I Fell in Love with a Pit Bull

LOVE...

April
Photo by Sanjay Sen

April walked into my life when she was about six months old, and I was twenty four. She came as a foster and stayed on. She was a “pit-lab mix” – leaner and taller than the typical American Pit Bull Terrier, with white markings on her chest and paws, and a very strong head. Once she ran into me excited about something – she was clumsy like that – and whoa – that head near about crushed my knee. My knee was never quite the same, but then again, neither was I…

As soon as April came into my life, she hauled my ass out of depression induced by suburbia and the unlikely role of a housewife. Over the years, I would intermittently learn and forget, and relearn, the lessons of love and life that my dog tirelessly taught me.

April passed away on 5 April, ten days shy of turning 11 (or 12) years, with less than a day’s notice. On her last day, she woke up and walked with me to her favorite park, chased the geese, splashed in the Hudson and fetched sticks. Only after that, she slowed down. Unknown to us all, and in spite getting a clean bill of health only weeks before, she had internal bleeding caused by an invasive cancer. She didn't make it through surgery that evening.

Since then not a single day has passed when I haven’t wished that I could smell the flowers, just one more time, with my beloved four-legged companion.

I am biased as I write this post. I am biased because a dog named April, from the feared and misrepresented lineage of “pit bull,” left a mark on my heart forever. She was abused and neglected before she had even turned six months, but she took on life with nothing less than exuberance and joy. Such are dogs, even dogs that have pit bull in them… perhaps, even more so!

I fell in love with a pit bull, and with love comes responsibility. I am writing this blog because a pit bull taught me that all dogs can be loving and capable of being excellent companions. The failures that we attribute to dogs (or breeds) are more often than not, our own failures in training and understanding a dog.

Genetics may play a role in dog behavior, but we engineered the breeds and traits that are now simply too inconvenient for our life styles today. So we have proceeded to blame the dogs and demonized them. We have persecuted breeds through breed specific legislations, which dog behaviorists and scientists have overwhelmingly opposed. We have spent more money condemning specific breeds than researching and understanding dog behavior. A dog named April made me question our collective apathy and arrogance.

What gives us the right to create and destroy at will? If you think about it, it’s not so different from the experience of all other social injustices. You and I have not engineered a breed any more than we have enslaved a people, or destroyed a democracy. But you and I are living in the shadows and consequences of those actions. We have reaped collective benefits or incurred collective hardships from those actions. You, and I, have a choice – we could continue to condemn the dogs, or do something different to make things better for them.

FIVE THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT PIT BULLS

What exactly is a "pit bull"?

Today’s “pit bull” is a catch-all phrase for several different breeds, or combinations thereof. The dogs termed as such rarely belong to the official breed of the “American Pit Bull Terrier." They include Staffordshire Bull Terrier, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Stafford Terrier, American Bulldog, Bull Terrier, or several combinations of breeds including these. Herein lies a serious problem – each of these breeds, or dogs containing a mix of some of these breeds, have unique histories, genetic traits and temperaments. Moreover, most of the dogs labeled as “pit bulls” are victims of visual identification that have nothing to do with their true genetic make up.  Many pit bull advocates would insist that we treat the dogs as individuals. They are not speaking from a moral ground. Because of the often unknown genetic make up of these dogs, and because of the varied traits that come with mixed genes, each dog may indeed be unique and have unique set of traits.

In 2009, researchers from Western University of Health Sciences published their findings after comparing the breed identifications made by adoption agencies with DNA analyses of the same dogs.  An overwhelming majority didn’t match. In a second paper published by the same researchers in 2013 showed that 900 professionals and service providers (for dogs) surveyed mostly disagreed with each other when making visual breed identifications of the same dogs, and their opinions did not correlate with the DNA analyses. These dog professionals recorded such identifications in documents that are largely relied upon for data, news, adoption and service provision.

Two separate studies conducted by researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Florida confirmed the unreliability of visual breed identification used by animal control and shelter service providers. They published a chart that shows how often dogs identified as pit bulls had little or no genetic make up of the same.

The result of this has been grave, for dogs known as “pit bulls.” If 87.5% of dogs have been misidentified by authorities responsible for their care, adoption or service provision, what are we to make of all the data, rhetoric and the breed-specific public policy that have been put in place, since 1980-s, based on such identifications?

Karen Delise, research director for the National Canine Research Council and author of “The Pitbull Placebo,” investigated every fatal dog bite reported in the years between 2002-2005, and found that “eleven dogs involved in fatal attacks with no Pitbull characteristics were counted as Pitbulls, while their ‘true’ breeds were not reported, and three dogs that were clearly not Rottweilers were identified as Rottweilers.” That was among a total of 47 fatal attacks (by all breeds) reported during that period. In some cases, even when a dog involved in an attack was identified as a Labrador mix by animal control officers, the media reported it as a pit bull.

