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- By Phillip Brownlee
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Soon the Wichita City Council is going to vote on a very flawed ‘dangerous dog’ law. They have made it breed specific in that they try and define pit bulls as dangerous dogs.
It is the position of the Wichita Kennel Club that BSL is poor legislation in general and the revisions that Wichita is considering are especially flawed in that they don’t address the real problems.
We have a problem with a lack of enforcement of existing laws and people that completely disregard the existing laws. BSL legislation will effectively punish the people that are currently obeying the law without addressing the problems we have with dangerous dogs.
Punish the deed not the breed!
Hank
By Amy Bickel
Harris News Service
LEOTI – A sign on an empty storefront signals a plea from residents: Move to Leoti.
This county-seat town of Wichita County sits on the High Plains of western Kansas, a community framed by the surrounding fields of wheat and corn, as well as a mammoth grain elevator.
The once thriving center for family farming and a commercial hub for the region has been losing population for nearly 40 years.
The Duckwall’s store closed, as did the lumberyard. The Land O’ Lakes feed mill that employed eight stopped operating in July.
“That doesn’t seem like a lot of people,” said Sharla Krenzel, the county’s economic development director, of the eight jobs.
But it’s a blow for a county of 2,300 that has lost 200 people since the last decennial census.
From Montana and the Dakotas, down to the Texas Panhandle, the rural Great Plains has been losing citizens since World War II.
“It seems like every time we take one step forward, we take three back,” Krenzel lamented.
Rural ghettos
Kansas is the nation’s leading wheat state with production at more than 400 million bushels in good years. The state also ranks No. 1 in grain sorghum production, 10th for soybeans and seventh for corn.
In addition to crops, the state also harvests taxpayer dollars, which last year amounted to about half of producers’ net farm income, according to the Kansas Farm Management Association.
The U.S. government has shelled out billions to crop farmers, including more than $9 billion alone in Kansas since 1996. Wichita County received $127 million of that money over the last 10 years – ranking 16th in the state for total subsidies.
Yet rural Kansas exports its youth to the bright lights of the cities, leaving communities like Leoti facing questionable futures. One in four rural U.S. counties lost population from 1990 to 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported.
In Wichita County, population has fallen 31.7 percent and farm employment 40 percent since 1980, the census shows.
Local farmer Charles Ayers said farm efficiency has moved farming toward more of a corporate structure.
In the struggle to remain competitive, operations have steadily increased in size but the expansions don’t necessarily help small-town businesses, schools, churches and hospitals, some argue.
While there once was a family on each quarter section of ground, today most economically viable operations are 10 to 20 times larger, gobbling up small farms. And operations of 10,000 acres or more are sprinkled across the region – part of a group that receives the majority of support checks from the government.
Government subsidies, said Ayers, are “shutting down the American farming industry. And rural America is getting smaller.”
Ayers, who also is chairman of Sunflower Electric Power Corp., the non-profit corporation that operates six rural electric distribution cooperatives, said the situation is what he and other observers call a “rural ghetto.” Communities are losing jobs, people and wealth, as well as an educational drain.
“If our kids get educated, they leave town,” Ayers said. “The future of Leoti is going to be significantly less influenced by the movement of agriculture.”
Fewer farmers
In western Kansas, one has to drive a long way to many destinations.
That includes residents in Leoti, a town that is an hour from the regional hub of Garden City.
Location – too far from population centers or not near a major railroad line or Interstate – is one reason for rural flight. It makes attracting businesses difficult, especially without a sufficient labor pool, said Troy Dumler, a Kansas State University agriculture economist.
When farm policy was first enacted, more than 20 percent of Americans earned a living from the farm, Dumler said. Now it is less than 2 percent.
Fourth generation farmer Jerry Gillen said he may be the end of the family line.
The farm bill has kept him and other farmers in business, he said, but that doesn’t mean his two sons want to take over the farm. Both are engineers in Kansas City, Gillen said. One contemplated coming back to Leoti a few years ago, then changed his mind.
So Gillen, at age 57, decided to cut his farming operation by 30 percent.
He’s managed to remain successful but says it hasn’t been easy. His farm just came off a multiyear drought before he cut 60 bushels of wheat in June.
Crop insurance helps farmers stay afloat, he said, adding he also is for some type of farm bill price support that pays farmers when prices are low.
“For those of us who have been here, we probably wouldn’t have been able to stay here and be viable farmers without subsidies,” Gillen said.
Statistics bear that out, Dumler said. Over the last five years, he noted, subsidies have accounted for 60 percent of farm income.
Taxing dilemma
On this 100-degree day, a soft breeze rustles corn stocks as water churns out of a center-pivot irrigation system on Gillen’s cornfields.
It’s that piece of ground that keeps him farming, he said, with a passion often associated with Kansas farmland. Gillen remembers when his father drilled the farm’s first irrigation well on that section in 1956.
