I am NOT looking to start a debate on the safety of pit bulls, rottweilers, or other bully breeds. I am only looking for opinions on current or former bully breed owners on media attention directed at their animals.
I am simply curious as to whether or not bully breed owners write to the authors of newspaper pieces or a “letter to the editor” when there’s a hit piece run on pit bulls, or bully breeds in general. Or what steps - if any - they take to inform people on a day to day basis of how well-behaved the breed can be.
Here’s the piece I’m referring to. It’s not the worst, it’s just pretty heavily slanted. No mention of handling, no mention of the history of pit bulls as nanny dogs, nothing. No mention if the dog was actually a confirmed pit bull, or any number of other similar looking breeds (like this website others have liked to in the past, most people have no clue what a pit bull really looks like).
Is it worth writing in? Saying what specifically? What have you said in the past?
In my own experience, simply showing people how well-behaved and affectionate your dog is (while walking him, etc) changes people’s minds. Many people have said my family’s dog is the best trained and most protective they’ve ever met. They’re amazed to learn of the time he parked himself in front of a stroller with no adult present and wouldn’t budge until the parent re-appeared. Stunned at the time he protected me from a dog attacking me - a golden retriever, no less.
Well, after so many times we couldn’t take it anymore, so our beautiful, gentle and loving Baby went to live with someone else. We just couldn’t take the chance.
We weren’t afraid of her attacking anyone, we were afraid if she even nipped someone she’d be destroyed and one of us would be considered the monster who insisted on keeping a pit bull. She lives out in the country now, in a place where she gets better care anyway.
She had a single pup soon after she came to live with us (we rescued her from living in the streets) and we still have him. He’s such a mixture you can’t really see the pit. He looks like a nice safe black lab. They are rarely demonized so we feel more comfortable taking him out, but honestly I felt much safer with his mother. She is a wonderful dog. I’m sure he will be too when the puppy grows out of him, if we keep working with him and loving him.
I belong to several organizations that try to teach that pits aren’t the danger they’re made out to be, no worse than other comparable breeds. What else can we do?
That’s a really touching story, Rushgeekgirl. I’m glad you kept one of her pups, and sad that you had to give Baby up. Our dog was also rescued, a victim of the recession, found wandering the highway. He’s growled exactly 3 times - once at the man who threatened to stab him, once at a drunk woman on our patio at 3am, and once when my parents tried to return him to his original owner’s home. He growled and snarled as they went up the driveway.
I do have one question though, what do you mean by “we couldn’t take it anymore”? Do you mean the stares and disgust at people who realize you had a pit? We’ve certainly gotten those.
I don’t believe writing in to your paper about how great your pitbull is will do anything. If they run a piece about how ‘awful’ the breed is, you are likely not to get much traction.
I walk with a female friend every week who has a pitbull and she is a somewhat smaller Asian woman who rescued the dog as an adult. The dog is certainly friendly with me, but it is very strong, and she can barely control it when it gets excited. THAT is the problem. This dog would never harm a person based on what I’ve seen, but she doesn’t get along with certain types of other dogs. If such a dog was being walked on the other side of the street, I could easily see my friend’s dog getting away from her and her not having the power to restrain it. The end result is that the other dog would likely get attacked and if the owner got between the two dogs, there might be collateral damage.
I’ve posted before about my corgi and I were attacked by a German Shepard whose owner had left a gate open and how both of us got mauled. Animal control interviewed me about the incident and it sounded like it was up to me as to whether his dog should be destroyed. I love dogs, so I didn’t do it, but then the idiot neighbor left the gate open again and another person’s dog got attacked. That time the dog was put down. I think ANY big dog should be treated like a gun. They are fine if you can control them, but if you are an idiot, you shouldn’t have them. I don’t care if it’s a pitbull or a golden retriever.
I was curious to know if other people did, and what sort of response they got if so.
But yes, I agree. There are tons of idiots; it’s unfortunate that idiots are drawn to the particular breed.
But where you differ from the casual (uninformed, even stupid) observer is that your last sentence. I’ve been attacked by two separate golden retrievers on two different occasions (once as a child, the second time while walking my dog and he intervened). Yet whenever I tell anyone either or both stories, they’re shocked and all say the same thing: that those dogs are anomalies and a “real” golden would never attack someone. :rolleyes:
I’m not a pit bull owner or enthusiast, but I think you should write your own letter. If you have the facts and anecdotes then you need to get your side of the story out into the public.
Don’t let mis-information get spread just because someone who possessed the mis-information took the time to write a letter and you didn’t. Even if it doesn’t get printed, at least you tried.
I do think it’s worth it to write a letter. The reason I ended up becoming interested in pitbull advocacy is because I moved somewhere that the local humane society is very active in educating people about pitbulls. They posted a letter on their website from a mother whose pitbull had been a loving and gentle family pet that really opened my eyes about the breed. It caused me to look into things more and realize this dog breed is very misunderstood and incredibly mistreated. Before then I just didn’t know that side of them. I just saw a lot of trashy idiots who keep them for the wrong reasons. The word needs to get out more about what they are really like.
I meant the fear. I was afraid if something happened with her around, all anyone would hear is “pit bull” and she’d be hurt because of it, and our family would be in danger of being hurt in some way. I’m not the least bit afraid of the dog, or at stares. Around here you don’t get stares because half the dogs in the area are pits or pit mixes.
