If you ask around, you might think it would be so easy to prevent dog bites. You simply ban certain breeds (e.g. Staff, AmStaff, Rottweiler) and nobody is ever injured or even killed again.

This can only occur to someone who doesn’t want to acquire knowledge but would rather set up a scapegoat (by the way, this has been done often enough within the human species).

So are there dangerous breeds?

There are, but they are not dangerous for human physical health, but for the wallet and mental health, because living with them is very stressful.

Dogs of the breeds Pug, Bulldog (especially French, English), Shar-Pei, German Shepherd (show line), and some others live a life in pain and with considerable disabilities.

They cannot behave normally (sniffing… the most natural thing in the world, for example), are usually read badly or incorrectly by other dogs because they have no or limited body language options for communication, and often have to undergo multiple operations to be viable (still far from healthy).

So if breeds are to be banned, then please ban these!

But what about the breeds on various lists?

The assumption here is that genetics alone is responsible for behavior.

That would be like assuming that a light switch automatically turns the light on (without anyone pressing it).

Genetics can only provide possibilities. Epigenetics (i.e. the experiences that the living being has) determines which of the various options provided is activated. Epigenetics is therefore the hand, or paw, that presses the light switch to turn on the light.

So if we want to assess whether a dog will behave appropriately in our human environment, we need to look at the dog’s history.

What was this dog allowed to get to know from birth (“hobby breeders”, where the dogs spend their first 8 weeks locked up in a box, are at a huge disadvantage here)?

How was he trained?

How is he generally treated by the family?

Especially the last two questions are often answered with a “hard hand”.

Far too many “dog trainers” work with outdated methods and do not acquire any knowledge. They teach the dogs one-size-fits-all  exercises that are often not needed in everyday life.

The dogs learn to shut down completely through punishments. Owners’ questions about behavior cannot be answered because there is a lack of knowledge about behavior.

The dog is then often subdued in everyday life.

In other words, an attempt is made to suppress a certain behavior through strictness (e.g. hunting). This leads to more and more stress building up in the dog and at some point, the dog may no longer be able to pull himself together and we see the behavior coming back much worse.

However, this doesn’t just affect listed dogs.

So what can we do to guide our dogs safely through the world?

We must finally stop trying to force dogs into corsets and resorting to aversive punishment measures (intimidation, leash corrections, hitting, kicking, pinching, tying up body parts, shouting at them, etc.) if they “disobey”.

Does that sound excessive?

People come to me every day who have seen exactly that from their previous trainer and it’s even shown on TV.

We know how living beings learn!

We can make use of this knowledge and treat our dogs in a non-violent way.

Not only for the sake of safety but also because it makes living together much more fun.

And if you’re still thinking about genetics, here’s a brief excursion into the history of Pitbulls (including Staff, AmStaff etc.).

They are called Pitbulls because they were bred for dog fighting (the ring is called “pit”).

In order to be ready for this, the dogs were massively abused (by humans) from the age of a few weeks. They had to endure methods that we would categorize as torture in the human world.

If a dog had turned against a human during these ordeals or in the ring, they would have been killed immediately (and thus removed from breeding). It must be emphasized that the dogs in the ring act at the highest level of arousal and with the intention to kill.

Turning against a person who “disturbs” them would be completely natural. And yet they didn’t.

This perhaps shows a little more clearly that genetics are not decisive for behavior.

So we don’t need to be afraid of individual breeds, but we do need an eye for how a dog is treated.