It would be a mistake to assume that pit bulls are a hallmark of poverty. Around the corner from me there's a house on the market for $750,000, and the real estate listing features the current tenant -- a pit bull -- proudly sprawled in the middle of the exquisitely appointed rooms. Gorgeous celebrities own pit bulls: Jessica Beal, Adam Brody and Rachael Ray are just a few who can be found walking their beasts in the pages of supermarket tabloids. But there is an economic component to the pit bull's popularity. When you live in an area so poor that even the police don't bother responding, you may want to have a little protection, and while any dog is likely to defend its owners from intruders, a pit bull at the door sends the message a bit quicker than the miniature schnauzer. And breeding just two litters of pit bulls in your yard can bring nearly as much cash as working full-time in Wal-Mart for a year. And then there is dogfighting, an illegal sport driven by gambling that has been around for centuries, but only recently seems to have made the news, through the power of Michael Vick's celebrity.
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It wasn't always this way. If you look into the history of the American Pit Bull, you'll find that a century ago, the breed occupied a far more elevated status in American culture. In 1903, a stray pit bull named Bud became a national celebrity when Horatio Jackson plucked him from the side of the road and took him on the first cross-country road trip. During WWI, it was the pit bull, then referred to as the American Bull Terrier, that was placed prominently on a series of American propaganda posters. In one, the pit bull, wearing a U.S. flag around his neck, is surrounded by the Russian wolfhound, the French bulldog, the German dachshund and the English bulldog; the caption reads, "I'm Neutral, but not afraid of any of them." Later, Buster Brown sold children's clothing and white bread with the help of his "American Bull Terrier" Tige. The pit bull was also featured in ads for sheet music, perfume, nearly anything offered for sale. Children got dressed in fancy outfits to pose with pit bulls in photographers' studios. A pit named Petey starred with a group of children in the "Our Gang" comedies.When did the tide turn? In "The Pit Bull Placebo," Karen Delise suggests the dog's image was forever changed after a 1987 Sports Illustrated cover featuring a snarling, nearly unidentifiable dog with the headline "Beware of This Dog." News stories began slipping the term into headlines as shorthand for dangerous dog, even if it was a different breed involved in that particular crime. "Pit bull" entered the mainstream as an adjective, as in "I hope you've gotten yourself a pit bull attorney." Yet, when two Florida lawyers used a pit bull in an ad a few years ago, they were reprimanded by the Florida Bar for dragging the profession down to the level of these animals.
Self-appointed experts will tell you that fighting is in the blood. And dogfighters use this cliché to support their "sport." It would be cruel to keep them from fighting, they say. Yet if fighting were purely dictated by genetics, there would be no need to feed dogs gunpowder, insert glass shards beneath their skin, or to engage in any of the other cruel forms of "training" in the underworld of dogfighting. And if it were true that pit bulls, through their bad breeding, are prone to unexpectedly attack, the streets of New York City would be littered with victims of its estimated 300,000 pit bulls. It is easier to believe that the dogs are somehow to blame, rather than their human counterparts. It is easier to point to faults in the DNA.
The dog world is ruled by bloodlines, whether for fighting or for show. The AKC now offers DNA tests that can establish the parenthood of purebred dogs, but they insist that the test cannot determine or identify the breed. No matter, several private companies have stepped up to offer that service. The Mars Wisdom Panel MX Mixed Breed Analysis "identifies more than 130 AKC-recognized breeds that may be present." While the advertised purpose of the tests is to better understand the health and behavior of your mutt, it isn't a stretch to imagine that the test might eventually be brought into courts and animal control offices, where your 10 percent bully breed will be stuck on death row with the rest. And, since dogs are often used in trials for procedures that eventually get approval for humans, we may eventually see Orwellian courts being ruled by blood tests that can determine the criminal intent present in the defendant's DNA.
Does the fact that my pit bull love is forbidden make it that much more intense? Possibly -- because I know that I saved her life. And, like all forbidden love, from "Romeo and Juliet" on down the line, each time anyone questions or disapproves of our love, we defiantly love each other even more than before. But I think, like most other pit bull owners I know, that my love of Sula has more to do with this: She makes me laugh; she doesn't hesitate to turn and run away from bad music on the street; she likes to hug. And she loves to play practical jokes like hiding my glasses when I'm not looking. We even have our own song: Corinne Bailey Rae's "Like a Star" was, I am certain, written for us.
We are not immune to nepotism. I put Sula on the cover of my last book, because ... well, because I could. And I wondered if it might be the wrong thing to do, since the pit bull image is so loaded with dread. But instead of alienating consumers, Sula lured them in. I was taken aback by the number of people who told me, "I bought the book because I have never seen my dog on the cover of a book before." What they had seen, up to then, was their dog as the image of pure evil, on the news, in movies, on TV.
In Los Angeles, on the first stop of my book tour, two enormous pit bulls joined the crowd at Skylight Books. In Portland, Ore., I arrived at Powell's early to discover several rows in the front occupied by some nice suburban women all talking about their pit bulls. In Tallahassee, at a reading in a crowded and darkened warehouse, I asked for questions and was greeted by an enthusiastic yip from a pit bull that emerged from the back of the house. Even at a stop in a small public library in Michigan, I arrived to find a pit bull named Rose waiting for me in the stacks. People bring me photographs: their pit bull and their cat, their son's pit bull, the photo of a pit bull who died years ago but is still missed.
Pit bulls are loyal. They are known to sing, proudly, in ridiculously operatic voices. I know pit bulls who have nursed kittens and another who adopted a piglet as its own. And this I know from photographs of them in New Orleans wading through water up to their necks: When you take away their unmistakable dog bodies, their round skulls and even-set eyes make them look remarkably like infants or old, bald men, or occasionally like the overly pancaked face of Judy Garland in decline. And like infants, old men and Judy Garland, pit bulls are capable of expressing anguish and despair, as well as their euphoric joy at being alive.
In fact, I wonder if these very human characteristics somehow inspire their abuse.
About the writer
Ken Foster is the author of several books, including a collection of short stories, the memoir "The Dogs Who Found Me" and the forthcoming essay collection "Dogs I Have Met." He lives in New Orleans.
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