The media has played a crucial role in how we perceive pit bulls today. A study conducted by the National Canine Research Council in 2008 showed that when an Arizona woman was killed by dogs identified as Labrador retrievers, only one local newspaper reported the story. But the same year, when a California man was killed by what was identified as a pit bull, 285 media outlets nationally and internationally covered the story.

Nanny dogs… or not? Where did Pit Bulls come from?

When I first started researching for this blog, I realized that there may not be irrefutable evidence that pit bulls were really called “nanny dogs.” And, skeptics often conclude that even if they were called that, it was in their capacity as formidable guard dogs.

But indeed, the pit bull, if raised and socialized as a normal companion dog is not the best of guard dogs. Any dog can be trained to guard. In fact, this particular function that humans sought and encouraged, has done more harm to dogs than we could imagine. Because in doing so, we expected dogs to protect one human from another, and to discern who was a potential threat and who wasn’t. Often, this expectation did not come with proper training or handling, and dogs were placed in uncertain or ambiguous circumstances.

While we don’t know if the pit bull was truly hailed as a “nanny dog” in old England, what we do know is this: In the 1800’s today’s pit bull looked a lot like the Olde English Bulldog. Some of these dogs were used in England for bull baiting, and later, in 1835, when bull baiting became illegal, dog fighting became a popular replacement. A cross breed of the Olde English Bulldog and terriers was created to have smaller, more agile dogs for this purpose. The dogs were bred selectively to prevent human aggression, and “pit bulls” gained reputation for their obedience and reliability with humans. [More on this here.]

In the 19th century America, “bull dogs”— a catch-all term for pit bull like dogs that immigrated with the settlers— became a popular breed with homesteaders. They were companions to children and families, helped with hunting, and protected their owners from bull and hog attacks (a common problem those days). As cities grew, Pit Bulls migrated to urban environments with their owners and were seen as regular dogs. They showed up in family photos, posters and advertisements. World War I posters displayed the American Pit bull Terrier as proud mascots.

So what changed?

For one thing, life styles changed. Pit bulls (in their glorious mix of breeds) are extremely smart and active dogs. They had to adjust to urban and suburban life styles. Pit bulls need physical AND mental exercise. This is the first thing I learnt when I started fostering April. Her energy and ability to learn was tremendous, and like you would (hopefully) do with a human child with high IQ, you have to find ways of channeling that energy and intelligence.

Karen Delise wrote in her book, “The Bulldog’s image experienced a rather sudden turn in the early 1900s when they left the farms, frontiers and pits and entered into urban apartment houses and began roam- ing in great numbers through city streets. Like the Collie, the Bulldog had much credit in the bank of public opinion in the later part of the 19th century… The Bulldog’s occasional function as a fighting dog influenced the image of the breed negatively to some degree, but the many contributions the Bulldogs had made to early Americans as farm dogs and loyal protectors counteracted their fighting image… As seen time and time again, when a breed becomes exceed- ingly popular, especially if the breed has a negative function attached to it, there will be a significant increase in substandard and unsuitable owners. Such was the dilemma of the Bulldog in the early 1900s…No surprise that we should find the highest number of fatal Bulldog attacks during the height of the Bulldog popularity (1900–1909). And no small surprise these attacks would be found clustered in the large cities, where these animals were often kept in apartment buildings or allowed to roam the city streets”.

Another big shift was how media started portraying them.

Pit bulls were not the only breed to have been maligned by the media. At one time, bloodhounds were believed to be inherently and exceptionally vicious – almost with a Dracula-like penchant for human blood. Eventually the bloodhounds were forgotten, in favor of the new "vicious  breeds"– the German Shepherd, Doberman Pinscher, Mastiffs, Newfoundlands, Siberian huskies… and so on. But as the reach of the media grew, and the way they reported about dogs changed, the “pit bull” took an even harder pit fall.

Fifty years ago, the media reported dogs as “sentient beings that reacted to pain, discomfort, or fear” and reports of dog attacks conveyed the context and understanding of what led to the aggressive incident. Owners and victims’ behaviors, which had caused the dog to attack, were described in the news reports. The style of reporting on dog aggression has changed completely. It has been replaced by sensational accounts of the attack or the injury, and as the Salon noted in their article, “ an almost-single-minded focus on the breed of dogs that turn violent, stripped of any larger context.”

Are pit bulls disproportionately aggressive and dangerous? Are they?

According to the American Veterinary Medicine Association, they are not. The American Temperance Testing Society, which tests thousands of dogs each year, have repeatedly found pit bulls to be a tolerant breed. In fact, according to their latest statistics, more than 86% of pit bulls passed the temperament test. In 2011, they came up as the second most tolerant breed, next to the golden retriever.

If you’ve heard enough pit bull lore, you've probably heard about the infamous “locking jaws” – it's pure myth. Pit bulls do NOT have special locking jaws. They do not exhibit any unusual biting behavior or exert unusual amount of bite force. In fact, tests conducted by National Geographic found they have less bite force than German Shepherds or Rottweilers.

