cute sweet dogs from Fairfax County Animal Shelter and then they charge for them??

The "charge" is barely enough to cover the costs of routine vetting, housing, care and upkeep, but yes, this is a common practice. Shelters don't intervene because the end goal is to find good homes for rescued dogs. Sweet, shy dogs don't fare well in a shelter environment, and many rescue agencies only use fosters for pre-adoption placement. This give the agency a better chance to get to know the animal, which helps them pick a good placement. It also keeps the dog from deteriorating in a shelter environment.

And what you're "left with" is the "pit bulls" (read: dogs who "look pit", most of whom are mutts and not at all aggressive or problematic, at least, not when they first get there). The longer they stay in a shelter environment, the more they deteriorate, through no fault of their own, nor any fault of the volunteers who run the shelter. It's just a rough environment.

You could make the argument that "rescues" that use fosters for free, have a high rate of turnover (i.e. "easy to adopt" dogs, like toy breeds, puppies, etc.), and push the cost of spay/neuter onto adopters are "making money" but... Those dogs have to go somewhere. Better that they be placed in a home with someone who can afford to "buy" them than left on the street or wherever they were before.

I assure you, NOBODY is getting rich off rescues. The overhead is ridiculous, the liability is significant, and the hours are exhausting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying to adopt a puppy/young dog for several months. Nearly every dog at the various shelters is a put bull or variation of pitbull mix. Why? I don’t get it. I don’t want a pit bull and frankly I don’t get how so many people have come to get a pit bull in the first place.

Independent rescues pull all the more adoptable dogs from the shelters. These are the healthy, easy to adopt ones, and ones that yield the highest adoption fees allowing the rescue to cover salaries, off set housing and food expenses etc. The pits get left in the shelters.

Wait, how is this even allowed? I had no idea that this was how it worked. So places like Lost Dog Rescue or whatever pull the cute sweet dogs from Fairfax County Animal Shelter and then they charge for them??

The "charge" is barely enough to cover the costs of routine vetting, housing, care and upkeep, but yes, this is a common practice. Shelters don't intervene because the end goal is to find good homes for rescued dogs. Sweet, shy dogs don't fare well in a shelter environment, and many rescue agencies only use fosters for pre-adoption placement. This give the agency a better chance to get to know the animal, which helps them pick a good placement. It also keeps the dog from deteriorating in a shelter environment.

And what you're "left with" is the "pit bulls" (read: dogs who "look pit", most of whom are mutts and not at all aggressive or problematic, at least, not when they first get there). The longer they stay in a shelter environment, the more they deteriorate, through no fault of their own, nor any fault of the volunteers who run the shelter. It's just a rough environment.

You could make the argument that "rescues" that use fosters for free, have a high rate of turnover (i.e. "easy to adopt" dogs, like toy breeds, puppies, etc.), and push the cost of spay/neuter onto adopters are "making money" but... Those dogs have to go somewhere. Better that they be placed in a home with someone who can afford to "buy" them than left on the street or wherever they were before.

I assure you, NOBODY is getting rich off rescues. The overhead is ridiculous, the liability is significant, and the hours are exhausting.

But yeah, the "look at all the pit bulls in shelters; every rescue dog is a pitbull now" are both uninformed AND contributing to the problem of overflowing shelters and the otherwise-fine dogs who will likely die there. The stereotype is nonsense.

If you aren't interested in being a responsible owner, sure, a pit bull isn't for you. But what breed would be?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying to adopt a puppy/young dog for several months. Nearly every dog at the various shelters is a put bull or variation of pitbull mix. Why? I don’t get it. I don’t want a pit bull and frankly I don’t get how so many people have come to get a pit bull in the first place.

LOL, nobody wants them, that's why shelters are full of them

[Anonymous]

Beware of giving away your pets for free, be they dogs/cats/bunnies.

The dog fighting rings are always looking for free animals to use for training their fighting dogs. They send their sweet-looking girlfriend (black/white/whatever) to collect the dog from you. Your pet will be thrown into a ring where it will get killed by the dogs.

