Riley and his little friend

Like it or not, your dog is an ambassador

I've been hearing about a young woman here in Corvallis who takes her dog, a young pit, to the dog park, off leash, even though the dog has attacked and bitten several of the dogs there. We can advocate all we want for the pits, but one dog owner like this and one untrained, aggressive dog wipes all that out. Pit bull owners, your dogs, like it or not, are ambassadors. They are showing people, by their behavior: this is what a pit bull is like. Don't let your dog reinforce unjust and inaccurate stereotypes. Fair or not, you do a disservice to the entire breed. You give ammunition to people like those in Denver who have outlawed pit bulls and have killed hundreds of family pets........
ps the painting at the top of this entry is a link. Click on it!

a letter to Air America's Ring of Fire

Today on your show, John Morgan was talking about Bush and the fact that media pretends he has what they call "loyalty," when, in fact, if one of his guys is no longer useful or, even worse, disagrees with one of his whacky policies, Bush turns on him--- Morgan said "turns on him like a pit bull." Hey! Pit bulls do not typically turn on people. Pit bulls are loyal, people-loving and trustworthy. While I agree whole-heartedly with your assessment of Mr. Bush, I have to object to your characterization of pit bulls.

Like a pit bull

Last week there was a retreat for the staff at the school where I work. I think a retreat should always include a pedicure, but it didn't. Ours was a bonding retreat. This is a pit bull blog, so I won't go into my feelings about activities designed to artificially create bonding in the workplace. One of the less irritating things we were instructed to do was to create a metaphor.

When I am teaching at my best, I am like (insert your metaphor here.)

(Which is, by the way, the very same activity a friend in Massachusetts had to do at one of her university-staff bonding retreats.)

At any rate, I said, "When I am teaching at my best, I am like a pit bull: eager, enthusiastic, fun-loving, good-natured and exuberant.

I think it's time to create new metaphors for pit bulls.

PETA-- punishing the breed, not the deed

PETA’s Position on Pit Bull Bans
"PETA supports legislation that bans the breeding of pit bulls, just as we support any spay/neuter legislation as the most effective way to combat the tragic companion animal overpopulation problem. We also support pit bull bans, as long as they include a grandfather clause....."

Wouldn't such a ban, if it was successful, lead to the extinction of pit bulls? What is with PETA?

the only dog that ever bit me was a poodle

According to news sources, two pit bulls here in the northwest entered a woman's home through her cat door and attacked her. Just the kind of story pit bull lovers hate to hear. I read one of the articles written about the attack, and then I wrote the journalist a letter. Here's the letter I wrote-----

Dear Mr. Haynes,

I read your article on the woman who was attacked by dogs. Are you sure the dogs are pit bulls? Lots of breeds look like pits, but aren't. Pit bulls as a breed, despite what people might think from news reports, are especially adverse to attacking people. (If they are pits, you might mention this in your report, for the sake of fairness and accuracy.)

thank you,
Alison Clement
pit buller owner and advocate

http://www.understand-a-bull.com/BSL/MistakenIdentity/WrongId.htm

Aisle of Dogs

This is a poem by Chase Twichell [New Haven, 1950-] from her book The Ghost of Eden (Ontario Review Press, Princeton, 1995).

AISLE OF DOGS

In the first cage
a hunk of raw flesh.
No, it was alive, but skinned.

Or its back was skinned.
The knobs of the spine

poked through the bluish meat.

It was a pit bull, held by the shelter
for evidence until the case
could come to trial,

then they'd put him down. The dog,
not the human whose cruelty

lived on in the brindled body,
unmoving except for the enemy eyes.

Not for adoption, said the sign.

All the other cages held adoptable pets,
the manic yappers, sad matted mongrels,
the dumb slobbering abandoned ones,

the sick, the shaved, the scratching,
the wounded and terrified, the lost,

one to a cage, their water dishes
overturned, their shit tracked around,

on both sides of a long echoey
concrete aisle--clank of chain mesh gates,
the attendant hosing down the gutters

with his headphones on, half-dancing
to the song in his head.

I'd come for kittens. There were none.
So I stood in front of the pit bull's
quivering carcass, its longdrawn death,

its untouched food, its incurable hatred
of my species, until the man with the hose
touched my arm and steered me away,

shaking his head in a way that said
Don't look. Leave him alone.
I don't know why, either.

a family pet

Portland Oregon's alternative newspaper, The Willamette Week, has an article in its August 1 edition, about the local animal shelter and its increased rate of dog euthanizations. The director, Mike Oswald, attributes the increase to the fact that 33% of the dogs entering the shelter are now "pit bull type" dogs. He goes on to say that most people come to the shelter looking for a "family pet, not something difficult to handle."
Pit bulls are not naturally aggressive and hard to handle. He does the dogs a disservice by implying that they are.