The well pumped 1,700 gallons a minute back then. But the Ogallala Aquifer, the underground water cache in the region, is declining. Now the well pumps just 280 gallons a minute, and Gillen said someday his farm will rely only on rainfall.
For Wichita County, it means fewer people are needed to farm the acreage; dryland farming is less labor intensive. Farmers and machinery have become more efficient, too, Gillen said. All that leads to a declining tax base in a county that doesn’t even have a single oil well.
A school bond issue to replace the county’s elementary school, which is more than 80 years old, has failed twice. School officials plan a third attempt.
“We need a new school but the tax base isn’t good,” Gillen said.
The base fell to $24 million in 1996, Wichita County Clerk Karla Ridder said, after cattle and farm machinery were exempted from the tax rolls. It went up to $32 million after Seaboard moved hog facilities into the county, but since has fallen to $29 million as land values fluctuate.
“That’s all we have to tax – personal property and real estate,” Ridder said. “Increasing the tax base, we don’t know where to find it.”
Money trickles out of state
While millions in farm payments trickle to farms like those in Wichita County, Ayers said he suspects out-of-state landowners receive a fair portion of Wichita County subsidies.
Of the $15 million in subsidies handed out in 2005 in Wichita County, $3 million went to those not living in the county, according to the Environmental Working Group. About $1.2 million of that went to absentee landowners living in other states.
A portion of the $486,000 received by Whit-crop, the farm that received the most subsidies in 2005, went to Lamar, Colo. Four of the county’s top 20 farm payment recipients had ownership interests out of state, including two primary operators with addresses in McIntosh, S.D.
In all, about 77 percent of the dollars go to farmers in the county, accounting for just 41 percent of the total number of payments made by the local Farm Service Agency office.
Gillen said he tries to buy locally, which includes a new auto-steer tractor he purchased last winter from Leoti Greentech, a farm equipment dealer. But many farmers, he said, look elsewhere – including the Internet – for their implement purchases.
Slowing the trend
Without subsidies, there might have been an even greater exodus from the farm between the Great Depression and today, contends K-State’s Dumler. Government payments have let the marginal farmers continue farming.
“It’s kind of like putting a Band-Aid on it,” Dumler said. “Subsidies may be slowing some things down, but they also aren’t solving the long-term problems these communities face.”
For communities to survive, they will have to lose their dependence on farming, said Terry Woodbury, president of Kansas Communities LLC, which works with rural communities to revitalize rural America. He also has interest in his family’s Wichita County farm.
“Subsidy – just listen to the word,” Woodbury said. “It isn’t about growth, prosperity, attractiveness and development. It has very little do with the ability of rural America to grow in size.”
Woodbury works with 11 communities, including nearby Greeley County, where a new dairy is being built. A start-up company formed last year builds hazardous material collection boxes for hospitals.
However, it isn’t just about expanding business, Woodbury said, it’s also about lifting self-esteem.
Communities “compare themselves to others, they see their best and brightest children leaving and going someplace else,” he said.
“They see their population shrinking, and in a sense, they are on welfare.”
That means creating a community that works together, focuses on their assets, Woodbury said.
In Greeley County, officials created an adult softball league, generating eight teams. Hodgeman County leaders created a fall festival.
Reversing decline
In Wichita County, folks continue to fight the strong tide of decline, economic development director Krenzel said.
City leaders hired Krenzel, who also farms with her husband in the county, in 1996. In 1999, the county received a $2.5 million, 10-year grant through USDA’s Rural Development office because of its dwindling population.
The grant, which labels them an Empowerment Zone Enterprise Community, requires a local match.
“For every dollar of EZEC money spent, we’ve brought in $5 in cash or in-kind services,” Krenzel said.
Krenzel said Congress hasn’t appropriated all that’s been promised each year. But with money received so far, officials have torn down old buildings and built a business incubator. They retained and added about a dozen businesses and recruited a dentist.
There are other positives, Krenzel said. Though the lumberyard closed, a local farrier who operates an Internet business mulls reopening his shop.
Talk of a wind farm has circulated for several years. That hasn’t developed, and neither have other industries. The town’s struggle to stay viable shows, even with the best civic
intentions.
For Ayers, it’s visible in the two failed school bond issues. Rural America can endure much. But death comes when the school closes, he noted.
Not that this will happen anytime soon in Wichita County, Ayers said, which has a 2A high school. But as state legislators talk more about school consolidations, Ayers wonders if that means a merger with nearby Scott City schools isn’t far off.
“When we don’t pass a school bond issue, that’s a mark that Leoti is dying, not growing,” he said. “We want the county to grow, but we have schools that are needing to be updated and wonder why people don’t want to come live here.”
On the flip side, Leoti has amenities to offer residents that the many urban cities have lost: homegrown produce, a quiet country lifestyle, knowing your neighbor.
