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Comment by randomblast | Hacker News Reader

No. I wouldn't let a 6 year old play unsupervised with any dog. That would be incredibly irresponsible, and has lead to innumerable unnecessary child & dog deaths.

Would you leave a 6 year old unsupervised with a hungry rat? No - what a stupid question. A chihuahua can cause the same degree of injury (life-altering).

Is there a significant difference in behaviour between a pitbull and a chihuahua? No - this study confirms what has been known for years.

Breed-specific legislation is utter bullshit. It clearly doesn't work, isn't workable anyway (breed is judged based on looks rather than genetics), never had any scientific basis, and has been proven to be detrimental to its own aims time & time again.

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I’m not a fan of breed-specific legislation, but I’m more amenable to breed-selective homeowner insurance[1].

Interestingly most people misunderstand what a “pit bull” is. There are a few very similar breeds:

  - American Pit Bull Terrier
  - Staffordshire Bull Terrier
  - American Staffordshire Terrier
  - American Bully

In my experience, most people don’t specify which they mean, so they don’t actually care about the “breed” (the bloodline), but care more about their intuition of a breed based only on visuals.

[1] https://forbes.com/advisor/homeowners-insurance/banned-dog-b...

Another statistical problem is almost any mutt that looks vaguely like a terrier labeled a “Pitt bull type.”

Hey it’s r/pitbulls trying to convince you that your kid’s face getting bitten off is totally your fault. Should have supervised better.

Chihuahua: face still attached.

Pitbull: lack of face.

Ok, since you don't think a 6 year old can play with any dog unsupervised, how about a 12 year old? Would you let a 12 year old play unsupervised with a pit bull? How about with a chihuahua?

Depends on the dog, depends on the child. As per the paper, breed is a poor predictor of behaviour. I wouldn't let most adults in this thread play with my dogs unsupervised, based on the state of the comments.

Fair enough, but I think it's safe to say you're an extreme outlier.

As someone who fostered lots of dogs and had to interview people hoping to adopt a dog from me, I don’t care about what the vast majority of people. All people are ignorant until they aren’t.

Talking about non-outliers as if they have better knowledge of what the safety hazards are is a fallacy.

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