new pitbull!

[Spider-Spazz]

we got her from a shelter that had to temporarily close down for rewiring purposes, if all the animals didn't find homes they had to be euthanized. sad for a no kill shelter huh, i heard they were all adopted out though!
anyways, we got a pretty buff female pit named Neiko. she's amazing! except she killed our cat.. i'll spare you the gruesome details of that. my mom almost took her back to the shelter but they still hadn't opened, i think we're keeping her now since the other cats are inside cats.
she's so powerful it's amazing, we have this ball in the backyard for our other dogs to play with. we got it last year and NONE of them could puncture a hole in it, soon as she got it that thing was dead meat. she still has it though, if you say 'wheres the ball!?' she'll go off looking everywhere for it!
just wanted to share the news of the new baby

 

[pitbulllady]

Good thing you got her, since dogs like this are usually the first to be killed in shelters; I do not use the term "euthanized unless it refers to an animal that is seriously ill or injured with little hope of recovery and no quality of life.

Just a few pointers to avoid future problems: NEVER allow an adult dog access to cats or other animals unless both the dog AND the other animals have proven that they are compatible! Dogs naturally view cats as prey animals, and cats view dogs as dangerous predators, so their inate reactions are attack, on the part of the dog, and run away/become defensive, on the part of the cat. Often, with a dog that is supposedly used to cats, the reaction of the cat can sway the encounter one way or the other. If you just bring in a dog and turn it loose around cats, a tragedy is almost inevitable, as you have found out. You cannot blame the dog for being a DOG. Our local shelter, the Darlington County Humane Society(no affiliation at all with HSUS), allows animals to be "tested" for species compatibility before you take them home. When I got my cat from them last year, I got to see him around dogs of several different sizes and ages that were cat-tolerant, to see how he reacted, since it was imperitive that I get a cat that at least tolerated small dogs, since my father(who had to move in two years ago after losing his home in a fire)has a Pug that lives indoors. The shelter manager keeps her own personal dog there at their office for the purpose of checking how a cat will react to a dog, so if the cat freaks out or arches up and hisses, etc., you know that is probably not a good candidate for a home that has a dog already. If a dog shows predatory behavior around cats, that's not a good dog to go to a home that has cats. They keep many of their cats in large roomy outdoor chain link kennels, so you can walk a dog you're thinking of taking home over to the cat enclosures and judge its behavior, or even muzzle it and take it inside with dog-friendly cats, until you can tell how the dog reacts to them.


I don't use the term "pit bull" unless it is in the broad, general term, since that term(which is TWO words, by the way)can mean virtually ANY short-haired, medium-to-Xlarge, muscular dog these days, especially if the dog does something deemed "bad". In fact, it doesn't even have to have short hair; one of the dogs implicated in the killing of a Chicago jogger a few years ago was clearly a Chow mix, with a thick double coat and purple tongue, yet it was called a "pit bull" by everyone who reported on the incident and the dog's subsequent shooting. I refer to the BREED as APBT's, for "American Pit Bull Terrier", since that separates them from all the other countless non-APBT's that are still called "pit bulls".

Good luck with your new dog. They are incredible athletes and are really fun-loving, but keep in mind that they are TERRIERS, and terriers have been bred for a high prey drive, especially when it comes to small furry animals.

pitbulllady

 

[Spider-Spazz]

about the cat thing, we didn't turn her loose around her. a few years ago we were watching some dogs, and they were with our other dogs in the back yard. our cat jumped over the fence and the dogs we were watching attacked her (no puncture wounds) just literally scared her to death.
well those dogs taught our dogs to attack cats. they won't mess with them on a leash or in the house, and Neiko was out back when our cat Ginger jumped over the fence for some odd reason (they NEVER go back there) and unfortunately, curiosity really did kill the cat ): we don't blame our dogs for any deaths personally, it's part of them to chase smaller animals.

 

[Spider-Spazz]

here she is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHtloqLmmQM

 

[Crysta]

I personally think it's a trainning thing - dogs can be trained out of attacking things. The first experiences with my first samoyed was when we had a bunch of chickens, gease and ducks. He would try to kill the goose, but he was disceplined not to. He never touched them even though the gooses honked at him, or stuck their heads out of the fencing to bite his fur.

Good dog.

Although, before he was disciplined he would kill anything - RIP my lizard, and rabbit. This was when we first got him, within the first two weeks. That was a sad day

Once discipline was in he never touched my other iguanas or rabbits. Mind you that took about a month to do lol

Although that didnt stop him from going fishing. He used to catch salmon in the river here and bring them home for us. lol!

 

[pitbulllady]

Can I ask you some questions, Spiderspaz?
Do you support BSL, laws that ban the ownership and breeding of specific types of dogs, "pit bulls" in particular? Do you think that all "pit bulls" should be rounded up and killed, for their own good?
Do you own other animals besides the dog and the cats, like snakes, lizards, spiders, etc.? Do you think that other people should be allowed to own those animals, too, or do you support laws that would ban them and require all existing animals like that in captivity to either be released back into the wild or killed?

pitbulllady