The Never-Ending Story.
Every year, American shelters have to kill about half a million dogs. Both pro- and anti-Pit Bull organizations estimate that of these, anywhere from 800,000 to nearly 1 million are Pit Bulls/Pit Bull mixes. That means we're killing anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 Pit Bulls a day.
–by Anna Cooke
Generically, the term ‘Pit Bull’ does not describe a breed as much as it repre- sents a classification, say Pit Bull advocates. Therein lies the problem with the public’s confu- sion. Denver, Colorado, where the breed is banned, defines a Pit Bull as “any dog that
is an American Pit Bull
Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, or any dog displaying the majority of physical traits of any one or more of these breeds, or any dog exhibiting those distinguishing charac- teristics.” Luis Salgado, the ani-
mal services investigator charged with enforcing the
Pit Bull ban (known as breed-specific leg-
Top: Hooch gets sprung from Hillsborough County’s Pet Resource Center into his forever home. Above: On the 1918 cover of The Red Cross Magazine is Sergeant Stubby, the most decorated war dog of WWI.
islation or BSL) in Miami says, “There is no reli- able DNA testing for that breed. DNA is useless. If you look at where that breed came from, there’s American Bulldog, there’s Terrier, all watered down and mixed together to produce the dog we now call the Pit Bull.” In enforcing the Pit Bull ban, Salgado points
out that Miami-Dade relies on physical character- istics. “We have a 47-point checklist. Any dog that substantially conforms to the characteristics of a Pit Bull is considered a Pit Bull. Furthermore, it doesn’t have to be purebred to be considered a Pit Bull. A Cocker Spaniel crossed with a Pit Bull is a Pit Bull. A German Shepherd Dog crossed with a Pit Bull is a Pit Bull,” said Salgado. Kris Irizarry, a professor of comparative
genomics from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences said, “Looking at a Pit Bull’s DNA, the only thing you can really tell is that it’s a dog. The tests don’t work.
28 THE NEW BARKER
There is no boundary between what genes may or may not be in the breed. That is why it’s not a breed. It’s just a general dog and there is no way to predict its behavior from its appearance. However your dog acts, keep it to your dog. Don’t extrapo- late and think that all Pit Bulls do this or all dogs from shelters do that, or that all short-haired dogs do this. Look at your dog as an individual.” Tom Junod, a writer who lives with his wife,
young daughter and their Pit Bull, Dexter, wrote an intriguing article, The State Of The American Dog, which appeared in Esquire magazine in August 2014. “There is no other dog that figures as often in the national narrative—no other dog as vilified on the evening news, no other dog as defended on television programs, no other dog as mythologized by both its enemies and its advo- cates, no other dog as discriminated against, no other dog as wantonly bred, no other dog as fre- quently abused, no other dog as promiscuously abandoned, no other dog as likely to end up in an animal shelter, no other dog as likely to be rescued, no other dog as likely to be killed. In a way, the Pit Bull has become the only American dog, because it is the only American dog that has become an American metaphor—and the only American dog that people bother to name. When a Cocker Spaniel bites, it does so as a member of its species; it is never anything but a dog. When a Pit Bull bites, it does so as a member of its breed. A Pit Bull is never anything but a Pit Bull,” he wrote. “We are not a pure country, or one that values
purity,” said Junod. “We are a country of adoption, a country of rescues, a country of mutts. At least that’s how we like to think of ourselves. But we are also a country that likes to create idylls of its own good intentions and then penalize what doesn’t fit. Pit Bulls don’t fit. Everything the media and haters conveniently omit when making their point about this group of dogs: Pit Bulls, when responsibly owned, are service dogs, disc-catching champs, companions to children and the elderly, they are comedians, athletes, dinner dates, running partners, and good old-fashioned family dogs.” (Continued)
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