In February 2007, our nephew found a completely wild, starving American Pit Bull Terrier puppy, about six months old, in the streets of a rural town. At first he took the little dog to his grandmother, my wife’s mom, but she wasn’t able to keep up with the pup, and she was due in the hospital for cancer surgery (she’s currently okay after treatment, fingers crossed!). The vet informed her that the law requires stray dogs to be turned over to the animal control people in case they’re claimed, so the disoriented pup, who did not know how to interact with people or other dogs, was turned over to the shelter for the required six days.
Nationwide, the odds of a pit bull being adopted from a county shelter are 1 in 600, I read; that includes the completely perfect ones. Certainly the odds were even worse for this ragged, staring little foundling with poor bite inhibition.
We had no significant experience with pit bulls. The pup would need to be trained and exercised with a dedication we had not yet had to exert for any of our other animals: she wasn’t housetrained at all, she expressed herself with her increasingly powerful teeth, she didn’t recognize any dominance or submission cues in other dogs, she didn’t respond to human touch, she didn’t respond to treats, and wasn’t particularly interested in food or toys. I think she’d been raised in isolation.
In short, she would be a ton of work with uncertain results. We knew almost nothing about “pit bulls” except what we read in the news. I did not especially find the idea of a pit bull attractive, and we had certainly not planned on another dog in our small condo…and our resident dog was dog-aggressive. Every rational indication was against going back to the shelter and claiming her. My wife said to me, “Can we do this without totally changing our lifestyle?” and the answer was NO, without a doubt.
But there was no one else. No one was going to step up for this little thing.
To make it seem possible at all, I told myself we would be temporary foster parents.
We brought her home, and named her Simone, because it seemed like a sophisticated name for a little uneducated rural pit bull.
Simone barely interacted with people – mostly she chewed things (including me!) and stared wide-eyed at everything. The vet thinks she was six months old, and her behavior seemed (to my admittedly out-of-practice eye) to be behind the curve, as if she was neglected and was only starting to learn things other puppies learned months ago. For example, puppies learn bite inhibition from their littermates.
We kept her in the kitchen behind a baby gate, and (when we weren’t home) in a crate, while trying to housetrain her.
One secret to taming a feral animal is just to be present. Sitting in the kitchen with her, passively keeping her company for long stretches of time, seemed to calm her…but I got sore, I got tired, I got bored. Boredom is a powerful tool for taming animals, however – eventually she started taking an interest in me; at first falling asleep in my lap, then hanging out near me while doing her own thing, and finally staring at me with the eternal question, “What now? What should I do?” and, once I had her attention, it became possible to start teaching her.
I wasn’t by any means an expert on how to housetrain. But I was (and remain) committed to positive reinforcement training, so I had to come up with something. My homemade solution was that when she peed in the house, I’d dip a paper towel in it, and take her and the towel outside and put the towel in the grass, make sure she sniffed it (no nose-rubbing or scolding), then praise her. And of course take her out early and often, every two hours at minimum.
It worked really well! She learned quickly, and hasn’t had an accident since she was sick in early May.
Simone had puppy energy to burn. Going out frequently is one key to housetraining, too – so “up and out with the dog” became the force that drove me. She wanted to run up and down the sidewalk in the frigid spring weather we had, even in snow and ice, so I ran up and down the slick sidewalk at all hours of the evening and night, trying not to fall. I struggled to keep up, losing 18 pounds that spring.
I made it a priority to work on her bite inhibition – she wasn’t malicious, but she was getting stronger, and seemed unaware that grinding away on Daddy could hurt him. And, of course, a biting adult dog is intolerable. Because my instinct is to be positive, not punitive, I looked on the Internet for positive bite inhibition training methods. I let her bite my hand and then I’d yelp like a puppy and turn away and stop playing. Biting ends the social interaction! By that point she hated being ignored, and my turning away riveted her attention on what she could do to get my attention back. We worked on bite inhibition over and over, and to my mild surprise it started to work pretty quickly. All I had to do was willingly get munched on by the pit bull who didn’t know her own bite strength. 
The things we do for love, eh?
All this extra effort seemed less of a burden because we thought we’d wind up rehoming her – it felt more like a temporary displacement I was willing to endure to give her a better chance at being adoptable. And she was a huge disruption in our lives. We even got so far as dropping her off for a weekend trial visit with someone we thought would adopt her! He seemed to really like her, and seemed like a nice guy. When he called the next day and said she was too wild, and asked us to come get her, I was frustrated – but secretly, my heart leaped in my chest.
Some time later my wife gently asked me if she should stop listing Simone on adoption websites. Somewhat crossly, I asked her why. “You look like you want to keep her,” she said. ”Does it show?” I foolishly asked.
And here we are.
Simone’s training has been very successful. I found a great positive trainer who works with the natural behaviors of the dogs, and really loves pit bulls – she volunteers time at a pit rescue. I also found something that motivates Simone – the humble, unsalted, roasted peanut, of all things. Simone has completed two six-week classes so far, and had one private session. Simone responded very well to clicker training. She’s still a bit willful when she wants to walk one way and I want to walk the other, but she knows a lot of behaviors and she was the star of the class at the “here!” and “leave it!” commands.
So far, Simone’s shown no dog aggression at all – she’s eager to greet other dogs, and plays with them quite happily. She’s been knocked down by another dog, while running with him, repeatedly, and just bounces back up for more, or turns away and walks off. Other dogs can take a toy or food from her without her doing anything other than stare after them, as if to say, “why’d you do that?”
Of course she’s become a daddy’s girl. She follows me everywhere. Even though I don’t always feel like it, and have lots of other pets who need time, I give Simone as much time as I can, because I’m all she has. Ahem…and because I’m in love.
