I have owned and fostered many pit bulls and they are always the sweetest, most laid back dogs...far less likely to bite than my border collie.

There are many reasons why dogs attack. You do hear more about pit bulls because of media hype. Statistically speaking, if you look up actual reported statistics of dog bites, it's smaller dogs that have a greater incidence of biting. Of course a larger dog will do more damage. That's just anatomy.

Many of the dogs that are labeled as pits are not even pits. Many of them have been cross bred with other breeds and then not raised in accordance with that breed's characteristics. Pitbulls are actually medium sized to small dogs. Often we see "pits" that have actually been cross bred with labs or often mastiffs, making them seem like large, ferocious dogs.

Having volunteered in animal rescue for a long time and fostered many a pit bull, I've more often been growled at and snapped at by a small breed dog than a pit. The pits tend to be big babies that just want to cuddle.

That said, most often the reports you see of dogs biting children were unsupervised children playing with a dog when the dog gave MANY warnings, but the adult humans were just too stupid to notice it. Every day I see ppl sharing "cute" videos on Facebook of babies and children crawling all over the family dog, while the family dog stress pants, licks its lips, shows whale eyes, and tries to even get away. And yet no one does anything to relieve the dog's stress. So when the dog finally "corrects" the child by nipping at it (which is how dogs correct each other) the poor family dog that gave LOTS of warning gets put down.

This is human error, not dog error.

Yes, some dogs are too damaged to rescue. It happens. But that's actually pretty rare.

Bottom line, you should never be leaving your dog unsupervised with your child.