If you had asked me two years ago if I planned on ever getting a dog in my college career, I would have laughed at you. If you told me that I was going adopt a Dachshund (you know, the wiener dogs), I would have laughed even harder, because those dogs are fucking evil.

Here I am in 2016 with a Dachshund, who isn’t as crazy as I'd thought she'd be. Sure she’s clingy and the world’s biggest fraidy-cat, but she’s not aggressive. Why? It's because I’ve worked so hard to make her accustomed to social situations since I brought her home last November. So it got me thinking: why do these small dogs have less of a bad reputation than “aggressive breeds,” like Akitas and Pitbulls? My answer came to me in the form of a Facebook post.

Megan Wright was viciously attacked by a dog while she was waiting at the bus stop. She was left with “[over forty stitches], a broken kneecap, most of my blood volume gone, and some pretty gnarly physical and psychological scars.” The dog that attacked her was, in fact, not a Pitbull, but a St. Bernard.

You know the beer dogs that are “gentle giants.”

I’m not saying that St. Bernard's are vicious or aggressive dogs. I’ve met several who were well-trained, albeit covered in slobber. However, any dog can be an aggressive dog and it's not fair that some dogs have to be labeled because of their "aggressiveness".

In a survey done by the Angus Reid Institute in Canada, a little over a thousand citizens were asked if dog attacks were at the fault of bad ownership or the breed itself. The study found that 58% of the participants believed that “dog attacks are isolated incidents caused by bad owners, not the breed of the dog.”

So after a little more research, I decided to ask a few people on their opinions on breed restrictions, since it's such a huge topic.

Heidi Lynn Taylor, a Communications Studies major at Texas Tech University, says, "I don't think you can blame the breed. I believe that you can only blame the owner for how aggressive a dog is, take Micheal Vick, his dogs were all aggressive because he made them aggressive. But if you take an everyday person (that has been a good person and is loving to a dog) and give them a pit bull, it's usually one of the sweetest pups you'll ever meet! The only reason it should be aggressive is if someone is trying to harm their person/handler. All dogs are given a bad rep at some point or another."

Another example is my friend, who owns a one-year-old pit bull named Luna. Upon meeting Luna, I was impressed at how sweet and loving this dog was. When I sat down, I was instantly greeted with a toy from Luna, and we played a rousing game of fetch. Luna was incredibly gentle when she met Basil, my timid, little Dachshund. Part of the reason Luna is so sweet and sociable is that my friend doesn't let her get away with bad behavior.

All dogs have their quirks, no matter what the breed. Some dogs will be more protective than others, and some will be timider than others. Some dogs will even be cat-like and not care at all. The bottom line is that dogs who aren't trained properly will turn out be aggressive, no matter the breed, gender, or whether they came from a breeder or a shelter.