Students can participate in everything from track, wrestling and cross-country to basketball, football and golf. The Dairy King boasts great root beer floats and shakes and Charlie’s Mexican Restaurant has been a staple since 1962.
Those are the assets communities should promote in order to thrive, Woodbury says.
“The subsidy culture chips away at our dignity,” he said. “Even if it puts money in our pocket, it doesn’t make you feel better. Thinking the federal government is going to be the salvation of rural America – we can’t attach our existence to that.”
Let it die! Why save it. Just let it be and stop subsidizing farmers it doesn’t help and just leads to fewer farmers.
America has a four-legged problem called the American pit bull terrier. And the pit bull, its ”ridiculously amiable disposition’ ‘ notwithstanding, has a two-legged problem called Man. These two species are not new to each other. They have intermingled for some 200 years, and some say their common history goes back as far as the Romans. But something has happened to the pit bull in the last decade that says as much about the nature of American society as it does about the nature of this aggressive animal. Far from being an aberration, the American pit bull terrier has become a reflection of ourselves that no one cares very much to see. ”They’re athletes. They’re wrestlers. They’re dead game,” says Captain Arthur Haggerty, a dog breeder and trainer in New York City who owns five pit bull terriers and has trained hundreds of others. ”They will literally fight till they’re dead. If you found that quality in a boxer or a football player, you’d say it was admirable. Will to win. That’s what a pit bull has.” Others call it a ”will to kill.”
At least 35 communities nationwide have considered banning the breed from within their city limits, and while such ordinances have run into constitutional problems stemming from the difficulty in defining exactly what a pit bull terrier is, their number is growing weekly. The horror stories involving pit bulls are voluminous. Recent tragedies include the death of two-year-old James Soto, who was mauled in Morgan Hill, Calif., on June 13 by a neighbor’s pit bull. The attack rendered the child ”unrecognizable as a human being,” according to paramedics. Nine days later a national television audience watching the evening news was treated to the terrifying spectacle of a pit bull terrier attacking Los Angeles animal control officer Florence Crowell. The 33-year-old woman survived but spent five days in the hospital. On April 6, a retired surgeon, 67-year-old William Eckman, was killed by two pit bulls on a street in Dayton, Ohio. On that same day, 16-month-old Melissa Larabee of Jones, Okla., was killed by the family’s pet pit bull, who bit her in the throat. In June 1986, 20-month-old Kyle Corullo was attacked by a pit bull in Ramsay, Mich., while playing in his grandmother’s backyard. The dog, fighting off the child’s mother, dragged the boy into a nearby lot and shook him to death ”like a stuffed animal.”
In the last 18 months, 12 of the 18 confirmed dog-related fatalities in the U.S. — or 67% — have been caused by the pit bull terrier, a breed that accounts for only 1% of the U.S. dog population. And the maimings are far more numerous. Often it is small children who are the victims of unprovoked attacks. There is no definitive source for animal attack statistics, but pit bull fanciers claim that statistics show other breeds of dog bite more frequently — German shepherds lead the list — and accuse the media of publicizing only pit bull maulings.
DOG BITES MAN isn’t news, they say, but PIT BULL BITES MAN is. Unfortunately the pit bull, when it attacks, doesn’t merely bite man — or, most horribly, child — it clamps its powerful jaws down and literally tears its victim apart. ”The injuries these dogs inflict are more serious than other breeds because they go for the deep musculature and don’t release; they hold and shake,” says Sheryl Blair of the Tufts Veterinary School, in North Grafton, Mass., which last year held a symposium entitled Animal Agression: Dog Bites and the Pit Bull Terrier. ”Most breeds do not multiple-bite,” says Kurt Lapham, a field investigator for the West Coast Regional office of the Humane Society. ”A pit bull attack is like a shark attack: He keeps coming back.” ”A pit bull,” says Judge Victor E. Bianchini of San Diego, ” is the closest thing to a wild animal there is in a domesticated dog.”
A fair assessment of a growing problem? Or a bad rap against an animal which has suffered far more at the hands of man than it can possibly repay? It has been estimated that there are half a million pit bull terriers alive in the United States today. What about the 99% who have never bitten a human being? Are these dogs ”loaded hand guns,” as many have called them? ”There’s something a little scary about wondering, Is there a time bomb ticking in my dog?” says Dr. Franklin Loew, dean of Tufts Veterinary School, who opposes efforts to legislate against pit bull terriers and believes the breed is the victim of ”canine racism.” Loew adds, ”The pit bull does seem to respond more than other dogs to people trying to bring out aggressiveness. But everything I know professionally tells me that this is not a dog problem, but a problem of dog ownership.
