A pitbull reacts to his prey drive. It's what makes him unpredictable, and dangerous. The more movement, and noise, the higher the prey drive goes.
Training patrol, and handler protection dogs, I delt with this daily.
A pitbull has an extremely high pray drive, and regardless of how the dog is raised, the dog is what it is.
Dee, do you suppose that is akin to a cat's automatic reaction to catch mice etc. They cannot seem stand to see a ball roll or a piece of litter blow by without they give chase..
Likely.
Many of these killings, and maulings, are kids. Kids running, and playing with their squealing like yelling excites the dog, triggering "their prey drive", and they attack. When their victim becomes frantic and resists, the prey drive goes even higher.
I worked with an Amarillo P.D. K9 handler years ago whos Belgium Malinois would not out off a bite. The dog wasn't being stubborn like they believed. His prey drive was so high, he couldn't help himself.
My solution was numerous decoys taking bites one after another wearing the dog down, until he outed on the first command to out. As the dog became more fatigued, his prey drive came down also. It worked. Doing this daily, and quitting on success, resulted in conditioning the dog to out on the first command.
When the dog began outing off a bite like he should, they stopped the training I suggested, and he slowly went back to his old habit of his "prey drive" completely controlling him.
The dog was exceptional, the handler mediocre.
As I said, pitbull has an extremely high prey drive, PLUS, in the dog world they aren't very smart, regardless of their loving owners opinion. A pitbull cannot help being a pitbull anymore than a skunk can help being a skunk.