Please give up your pet to the shelter or to a legitimate rescue. Most of these groups including the shelter will attach legal paperwork to the adoption, plus they vet the prospective adopters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying to adopt a puppy/young dog for several months. Nearly every dog at the various shelters is a put bull or variation of pitbull mix. Why? I don’t get it. I don’t want a pit bull and frankly I don’t get how so many people have come to get a pit bull in the first place.

LOL, nobody wants them, that's why shelters are full of them

So you're willfully stupid, as opposed to just ignorant? Because the actual answer is just a few posts upthread, if you wanted to be smarter.

"LOL"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Beware of giving away your pets for free, be they dogs/cats/bunnies.

The dog fighting rings are always looking for free animals to use for training their fighting dogs. They send their sweet-looking girlfriend (black/white/whatever) to collect the dog from you. Your pet will be thrown into a ring where it will get killed by the dogs.

Please give up your pet to the shelter or to a legitimate rescue. Most of these groups including the shelter will attach legal paperwork to the adoption, plus they vet the prospective adopters.

Are you posting from the mid-90s?

Most people aren't giving away free animals these days. I guess if you're still on, like, Craigslist or something... But most people looking for pets are already visiting shelters, rescues and breeders. Pets that really are passed along for free are usually neighborhood swaps, with people you know, and will likely continue to see around your community.

You're not completely wrong; this probably does still happen, but your sensationalized post makes it seem like you're just ragebaiting about anti-pit tropes and, well, this is old meme at this point.

[Anonymous]

I thought this was going to be “why so many threads about pit bulls”?

Because people are irrational a-holes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Beware of giving away your pets for free, be they dogs/cats/bunnies.

The dog fighting rings are always looking for free animals to use for training their fighting dogs. They send their sweet-looking girlfriend (black/white/whatever) to collect the dog from you. Your pet will be thrown into a ring where it will get killed by the dogs.

Please give up your pet to the shelter or to a legitimate rescue. Most of these groups including the shelter will attach legal paperwork to the adoption, plus they vet the prospective adopters.

Are you posting from the mid-90s?

Most people aren't giving away free animals these days. I guess if you're still on, like, Craigslist or something... But most people looking for pets are already visiting shelters, rescues and breeders. Pets that really are passed along for free are usually neighborhood swaps, with people you know, and will likely continue to see around your community.

You're not completely wrong; this probably does still happen, but your sensationalized post makes it seem like you're just ragebaiting about anti-pit tropes and, well, this is old meme at this point.

You sound dim, PP, sorry. This is still very much a thing. They're more sophisticated in hiding their activity, but the dog fighting rings are still around.

Just a few years ago I was told by folks in the know that Michael Vicks was still at it with dog fighting in Virginia. This is an account about the ring he got busted for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Newz_Kennels

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been trying to adopt a puppy/young dog for several months. Nearly every dog at the various shelters is a put bull or variation of pitbull mix. Why? I don’t get it. I don’t want a pit bull and frankly I don’t get how so many people have come to get a pit bull in the first place.

Independent rescues pull all the more adoptable dogs from the shelters. These are the healthy, easy to adopt ones, and ones that yield the highest adoption fees allowing the rescue to cover salaries, off set housing and food expenses etc. The pits get left in the shelters.

Wait, how is this even allowed? I had no idea that this was how it worked. So places like Lost Dog Rescue or whatever pull the cute sweet dogs from Fairfax County Animal Shelter and then they charge for them??

County shelters allow this because they’re all overcrowded and it frees up space for other animals.

[Anonymous]

Rescues like Lost Dog aren't pulling from local shelters... Fairfax County just doesn't have that many dogs in the shelter. The local rescues are taking dogs from high-kill shelters in the south or in TX; this is one of the reasons you see lots of beagles and other hounds.