”What exactly is a pit bull? Defining it has proved to be a formidable legal hurdle because the pit bull is not a specific breed. Rather, it is a kind of dog, a generic catchall like hound or retriever. The breeds most commonly referred to as pit bulls are the American Staffordshire terrier, which is the term used by the American Kennel Club, and the American pit bull terrier, the term used by the United Kennel Club. The men who match pit bulls in fight today do not bother with such formalities; they refer to their animals as bulldogs — a nickname which should not confuse pit bulls with the pug-faced and bowlegged English bulldog, a distant relative, or the bull terrier, another relation whose bloodline was softened long ago by crossbreeding with the English Terrier. Pit bulls come in almost any color; their ears may be cropped or uncropped; their noses either red or black; and their height and weight merely proportionate– with the weight parameters ranging from under 20 pounds to upwards of 100. Their muzzles are wedge like, their jaws powerful and their heads blocky. A pit bull’s coat will be short and glossy, shimmering over a compact frame tightly bound in muscle.
All the dogs referred to as pit bulls are thought to trace their ancestry back to the bull-and-terrier, which was developed in England in the early 19th century. The bull-and-terrier was a cross between the early bull-dog — the name comes from the fact that it was used in bull-baiting — and a game terrier of some kind, either English, or fox, or black-and-tan. The bull-and- terrier dog was also used for bull-baiting, and was sometimes referred to as a butcher’s dog. When a butcher wanted to slaughter one of his cattle, he would sic his bull-and-terrier on the unlucky bovine, and the game little dog would latch onto the bigger animal’s nose, and the butcher, hammer in hand, would move in swiftly and bludgeon the cow on the head. At some point, no one is sure exactly when, gentlemen sportsmen began matching bull-and-terrier dogs against each other. One of the more popular establishments in London used for such purposes was the Westminster Pit, an enclosure that could hold about 300 spectators. Admission was charged at the door (two shillings in 1816), odds would be established, wagers were made and purses put up. It was all very civilized. Sometimes, after the dogs had finished chewing up one another, a fight between bears would follow. In 1835, the English parliament outlawed the whole bloody business — bearbaiting, bull-baiting and dogfighting. All the law served to do was to drive dogfighting underground. The coal miners in Staffordshire were said to be particularly avid followers of the clandestine ‘’sport.” Now, more than 150 years later, in an age of computers and biogenetics, the blood of those miners courses throughthe veins of citizens in these 50 states, and the blood of the bull-and-terrier dog’s descendants continues to be splattered against the sides of pits.
According to The Complete Dog Book, the official AKC publication, the pit bull first came to America around 1870. Some pit bull breeders date their arrival much earlier. Byron Fortenberry of Akron, Ohio, a breeder and author on canine subjects, claims that of the two dogs that came over on the Mayflower, one was a spaniel and one was”a small mastiff.” Says Fortenberry, ”A bulldog was called a small mastiff in 1620. No way you can prove it was or it wasn’t a pit bull, but more than likely that’s what became our breed.”
Fortenberry does not explain how this particular small mastiff was able to reproduce itself — perish the thought that it was bred to the lowly spaniel — but one of the traits one discovers in talking with breeders of American pit bull terriers is that they consider the dog capable of almost anything, including virgin birth. At any rate, the breed was well established in America by the 20th century. In 1898 the United Kennel Club began registering American pit bull terriers under the auspices of C.Z. Bennett, who drew up breed standards and wrote a set of rules governing dogfighting. In 1909 the American Dog Breeders Association, which at that time was determined to distance itself from dogfighting, set up its own registry. These were the salad days of the pit bull terrier. The dog was the envy of the canine world. Buster Brown’s floppy-eared pal in the popular comic strip of that era was his pit bull, Tige. Theodore Roosevelt had a pit bull in the White House. And a pit bull named Stubby, used in World War I to deliver messages between battalions, assisted in the capture of a German spy and was decorated for bravery by General John (Black Jack) Pershing. The pit bull was America’s dog and was depicted as such in 1914 by artist Wallace Robinson, who created a poster in which an English bulldog, a German dachshund, an American bull terrier, a French bulldog and a Russian wolfhound were dressed in the military uniforms of each dog’s country. The caption on the poster was a remark by the pit bull, who appeared in the middle, slightly larger than the rest: ”I’m neutral, BUT — Not Afraid of any of them.” Later, the most famous pit bull of them all burst on the American scene, a star who was, ironically it now seems, surrounded by a cast of children. That was the Our Gang canine pal, Pete, a predominatel white pit bull with a distinctive black circle — almost certainly the work of a make-up artist — around its left eye. Pete is celluloid proof that there was a time when the pit bull terrier had ”a ridiculously amiable disposition.”
