When a person adopts a dog, they typically adopt it to have a fur baby to love and call a family member. The way a dog is raised is usually (in most cases) the reason they turn against someone and bite them or become the worlds biggest babies. In our family, our dogs have a middle name called "spoiled". However, because our way of teaching/raising our pets does not mean that everyone does the same. When my children we very young, they were taught to never bend down into a dogs face when petting. The chance of getting bit should be avoided as much as possible. So far, we have been lucky.
Any breed of dog can harm someone very badly. Some small dogs are far more vicious than the large "vicious breed" could imagine being. Unfortunately, the few and far between lawsuits around the country have caused the insurance carriers to tighten down and decline to insure our customers.
As an independent insurance agent, our office has the capability of providing you a stand alone liability policy that will cover you up to the policy limit (usually $1M - $2M) for your vicious breed animal either on or off your premises. That means, you can have coverage while walking the dog or if it decides to be the great escape artist and chase a person down the road, you have coverage for a lawsuit. This comes with a price tag of about $1000 per year. However, this does not relieve you of your headache of having to deal with your homeowners policy being cancelled or non renewed. The misery of being placed in the "high risk" market for property insurance can cause "sticker shock" and the loss of policy packaging and discounts.
Please understand that insurance underwriting will not ease up on this subject, but get harder as more lawsuits hit the books. I have included a list of "vicious breed" dogs that the industry considers ineligible for the owner to purchase property/homeowners coverage through the preferred market.
Pit Bulls & Staffordshire Terriers
Doberman Pinschers
Rottweilers
German Shepherds
Chows
Great Danes
Presa Canarios
Akitas
Alaskan Malamutes
Siberian Huskies
Wolf-hybrids
(Note: Insurance companies tend to deny coverage for the first four breeds on this list most often, experts say.)