Please, please, please do not breed or buy while shelter pets die.

[avebury]

32. I have a co-worker who recently took in her niece, great-niece, and three dogs.

One of the dogs is an in-tact (sp?) male pit who evidentally is afraid of his own shaddow. She talked about how sweet the dog is but he gets excitable when she comes home and jumps on her. We told her to ignore the dog until the dog calms down because all she is doing is encouraging bad behaviour.

We have mentioned to our co-worker that the pit should be neutered but apparently her niece is thinking about breeding him with a yet to found female. I have no problems with Pits because I recognize that the problem tends to be the owners and the way they raise/treat their dog(s). Unfortunately most people automatically thing they are evil and should be put down.

We immediately brought up:

1. If it is a fearful dog it could easily develop fear aggressive if they are not careful.
2. Neutering the dog might help to help keep some problems from developing.
3. Does her niece have any idea how many pits end up being put down all over the country because of the way people feel about them?
4. I stated that someone should take her niece and walk her through our local city animal shelter and she would see how many are sitting there at any one time. I know because I have been there many a time. Of course my co-worker cannot stand the thought of walking through the shelter. I stated that I would have no problem if it would get the point across to the niece.

If the niece does end up breeding this dog I doubt that any litter would be focused on improving the breed because it would not be any better then a backyard breeder situation and she would have to get a female pit if she did not find someone with one to breed with her dog.

The situation is not looking promising at this point.