In 1935 the American Kennel Club finally decided to recognize the American pit bull terrier as a breed. The club, however, could not bring itself to call the animal by that name. The AKC wanted its own name for this courageous, personable dog, and it wanted a name that did not include the word pit. The AKC settled upon the Staffordshire terrier because so many of the dogs had come from that area of England. In the summer of 1936 the first Staffordshire terrier was registered by the AKC. Pit bull lore has it that Pete was the first Staffordshire. It’s a swell story, but not true. Pete was among the first, but the honor actually goes to a dog named Wheeler’s Black Dinah. ”It was exactly the same dog as our American pit bull terrier, ” says Andy Johnson of the rival UKC, which currently registers between 25,000 and 30,000 American pit bull terriers annually. ”They even opened their registry to our dogs. The AKC just didn’t want anything in their name that would remind people of the fighting history of the pit bull. It was like a family denying that it had horse thieves in its past. ”Perhaps. But most pit bull fanciers believe that in the 52 years since the Staffordshire terrier — renamed the American Staffordshire terrier in 1972 — was recognized by the AKC, it has become a dog significantly different from the UKC’s American pit bull terrier. Not in looks — which are nearly identical — but in temperament. Why? Because over the years the Staffordshire has been bred to show, rather than to fight. In one of his books, pit bull expert and breeder Richard Stratton addressed this subject in his glossary of pit bull terms: ”American Staffordshire terrier. . . . The show counterpart of the APBT. Except for some game strains that are dual-registered, these dogs could not be expected to be as game as the APBT or to have the same ability.
”The ability Stratton is talking about is the ability to fight. The gameness he describes is the willingness of the animal to fight to its own death. American Staffordshire terriers have not been valued as fighting dogs for at least half a century. ”A true Staffordshire terrier is not a fighting dog, even though it came from a fighting dog,” says the Humane Society’s Lapham. Is it just coincidence, then, that none of the killings of people in the past two years have been attributed to registered American Staffordshire terriers? Probably not. ”The American Staffordshire terrier’s chief requisites should be strength unusual for its size, soundness, balance, a strong, powerful head, a well- muscled body, and courage that is proverbial,” reads The Complete Dog Book. ”As to character, they exceed being dead game; nevertheless, they should not be held in ill repute merely because man has been taking advantage of this rare courage to use them in the pit as gambling tools. These dogs are docile, and with a little training are even tractable around other dogs.” Ginny Bazelak of Chepachet, R.I., president of the American Pit Bull Terrier Club of New England, feels the same way about the dogs that she has bred. ”They say pit bulls have natural aggressiveness,” she says. ”I don’t believe it. People who are breeding for aggressiveness will get it. For the last 12 years I haven’t been, and these dogs aren’t. My dogs are babies. They’ll lick you to death. The people who fight dogs tell me I’m ruining the breed. They say my dogs are wimps.” Sadly it is the responsible owners and breeders who are suffering the most from the recent wave of pit bull hysteria. ”You feel like a criminal walking your dog,” says Bazelak. ”You’re constantly approached by someone who says, ‘That’s a vicious dog,’ as if it’s a wild animal. I’ve stopped breeding mine. I don’t want to add to the population right now. I’m disgusted with the American people who believe the problem’s with the dog and not with the people raising the dog.
”But the hysteria, or concern, is understandable. To the untrained eye — or even to the trained one, in many instances — it is virtually impossible to tell a docile pit bull from a mean one. None of them looks like a wimp, and a friendly pit bull jumping up to lick you to death has an eerie resemblance to a pit bull jumping up to rip out your throat. Your best bet is to pass a fast judgment on its owner. Pit bulls do not usually growl before attacking; they seldom bark. The hair on their backs does not stand on end when they are enraged. These are not dogs given to threatening displays. The pit bull, when so trained, is all business, which has made it the dog of choice for drug dealers and street punks around the country. ”People whose insecurities are such that they need macho reinforcement feel a need for this type of animal,” says Loew of Tufts, ”and they are available because of the overflow from illegal dogfights.” ”I just saw a surprising statistic from a Los Angeles study, ”Steve Blackwood, a sergeant in the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, said recently. ”In two out of three narcotics raids, pit bulls were used as the guard dogs.” San Diego investigators also were told that local members of motorcycle gangs were stashing their drugs beneath the doghouses of their pit bulls. ”Street dope dealers and street gangs have gone to pit bulls,” says Budd Johnson, an inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service who is based in San Diego. Law enforcement officials are seeing the same thing all over the country, and the pit bull populations in urban areas have mushroomed as a result. There have also been instances when pit bulls were used in armed robberies, in effect taking the place of a weapon, and one case in which a 16-year-old girl was raped by a man who allegedly threatened her with his two pit bulls. ”You’ve got a bunch of kooks out there who are getting these dogs and making them mean and registering them,” says Andy Johnson of the UKC. ”Every time somebody writes how mean these dogs are, the demand for them jumps up. You can make any dog mean if you work at it.” Now, and historically, at the core of the breed’s problems is dogfighting. This loathsome ‘’sport” is, by most accounts, more widespread than ever in the U.S. At the same time it is even less humane, having passed from the hands of the old-time ”gentlemen” breeders into the mitts of the borderline sadists. Once primarily a rural dementia, dogfighting has become a city problem as well, the outgrowth of the popularity of pit bulls.
