It depends on the breed, the owner, and the individual animal.
We had a purebred springer. Papers and everything. Sweetest dog I have ever seen, great with the family, and large enough that he wasn't afraid of me as a little kid, so he never reacted to me violently. He personally raised the next two dogs.
Number two was a pure beagle. He was a good, friendly dog. He and I were best buddies until he passed away.
Number three was a pure lab. She was nutty as a fruitcake. She would chew on herself, eat rocks and then vomit them up on the porch, and had poorer spatial perception and reasoning capacity than the beagle. On the plus side she had a good disposition, so living with her was alright.
The current fuzzball is a chow/shepherd mix. She has a chow appearance, and a shepherd brain. She's an absolutely wonderful dog, even if she does have large shepherd ears on a small chow head. She likes to run and play with the neighborhood kids (I just let her loose on them in the front yard), and then she comes in and climbs up on my bed to sleep.
The difference in the dogs? Springers are just friendly, and ours was raised by somebody else. Beagles have a good disposition, and I raised him just by being his little boy. Labs are genetically a little wonky, and my dad, who knows how to verbally abuse a dog but not how to train one, raised her. Our current mix is friendly to begin with, and I have trained her patiently with the help of several books.
So the moral of the story is that you should try not to judge based only on breed. Look at the individual animals to pick the right dog.
