Pit Bulls as therapy dogs

I've been told that this breed's background as a fighting dog actually makes it a good candidate for training as a therapy dog or a kid's dog. Apparently pits will ignore moderately painful things - a pulled ear or tail, getting a paw stepped on - in a way that many other breeds won't. They'll tolerate rough handling from kids, or from people with motor control issues, without being distracted from their primary purpose.

Also, where's the obligatory picture of Arnie? Nice video, but we want to see Arnie.

I'm waiting for our pitt mix Gus to mellow out too. We're at about year three, and he still acts EXACTLY as you describe Arnie. One thing I will say though is that he seems to have an intrinsic idea about being more gentle with certain people (ie women, children, the elderly) when playing than he is with my boyfriend for example. My one year old nephew can poke his eyes and pull his ears and tail (while supervised of course) and Gus just wags his tail, which gives me hope that we might get to therapy dog status one day. I've had labs, greyhounds, german shepherds and other mixes, but I've never had a dog as affectionate or as emotional as my pitt mix. I may never get another breed again.

And I agree with Martin; I love the Arnie pics.

He didnt just like and appreciate some attention from people. He was more like, LUUUUUUUVIES!!! PEEEEEOPLE!!!! I LOVE YOU PEOPLE!!!! I LOVE YOU PEOPLE!!! LUUUUUUUVIEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSICLIMBINYOURLAPNAUIFITSEE!

Heck, Arnie might even like playing with Rho! :-)

Your description of arni reminds me a lot of the pit my family had when I was a kid. Her dad was mellower (or maybe mellowed with age ?) and probably would have made a better therapy dog...

We have two large pit mixes, boy and girl. They both love children, but Tungusa, the girl LLLLLLOOOOOOOOVEEEEEEESSS to jump and cavort and roll around. She loves everyone. Our boy, Wolfie, likes children and old people. He made me cry twice, once when he picked out a kid in a crowd whose big dog had died a couple odays before and sat and commiserated with him. The other time was when he was even younger and an old Filipino neghber slipped and fell. I had to let Wolfie go to catch her and he was new from the shelter, so I was hoping he wouldn't run off and go wild, but all he did was kis the lady and sit by her until her famiy came. He kissed her, too, but she looked a little worried.

Haha, fantastic, sounds so much like my dog (which I left at home when I went off to college...). He's not a pit (he's a herding dog), but he is big: around 100-110lbs or so. He finally started to mellow out at about 8 years old or so, but can still get excited when he meets new people.

And yes, when I go home to Mom's, he wants to get in my lap. And I let him. For a little while :)

I already love your Arnie.

I've got a dog who is totally unfit for any sort of therapy because she starts barking really loudly at strangers. In our house, she quickly transitions from barking to wanting to climb on top of you or maybe inside you. They get excited but they don't mean any harm.

Point is, there's no such thing as a bad dog, only bad owners who hurt a dog so they can't trust people.