It matters little that dogfighting is illegal in every state, and a felony-level crime in 36 states. ”You can virtually find a convention (as dogfights are called in the jargon of the sport) on any weekend in any of the 50 states,” says Eric Sakach of the West Coast Regional office of the Humane Society in Sacramento. There are probably more matches taking place today than ever before because of the popularity of the breed,” says Stratton, whose books on pit bull terriers include such chapters of general interest as: ”Dimensions of the Dog Pit” and ”Fluid Therapy for Treating Hypo-Volemic Shock.” ”Dogfighting is the greatest perversion of the special relationship that exists between people and dogs,” says Randall Lockwood of the Humane Society. ”It is people subjecting dogs to incredible cruelty. And now that has turned into dogs killing people.” Dogfighters vehemently dispute this, and with a straight face one writer compared pitting a bulldog with taking a greyhound out on a run. When, as a youth, Stratton asked Mrs. William J. Lightner, thewife of a legendary pit bull breeder, if dog fighting was cruel, he recalls that she responded, ”It was cruel all right, but not to the dogs, for fighting was the very breath of life to them because of their breeding. But it was cruel to the people because it was hard not to get especially attached to your best dog, the very one likely to be matched, and sometimes they were lost.” The dog, in the warped perspective of the dogfighting zealot, dies happy, fulfilled, like an Iranian soldier. Next stop, puppy heaven. As one pitman bragged to Benno Kroll, who wrote a superb account of dogfighting in the November 1979 issue of Geo: ”My dogs die with their tails up and wagging.” Perhaps. They also die with their legs broken, their ears mangled and their flesh torn. ”We’ve seen them, with both front legs broken, push themselves across the ring to fight,” says Blackwood, the San Diego sheriff. Many times the dogs die hours after the fight of hypovolemic shock — dehydration — since the prevailing wisdom says to dehydrate your animal before fighting him to cut down on his potential loss of blood. And sometimes a dog dies minutes after the fight from a bullet to the brain, if the dog happens to ”cur out” — refuse to engagein battle.
Of course they don’t all die. Pit bulls are incredibly hardy animals that, some folks would have you believe, are impervious to pain. The majority of the pit bulls recover from their fights, which routinely last more than an hour and sometimes as long as three hours, and live to fight again. Before each match, the handlers wash their opponent’s pit bull, a tradition which started after some ”gentleman sportsman” discovered that by putting poison on his own dog’s coat, he could paralyze his adversary’s animal. When the fight begins, the two dogs share the 16-foot-square pit with two handlers and a referee. It’s close quarters in there, no place for a man-eating dog. And the bloodthirsty spectators, with fistfuls of cash, are separated from the participants by only a 30-inch-high wall. ”In the old days the fighting dogs were people-gentle,” says Lockwood. ”But that’s not true any longer. It’s not unheard of now for dogs to come out of the pit and attack spectators. Some of our investigators have seen it.” It has become a new game. It’s commonplace these days for a dogfighting raid to turn up a veritable storeroom of illegal weapons and illegal drugs. ”People who think they are dogfighters are into it now, but they have no concept what it’s about,” says one pit bull breeder from Ohio. ”True dogfighters had a lot of money tied up in their dogs, and they didn’t want to lose them. Today these clowns steal somebody’s pet and put him in the pit without training him. Then they watch while the dog gets torn up. At best, they’re sadistic.” Training a fighting pit bull terrier is something the Marquis de Sade certainly would have appreciated. Treadmills are the most commonly used apparatuses, and sometimes a kitten or a chicken is hung in a mesh basket at the top of the treadmill to hold the dog’ s attention. At the end of the hours- long workout, guess what the reward is? To increase the dog’s biting power, trainers will hang tires from tree limbs, bidding their pit bulls to leap up and latch on, sometimes making them hang there for 15 to 20 minutes. Those are the sophisticated methods. ”In Toledo we arrested a guy who was paying kids to collect cats for him,” relates Lapham of the Humane Society. ”He’d throw them into the basement where he kept his pit bull, to let him taste blood. ”
Steven Creighton, a sergeant with the San Diego police department, recounts the gruesome tale of the arrest on Dec. 4, 1986, of 18-year-old James Madison. ”We got a call that a guy put a noose around a live cat’s neck and threw it over a branch so that it hung about eight feet off the ground,” says Creighton. ”Then the guy let a pit bull loose who attacked the cat while ((a group of neighborhood children)) watched in horror. He would let the pit chomp on the cat for a while, and then he’d lift the cat up out of the pit’s reach. The dog was going crazy.” The cat eventually died. Madison, who has pleaded not guilty, will go on trial next month for felony cruelty to animals and raising a dog for fighting. ‘It’s ridiculous,” says Stratton. ”The taste of blood doesn’t make a pit bull a better fighter. But people write that kind of stuff about people who train pit bulls, and these kids read it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” And in some instances, it is literally the kids who get involved. Last year in Philadelphia five boys between the ages of 11 and 14 were arrested and charged with participation in a dogfighting ring in which the losing dogs were thrown out the window and hanged. All five were found guilty. ”They call it ‘gambling the dog,’ ” Sam McClain, a police officer with Philadelphia’s 19th District, told reporters. In a follow-up article on Philadelphia street dog fighting, which appeared in the July 2 issue of Rolling Stone, writer Mike Sager described the training regimen of a pair of pit bull handlers, brothers aged 13 and 14: ”They’ll starve him to make him mean, fatten him on twenty- five-cent-a-can dog food and leftover beans and rice, run him around the block behind their bicycles, feed him chicken blood, take him on a safari around the neighborhood looking for cats and strays, shoot him up with black- market penicillin and vitamin B12 to help heal his wounds, and rub him with used motor oil to make his fur grow back over his scars.” Some feed their dogs hot sauce to make them mean, while others subscribe to a dosage of gunpowder. It is not clear whether these dogs, when they die, do so with their tails up and wagging.
