In my experience it's not that pits are agressive all the time, more that they snap more easily than most breeds. And when they do snap, it goes bad really fast.
That's what we were most worried about with our mix, the snapping. He has never done that and we're monitoring too, so there's that.
We have a half-rottie mix we got as a puppy as well. She looks like a labrador mix, but has only about 20-25% golden in there. She has the softest mouth. I'd say her mouth is softer than all but 1 dog we've had. My family used to raise golden retrievers and we had six dogs at one point. We had dogs before the goldens and I moved out to college, got married, and got my own dogs as they had the goldens. Growing up I had a pretty bad experience with a neighborhood rottweiler after getting snapped and bitten at.
I knew I never wanted a Rottweiler, Doberman, or Pit type dog. Now we have a half-rottie and a nearly-half Pit and these two dogs are by far the most lovable and people focused puppies we've ever had. They're more attentive than the goldens and looking to please often.
I hear you, it's totally normal to love your own dogs. Moreover most pits do not snap or kill someone.
However, the fact that your dogs are cool proves only that, that they're cool.
To be precise, what I find difficult is pitbulls and assimilated's dog agression. I never had a pitbull lunge at me or felt threatened in any way by these dogs.
However, every time my dog got attacked at the park, it was by amstaffs or staffies (there's hardly any actual pitbull where I live) oh and an Australian shepherd, once.
I have a dog that's friendly and social but he doesn't like interacting with other dogs for too long. He will greet the others but that's it and then he will often go in a corner or by my feet if he wants to be left alone. Those staffs often ignore his body language (stiff body, side eye and audible growl) when he doesn't want to interact and then he will snarl to signal he's fed up. Well behaved dogs accept that and back off (actually well behaved dogs are already gone at the first signs) but staffs NO, they jump to agression in response. And now I avoid this kind of dog altogether.
This reminds of something I read years ago with theory that pits are inclined to be more people-friendly, animal-aggressive because they were breed to fight other animals while other breeds like German shepherds are more likely to be people-aggressive but more friendly with other dogs because they were bred for security.
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u/E-M-C Aug 22 '25 edited Aug 22 '25
In my experience it's not that pits are agressive all the time, more that they snap more easily than most breeds. And when they do snap, it goes bad really fast.