ATTS official breed statistics

[Crepuscular]

19. if people want to deny the impact

of hundreds of years of selective breeding, that results in certain physical and personality characteristics in different breeds of animals that share a common ancestry and want to maintain that there is "no difference" between breeds and that it's solely due to "nurture", get back to me the next time a Percheron wins the Derby. Let's see you train that Bloodhound to herd cattle or that Husky to point a grouse. Show me the Yorkie that excels at retrieving a dead goose. Let's run a race between your Saint Bernard and a Greyhound and see who wins.

Does that mean that every individual dog within a certain breed will have those characteristics or that they cannot be bred back out? Not at all. Irish Setters used to be excellent field dogs until they were extensively bred for show characteristics. "Pit Bull" types were bred for a long time to reinforce certain types of behavior, including tenacity and aggressive behavior. That does not mean that all of the dogs of breeds and mixes that are commonly identified as Pits will exhibit that behavior but it's either hopelessly naive or intentionally misleading to portray that collection of breeds and mixes collectively, as just misunderstood "babies" that would not hurt a fly.