Who has suffered more, then? The pit bull for his association with man? Or man for his association with the pit bull? It should be pointed out that pit bull terriers serve man in a number of legal and interesting ways. They are not just guard dogs and fighters. The stamina and courage of the pit bull make the breed unparalleled as a hunting dog for wild pigs, a popular quarry in parts of the South and Southwest. Some ranchers, particularly those who graze livestock in brushy country where it is difficult to rope, use pit bulls as catch dogs for cattle. They can also be trained to herd sheep — pity the coyote that would bother a pit bull’s flock. And, recreationally, pit bull owners have started to show enthusiasm for weight pulling. ” The pit bull’s the hardest-pulling dog in the world,” brags Ralph Greenwood of the American Dog Breeders Association. Last year in Seguin, Texas, a 78-pound pit bull named Bighead set a record by pulling 5,650 pounds over rails for a distance of 15 feet. Clearly, though, steps have to be taken if man and the pit bull terrier are to continue to coexist. ”Dogfighting needs to be prosecuted,” says Blair of Tufts, ”And effective vicious-dog legislation needs to be enacted.” There are a number of reasons why ”vicious dog” legislation is preferable to ordinances that specifically target the pit bull terrier.
As has been noted, it is virtually impossible to define a pit bull in legal terms. There is also the nettlesome question of punishing innocent, responsible breeders of American Staffordshire terriers and American pit bull terriers for the abuses of irresponsible, often criminal, owners. And finally, the pit bull is not the only aggressive dog on the street. Rottweilers, Dobermans, German shepherds, akitas and chows are all breeds that can be aggressive and that are large enough to inflict severe damage on people and other animals. For that matter, any breed that is improperly raised or is allowed to run loose can become a menace. The population of this country is more than 240 million people, and ”Ninty-seven percent of Americans now live in cities, towns or villages,” says Loew of Tufts. ”There are 50 million dogs in this country, more than at any time in our history. How are we going to live with them?” ”We suggest a procedure by which a dog can be identified as ‘dangerous’ or ‘vicious’ that does not just take into consideration bites,” says the Humane Society’s Lockwood. ”A dog that assumes a threatening posture when unprovoked, that lunges at its fence when someone walks past, that chases kids — that is a dangerous dog, even if it hasn’t actually bitten anyone. The new thrust is to make owners responsible for their dogs before there’s a problem.” This much we have learned from the pit bull: The so-called ”one free bite” concept of dog control is out to lunch.
This is the policy in effect in many communities where a dog is not considered to be a problem until it has bitten on two occasions. In the case of the pit bull terrier, that is usually two occasions too many. David Sholes, a Rhode Island state senator, proposed and drafted vicious-dog legislation for his state in 1985. It is now considered a prototype for others to follow. ”We had a tremendous explosion of pit bull attacks, you were reading about a new one practically every week,” says Sholes. ”One child lost part of a buttock, another part of her face. A pit bull managed to get on a school bus and terrorize the children. It was apparent that the current law was not working.”
