Originally posted by Dixieland Dancer
Where does this statistic come from? I don't agree with it at all. If I see a truly aggressive Golden, I look at the owner and see someone who doesn't understand the breed or hasn't trained the dog appropriately.
Yes, it's the owner's fault in every case, but I feel that BYBs have produced many unstable goldens. I have met more shy, fearful, and aggressive goldens than ones that would be a good respresentation of the breed. I did a breed bite list this year for English, and golden retriever was one of the top biters on my list. It could possibly be because they are more common than alot of breeds, but for a place where small dogs are particularly common and large dogs not, those statistics are pretty incredible. We have many backyard breeders here in Kelowna and I feel that it is their fault more than the owners for breeding dogs with tempermental flaws -- if it wasn't for them, the dogs wouldn't be there in the first place and we wouldn't need to blame an owner. There are no accurate statistics for bites last year in Canada -- I'm not sure about the US.