By the mid to late 1980’s and through the 1990’s, Rottweilers were also more and more targeted. Before this time, Rotties were actually considered a rather rare breed. A lot of people point at Hollywood, again, as the turning point for this breed. When making the 1976 horror hit “The Omen”, filmmakers apparently wanted to use a powerful, fierce looking breed that simply wasn’t seen every day. Unfortunately, they picked the Rottweiler to portray their hellhounds. The breed was also used to reprise that role in a few other horror movies of that time, such as movies with names like “Daughters of Satan” (staring Tom Selik, by the way).
The breed’s popularity and population began to rise dramatically. Often, it attracted the attention of people who should not own any dog, let alone one as powerful as a Rottie. The end result is a breed whose name appears on BSLs almost as often as do the pit bull types. It is also commonly blacklisted by insurance companies.
So, what does the future hold? What breed is next for the blacklists? Opinions differ. For a while it looked like it could have been the Akita or the Chow Chow. Then, last year a terrible incident in California pushed another rare breed into the spotlight, the Presa Canario. Even though the dogs involved in that death were not common pets but trained fighting dogs, the Presa breed itself has taken a huge blow, which could very well put it in the same position as Rotties.
As you can see, the idea of a vicious “breed” is not a concrete thing. It can change as times and people’s ideas change. The breed that people fear today might not be the one they fear tomorrow. That change of opinion happens not because that breed has been outlawed by breed specific laws, but because something else has grabbed public attention.
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