[thephyber]

> Is there anyone here who would let their 6 year old child play, unsupervised, with a random pit bull? How about a random chihuahua?

I fostered dozens of dogs. In my (admittedly small sample size) set of fosters, a Yellow Lab was the one with the most reactive response towards people and the “pit bull”/bully breed mixes were the most docile with little people in my family. The only “bites” in my family are from two different trained police GSDs.

I agree with other commenters that kids (and even adults who are not well versed in dog behaviors) should not be around strange dogs with unknown histories or behaviors.

I have seen two significant dog-attack-dog events. Neither showed obvious signs or gave noticeable warnings before the attack. Children should not be around dogs with unknown behaviors/ traumas/ conditioning and probably shouldn’t be around dogs when not supervised by a dog-savvy responsible adult. Obviously more time and exposure can lead to increased trust with an individual.

I agree with both the title (which is generally true but unspecific enough to the point of being useless). I also agree that some behavior phenotypes have significant correlation to breeds, while there are almost always counterexamples.