That the only available rescue dogs are pits or pit mixes hasn't been true for a long time; the rescues are so full they have pretty much any kind of dog. It is harder to get a small dog, from what I've seen, because those tend to go fast. From what I've seen, the dogs that stay a long time at Fairfax tend to be very big dogs (like over 70 pounds) rather than pits.

[Anonymous]

You have to go to the rescues that pull dogs from the south. In the south lots of people don’t spay/neuter so you end up with lots of unwanted dogs of all types. Up here only jerks don’t spay/neuter so you end up with a subset of dogs. The southern dogs are often shepherd/hound/lab mixes which is often a great mix.
Or go to the breed specific rescues. If someone is giving up a golden retriever, they will go to grreat so the dog is fostered in a GR loving home and never sees the inside of a shelter. They also do much more thorough assessment so you kkkw what you are getting. Dogs are typically either older with a health condition (manageable) or younger and came from a family that failed to provide proper training (which the fosters try to mitigate, but they’ll often still need a bit of training).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Beware of giving away your pets for free, be they dogs/cats/bunnies.

The dog fighting rings are always looking for free animals to use for training their fighting dogs. They send their sweet-looking girlfriend (black/white/whatever) to collect the dog from you. Your pet will be thrown into a ring where it will get killed by the dogs.

Please give up your pet to the shelter or to a legitimate rescue. Most of these groups including the shelter will attach legal paperwork to the adoption, plus they vet the prospective adopters.

Are you posting from the mid-90s?

Most people aren't giving away free animals these days. I guess if you're still on, like, Craigslist or something... But most people looking for pets are already visiting shelters, rescues and breeders. Pets that really are passed along for free are usually neighborhood swaps, with people you know, and will likely continue to see around your community.

You're not completely wrong; this probably does still happen, but your sensationalized post makes it seem like you're just ragebaiting about anti-pit tropes and, well, this is old meme at this point.

You sound dim, PP, sorry. This is still very much a thing. They're more sophisticated in hiding their activity, but the dog fighting rings are still around.

Just a few years ago I was told by folks in the know that Michael Vicks was still at it with dog fighting in Virginia. This is an account about the ring he got busted for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Newz_Kennels

This was never "very much" a thing. This has always been a clandestine thing for a few individuals. That you were "told by folks in the know" that a criminal was back into criminality is 1) not hard facts; and 2) sadly not uncommon. Recidivism is a thing.

Still, this is not the "there's a dogfighting ring in every neighborhood!" that the pp was making it out to be. You sound gullible, and not all that bright yourself, so I guess the projection makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought this was going to be “why so many threads about pit bulls”?

Because people are irrational a-holes.

Yes, that is the correct answer. Some anti-pit posters insist on these weekly (if not more often) anti-pit hate/disparagement/gossip threads because... I honestly don't know why. If they wanted to learn better and do better, they could.

Haters gotta hate, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Benji doesn’t exist anymore - any mutt mixes almost always have Pit in them. We shop, not adopt. I’m not playing mutt roulette when it comes to my house and my family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because a lot of people who want pit bulls intentionally choose not to get them fixed which leads to a million pit bull mixes in shelters. People who actively seek out pits often like them for aggression, and think fixing them will decrease their aggression.

It's a frustrating cycle. And what we should really be doing is forcing pit owners to fix their dogs, going after breeders that cater to these owners, and really cracking down on backyard breeding, which is illegal. But the whole conversation gets disrupted by people who adopt pits from shelters, fall in love with their specific dog, and then become very defensive about the rep pit bulls have, and fight against "discrimination" against the breed. It's exhausting.

I increasingly think you should need to get a license in order to have a dog, in order to ensure responsible dog ownership, make sure animals get fixed, and make it easier to take dogs away from people who abuse them or are otherwise irresponsible with them.

Until then, yes, like 95% of shelter dogs are pits and pit mixes.

But who in their right mind buys a dog for “aggression”? Why are so many people doing this? This is the part I don’t understand.

MAGAs

IME, magas are not the ones with the pitbulls. It’s the blue haired folks still wearing masks who have them.