Golden Retriever Attempts Suicide

I am baby sitting my sister's Golden Retriever. He is a city dog. He just learned to pee standing up a few months ago. For about a year, he has not been around any other dogs except some little yapper belonging to my sister's former roommate. His name is Chubbs (because he was so chubby as a puppy, I think).

We have a male pit bull mix. Here's a picture I pulled off the web that looks kind of like our dog, Amos, except Amos is a little bigger, not so compact. Also, Amos doesn't have his ears cropped like this dog does.

We named him Amos because, even as a puppy, he acted like an old man, just laying around and wanting to sleep all of the time. Right now Amos calls a cable in the front yard home. We let him off from time to time to run around the yard. Sometimes we take him with us places, but he doesn't like to be left alone in the car if we have to go in somewhere... So, when the Golden got to the house, we took him on his leash to meet Amos on his cable. They were basically nose to nose, but not really able to get to each other. Amos fairly ignored the Golden and mostly wanted us to come closer to love on him. Chubbs tried to get tough and started growling and puffing up. I pulled him back and that was the end of it. So I thought. Friday the kids and I left to pick up Robert's report card, leaving Chubbs in the house. When we got home, Gwen's dog darted out the door, down through the yard, and straight at Amos. Of course, Amos wasn't going to have that. So a dog fight ensued. I ran down there and grabbed Amos' cable and pulled him off Chubbs. Chubbs ran off into the woods. Knowing that I couldn't leave him out there, Marina and I took off after him. Robert stayed by Amos with a golf club in hand to scare off Chubbs should he return before we could catch him. So Marina and I are down in the woods and I hear a dog fight start up and Robert start yelling. Chubss had circled around and ran back at Amos. I take off running (8 months pregnant) up the hill through the woods. I get to the scene, but by now this is a legitimate dog fight. They have had at least a minute to get fully involved. We are all yelling, Robert is swinging at both of them. I grab Amos' cable again and start pulling. The cable was slippery from being in the grass, so I wrapped the cable sort of around my wrist to get a better grip. Then I slipped in the grass and was now sitting down and pulling Amos toward me with all my might. I am thinking at this point that at the least, my dog is going to rip off an ear or a floppy lip of Chubbs. I yanked on the cable once very hard and either I pulled Amos loose for a split second or he just decided to let go of Chubbs. This time Chubbs ran straight for the house. Chubbs had only a tiny cut on his ear, no puncture wounds, no dripping blood, etc. I know that Amos could have done much worse to this insolent Golden Retriever, but he didn't. I, of course, didn't fair so well. I have a bruised wrist and forearm from where I wrapped the cable around my arm. I jammed the ring finger of my left hand and bruised the area around my finger nail and I bruised my ankle when I fell in the grass. And not to mention that my children are now traumatized and scarred for life; well, not really... So I come to work today and relate this story to my coworkers and all I heard was how it's because Amos is a pit bull and you know those dogs are unpredictable and blood thirsty. Huh? He was minding his own business and didn't even really break the skin of Chubbs. He didn't "lock" his jaws, as people believe. He didn't yank his head from side to side, attempting to shake Chubbs like a rag doll. This irritated me and got me to researching pit bulls and pit bull myths. If you're interested, read this article from the SPCA http://www.la-spca.org/dedication/talk/t_judge.htm or this from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_bull. I read that a lot of times when there are attacks by "pit bulls," they aren't even always pit bulls. Look at this web site to see what a legit pit bull looks like http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html. So, hhmmmph. That's my crotchety old person article of the week. I read a slogan that I liked: Judge the Deed, Not the Breed. The only dog that I have had biting / nipping trouble out of is my inlaws Pappillion. So from now on I am going to brand all Pappillions -- "you know those Pappillions, they are unpredictable..."