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Exactly! We train ours to work with livestock (horses, cattle, and goats)....don't know about chickens yet though....Sort of the same thing with pit bulls, though I think now we're getting to the point that an aggressive behavior is being bred into some....becoming a genetic trait instead of learned behavior. Maybe a mental defect that runs in the breed.
It IS getting bred in, mostly by crossing in other breeds such as mastiffs or cana corsos. Agression towards people isn't really a trait that a pit can be taught, it is just entirely against their nature. You might provoke an aggressive response in certain situations, but remove that and the pit is once again a friendly loving dog. Generations of bad breeding and selection for mean is starting to leave a lasting effect. Not to mention the public perception. A nip by a pit is always a "mauling" while an attack by a small dog never makes the news.
An example was a headline last year that read "elderly woman injured by pit". That is all most people would read, shake their heads and go forward with another bad thought about pits. Actually reading the article and the witness accounts told a very different story. The pit was out of its yard and offleash, true. The woman was walking two small poodle-mix dogs. The small dogs saw the pit across the road and started barking and running in circles. The woman got tangled and fell, injuring her ankle. The pit owner was cited for allowing their dog to roam, but there was no attack on human or dog.
Of course, "elderly woman falls over poodle" doesn't sell papers