Mmm, definitely understood. A cat was killed in the neighborhood a year or so ago; our dog was at home, laying in the sun while our housekeeper was cooking dinner. The police came to our house because the cat’s owner claimed it was him. It was a mess. If he’d been home alone, he wouldn’t have had an “alibi”.
In my heart of hearts, I know you’re right, ZipperJJ. Misinformation goes unchecked like a wildfire on so many topics. I actually met a few anti-vaxxers the other day. Now, those people are willfully ignorant, but so often regular people are simply scared of bully breeds.
Wow, so you were simply on the humane society website/active with them, and you because interested in pitbull advocacy as a result of a letter they posted? That’s phenomenal. Should I get involved with the local groups as well? (I literally just googled “pit bulls pittsburgh” and found Hello Bully, "an advocacy and education group dedicated to repairing the reputation of the American Pit Bull Terrier and other bully breeds.)
The news article linked to in the OP strikes me as balanced and not a “hit piece”. It contains a defense of pit bulls from a spokesman for a pro-pit organization and commentary from a Humane Society official about the need to properly socialize dogs. It even mentions that a Boston terrier joined in the latest attack.*
Any letter-writing response from supporters of the breed(s) would do well to emphasize what steps if any are being taken by local fanciers of the breed to keep such dogs out of the hands of irresponsible people and to educate owners about safety precautions, not to rail at the paper for running a “hit piece”.
*I hate to think of Boston terriers running amuck. :eek:
It’s a hit piece because it takes that Colleen Lynn woman seriously. She runs a hate organization, pure and simple; her website is the Mein Kampf of dog-haters, no more balanced or informational than the KKK’s, or Stormfront. Simply publishing her without caveats is like reporting Fred Phelps’ claims with a straight face.
I’d write the letter but you have to keep it pleasant; we gain nothing by appearing to be deranged or angry. I’ve done this before but I get so tired of endlessly having to explain the same truths to the willfully ignorant.
Perhaps you could seek help in composing such a letter from some of the online pit bull rescue presences (PBRC for example). Somebody’s got to have resources out there…I keep adding to a file of links and resources for my own use, but the web is so ephemeral it’s hard to keep a handy-dandy list of links up-to-date.
Right, the other organization is purely going on fear and little information.
Sailboat, if you have a list handy, could you PM me some of the links? You don’t have to check them first to see if they’re still active or anything. Otherwise I will contact PBRC further. I want to have cites on my side; I never tracked the sites and resources that I’ve learned from over the past few years.
For every pitbull owner who claims that sweetums will never harm anyone there’s another one (or two) who likes to be a big swinging dick and absolutely glories in the menacing aspect of the dog when they walk it. People aren’t idiots, they see this on the street everyday. They don’t have to call in Sherlock Holmes to crack the case re the intended projection of menace derived through ownership of these dogs.
It’s a large, extremely powerful dog that many owners are not going to be able to control if the dog decides to take after something or someone. Reasonable people are wary of pitbulls with good reason.
I don’t disagree that idiots use them to intimidate. However, the rest of your post is an example of the problem.
They’re not large dogs. Maximum size for a male is 60 or 65 pounds according to which breed standard you follow. Median size for female is 37.5 pounds. They are universally described by dog professionals as medium-sized dogs.
“Reasonable people” may be wary of pit bulls but they’d better be wary of other breeds too – other breeds bite too, and idiots use other breeds to intimidate. There’s considerable evidence that pit bulls are less likely to bite a human than the guardian breeds. Police use them for sniffer roles but never for attack dogs because it generally runs counter to their nature.
People who are wary of just pit bulls and not all other dogs are buying into the media myth and letting their fears rule them.
The exact same thing can be said of Rottweilers, German Shepherds, mastiffs* and a few other breeds. An actual “pit bull” should not be “extremely large”.
*More so Neopolitan Mastiffs or Bull Mastiffs. IME, the typical Mastiff is a 200 pound lump that would rather just lay around the house.
I’m pretty reasonable, and I am not wary of pitbulls at all as I’ve never had bad experiences with any, personally. I live on the outskirts of Philadelphia, there are a crapload of pit-type dogs in the city and the general area. All I have encountered have been ‘nice dogs’, although many suffer from lack of training IMO. 30+ lb dogs should not be jumping up, pawing, and mouthing people. I don’t care if it’s ‘friendly’, it’s obnoxious and can be painful.
I am somewhat wary of German Shepherds as I’ve seen/heard of secondhand and experienced firsthand more than a few with significant aggression towards both dogs and humans (including one attack on me that I think could have ended in a serious mauling, but by the grace of dog he didn’t sink his teeth in, I managed to fall in an advantagous way, and rolled out of the chained dog’s reach). However I’m far from demonizing every German Shepherd I see, I know a ton of exceptionally well-behaved and well-trained ones, and I own a Shepherd mix myself. We did have a long struggle with his on-leash agression towards all dogs and some men, made even more difficult by the fact that I weighed 95 lbs to his 80, but he’s improved a ton in the last 2 years and the only time there was an actual aggressive ‘incident’ it was the fault of the other dog’s owner, as she dropped the leash and her dog tackled mine. Since poor Ferdy was on his back on the sidewalk as the 120-lb dog bit at his neck and face, I think the gash he opened up in his shoulder qualifies as self-defense.