The truth about genetics

Genetics matter, but not in isolation, and it’s not the sole determinant of a dog’s temperament and behavior. As the ASPCA notes: “behavior develops through a complex interaction between environment and genetics. This is an especially important consideration when we look at an individual dog versus a breed. Many diverse and sometimes subtle factors influence the development of behavior, including, but not limited to, early nutrition, stress levels experienced by the mother during pregnancy, and even temperature in the womb. And when it comes to influencing the behavior of an individual dog, factors such as housing conditions and the history of social interactions play pivotal roles in behavioral development. The factors that feed into the expression of behavior are so inextricably intertwined that it’s usually impossible to point to any one specific influence that accounts for a dog becoming aggressive. This is why there is such variation in behavior between individual dogs, even when they are of the same breed and bred for the same purpose. Because of the impact of experience, the pit bull specifically bred for generations to be aggressive may not fight with dogs and the Labrador retriever bred to be a service dog may be aggressive toward people”.

Reading this, if you are wondering, “but you don’t hear or see a Labrador retriever being aggressive,” consider this: we already know the media has successfully portrayed pit bulls as a monster breed capable of more aggression (than a Lab), and over the years it has played a role in popular belief and collective perception; we also see many more pit bull type of dogs in shelters than other breeds (a vicious cycle), and chances are that you’re looking at dogs who have been abused, neglected and abandoned… dogs who have had some of the worst owners, and are stressed.

But let’s get back to genetics. If “pit bulls” have such a varied mix of genetics in them, then they would have just as diverse genetic traits. Also, in the early 1800-s and into 1900s, “pit bulls” were originally bred for multiple purposes. In fact, referred generally as “bulldogs” they functioned as guard dogs, farm dogs, hunting dogs, police dogs, companion dogs, as well as in some cases, fighting dogs. In the 19th century people and the media actually used terms “Bulldog guard dog,” “pet Bull- dog,” “Bulldog used in the pit,” or “farm Bulldog” to distinguish between pit bull type dogs performing these various functions. So while the pit bull you see today may have genes of the Olde English Bulldog, or a pit bull terrier that was bred for fighting, it could just as well have inherited the dominant genes of a “bull dog” that was bred to be a family dog. In addition, the pit bulls you find in the shelter systems are rarely pure bred. They are products of generations of random and cross breeding.

Not that long ago, experts and dog trainers referred to behavioral traits that dogs have inherited from wolves. But as most of us know now, dogs have been domesticated, selectively and randomly bred for too long and dog behavior cannot be understood by comparing them with wolves, based on their genetic lineage. Research has shown that “Dogs clearly have behaviors, phenotypes, and diseases that are not evident in their wild progenitors… Dog breeds have distinct behaviors, and dogs as a whole have unique behaviors not found in gray wolves.” furthermore, recent studies have even concluded that the common ancestor of dogs and wolves went extinct thousands of years ago, and today’s dogs are more related to each other than to wolves.

It’s also worth considering that “some dog breeds are now bred for entirely different jobs than those for which they were originally developed. For example, certain strains of Golden Retrievers are now being bred as service dogs, a far cry from their original job of retrieving downed birds.”

Did you know that pit bulls make excellent therapy dogs? No kidding…

Can a pit bull be a good dog for you?

Remember Michael Vick? Yeah, the douche bag football player that was indicted for having a dogfighting ring. His pit bulls had gone through horrific abuse, and even death. When the dogs were rescued, even the Humane Society believed that they were damaged beyond rehabilitation. Thankfully, some disagreed. The Best Friends Animal Society, based in Utah, took in 22 of the most traumatized pit bulls. Ten of them are now adopted and living with other dogs, cats and kids! Check out their reunion video!

In 2008, NPR covered a story about one of Vick's dogs, Leo, who is now a therapy dog at a cancer treatment facility in California: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=91769901

More recently, NPR did another story on the dogs rescued from Vick and placed with sanctuaries. Jim Gorant, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, who had followed the surviving dogs’ rescue and rehabilitation and who had written a book about it called "The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption," joined the conversation. Along with him came Hector, one of Vick’s pit bulls who had some of the worst fighting scars, dog trainer Andrew Yori, who had adopted Hector, and Dr. Stephen Zawistowski, a psychologist and ASPCA animal behavior specialist. What would you say if I told you that Hector is now a certified therapy dog? Have a listen! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129989424

Can a pit bull be a companion dog like any other? Absolutely! But do you have the time and commitment to give adequate training, stimulation and exercise to a pit bull? Personally, I wouldn’t recommend getting ANY dog that’s an active breed, and subject them to a couch potato life style, or deny them proper socialization. There is nothing wrong with a pit bull. But there’s plenty of wrong that we have done to them.

So, can you be a good human to a pit bull?

Photo by: Sanjay Sen