Of all the friendly and sweet looking dogs you can choose from and people get these ugly things.

Bean bag rounds? Do these officers not carry live ammo?

Don’t put clothing on dogs.

They’ve got some good traits. Personally I like that they have very short hair and don’t shed much if at all. That’s great for warm weather locations.

Obviously being large and powerful can be a drawback, but I like it as a pet owner. I want my dogs to have a function and a pit bull is going to do a lot to deter potential home thefts and invasions.

You want one of those things around young kids?

Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want any dog over, probably, 25 pounds around my infant/toddler/young child. They’re still animals at the end of the day and my wife would 100% be worthless in dealing with a savage dog attack; I’m sure of it.

At the same time, I wouldn’t want a dog that weighed under 25 pounds as a pet.

So we just don’t own any dogs lol

I'm sure that part of the story gives plenty of cover for pitbull people to say "yeah, see that's just a bad owner".

Before we had kids we had our Maltese. It was always going to be a smaller one but she turned out to only be about 6 lbs. After our second kid became mobile the dog got depression. She was just too small to handle the attention. She started staying outside even in the cold instead of coming in, no longer sitting on the couch, and even squeezed through the fence apparently trying to run away.

So we got a cavapoo (grand cavalier/poodle) and that fixed the first dog’s depression. The Maltese tolerates the kids now, and at 3 and 5 they know how to handle her gently. This new dog ended up at just under 30 lbs. This is a good size for little kids as she is bulky enough to handle their rough housing without feeling scared but small enough to not knock them over just walking around or playing with them. I think anywhere in 20-30 lbs is optimal for young kids. I know people like labs for families but I’ve never been into big dogs.

Labs are great dogs. Very large, intimidating bark, but total sweethearts and generally intelligent. Lovable, friendly, don’t require a ton of attention/activity.

I would consider labs the best dog breed overall.

Their coats aren’t as bad as a golden retriever or many other breeds but they do shed too much for my liking. It’s like a full time job keeping that fur from being visible on your furniture, rugs, etc. and I’m just not with that shit.

Never a good story when bumped

yeah - that undercoat is brutal on labs.

But they're friggen bulletproof dogs. You can mess them up but when you do, they'll just be hyper. You could beat them daily and starve them and they still wouldn't be violent.

I've never had a Boxer but have known quite a few people that do and by all accounts they're fantastic family dogs. Very affectionate and patient with children and they have short hair/docked tails so they're really low maintenance.

Yeah, in my experience Boxers are great but the other dude talked about pits being ugly - no way I wanna look that fugly Boxer mug day in and day out lol

They are also insanely energetic. If you own one, you really, really need to get it a ****ton of exercise every single day or you could deal with some behavioral issues in the house.

Could always get a lazy-ass Great Dane.

God those dogs are boring.

Good Lord, no. Imagine the shits those things take. You’d have to haul a shovel around on every walk…

I think the largest you could convince me would be around 90-100 lbs. Something like a Cane Corso. As far as mastiffs go, they’re on the smaller side. Maybe a svelte Rottweiler.

Personally, I think 50-85 lbs is the sweet spot. That’ll get you a lab, golden, basically any kind of pit if that’s your thing, Dalmatian, German Shepherd, poodle, Doberman, husky, a few different breeds of hounds - lots of good options depending on your lifestyle.

Remember that scene in There's Something about Mary when that guy with the Great Dane had about 20 giant piles of shit in his apartment when they went in? ROFL