The new Rhode Island law provides a workable definition of a ”vicious dog”: One that has either committed an unprovoked attack on a person or animal, or that approaches a person in an apparent attitude of attack when unprovoked. That is the key word: unprovoked. Any dog that is unlicensed falls into the ”vicious” category until it is licensed. Rhode Island’s procedure for having a dog declared ”vicious” is as follows: 1) the complainant calls the local animal control officer; 2) the officer investigates the complaint and holds a hearing to examine the circumstances; 3) he then declares whether the animal in question is ”vicious” or not; 4) if the owner of the dog disagrees with his verdict, he may appeal to District Court. Should his appeal fail, the owner of the ”vicious” dog must keep it in a secure enclosure, at least six feet in height, that is both childproof from the outside and dogproof from the inside. The dog is tattooed for identification. Furthermore, the dog owner must show that he has a $100,000 insurance policy for liability, and he is required to display a sign that can be read from the road: VICIOUS DOG ON PREMISES. The dog officer has the right to inspect the enclosure at any subsequent time and without need of a warrant, and has the right to seize and impound the dog if any of the specifications are not met to his satisfaction. If the dog bites again, the owner is fully liable, much as if he had been keeping a wild tiger in a cage. ”Most owners would rather turn in their dog than comply,” says Sholes. So the net effect was to keep these vicious dogs off the street.
Of course the vast majority of problem pit bulls are unregistered and unlicensed. These are the animals that law enforcement officials must focus on, and quickly. Unlicensed dogs should be impounded. And anyone who knows of individuals who are keeping unlicensed dogs, or whose dogs are allowed to run loose, should be encouraged to report them to the proper authorities. ”We’ve got to make bad-dog behavior impersonal,” says Loew. ”It should be like asking someone who is smoking in a no-smoking area to stop. No offense, but your dog is a problem.” ”For a long time the judicial system has not taken dogfighting and dog- biting seriously,” says Lapham. ”That laissez-faire attitude cannot persist. Dogfighting is not just aberrant behavior in a civilized society, it has become a lethal liability within that society. The best new ordinances and leash laws in the world will be worthless unless the courts deal with these people seriously. They have to send a message that says: You want to own these dogs, fine. But you’ll pay the consequences if you screw up.” It is a message that is already being sent. In February, Hayward Turnipseed of De Kalb County, Ga., was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison after three of his pit bulls attacked and killed four-year-old Billy Gordon as the child walked through a neighbor’s yard. Michael Berry, 37, the California man who owned the dog who killed two- year-old James Soto, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter. And Edlyn Joy Hauser, the woman whose dog, Benjamin, attacked animal control officer Crowell, has pleaded innocent to three felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon — Benjamin — and intentionally inflicting great bodily harm. As for the American pit bull terrier, it, too, has taken its lumps. In the three weeks following those two grisly June incidents in California, more than 300 pit bulls and pit bull crosses were turned in to the Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control Department, most of them by owners whono longer wanted the responsibility of keeping them, or who had simply become frightened of their own pet by the breed’s reputation. The animals were all put to sleep. Overpopulation of the breed remains one of the chief concerns about pit bulls, especially in already crowded urban areas. Law enforcement officials, animal control officers, animal rights groups and legislators are just beginning to address that particular problem. And the American pit bull terrier’s aberrant sidekick? They’re going to be dealing with the human part of the puzzle for a long, long time.
SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PIT BULLSLET THE BREED DISAPPEAR
America has a four-legged problem called the American pit bull terrier. And the pit bull, its ”ridiculously amiable disposition’ ‘ notwithstanding, has a two-legged problem called Man. These two species are not new to each other. They have intermingled for some 200 years, and some say their common history goes back as far as the Romans. But something has happened to the pit bull in the last decade that says as much about the nature of American society as it does about the nature of this aggressive animal. Far from being an aberration, the American pit bull terrier has become a reflection of ourselves that no one cares very much to see. ”They’re athletes. They’re wrestlers. They’re dead game,” says Captain Arthur Haggerty, a dog breeder and trainer in New York City who owns five pit bull terriers and has trained hundreds of others. ”They will literally fight till they’re dead. If you found that quality in a boxer or a football player, you’d say it was admirable. Will to win. That’s what a pit bull has.” Others call it a ”will to kill.”
At least 35 communities nationwide have considered banning the breed from within their city limits, and while such ordinances have run into constitutional problems stemming from the difficulty in defining exactly what a pit bull terrier is, their number is growing weekly. The horror stories involving pit bulls are voluminous. Recent tragedies include the death of two-year-old James Soto, who was mauled in Morgan Hill, Calif., on June 13 by a neighbor’s pit bull. The attack rendered the child ”unrecognizable as a human being,” according to paramedics. Nine days later a national television audience watching the evening news was treated to the terrifying spectacle of a pit bull terrier attacking Los Angeles animal control officer Florence Crowell. The 33-year-old woman survived but spent five days in the hospital. On April 6, a retired surgeon, 67-year-old William Eckman, was killed by two pit bulls on a street in Dayton, Ohio. On that same day, 16-month-old Melissa Larabee of Jones, Okla., was killed by the family’s pet pit bull, who bit her in the throat. In June 1986, 20-month-old Kyle Corullo was attacked by a pit bull in Ramsay, Mich., while playing in his grandmother’s backyard. The dog, fighting off the child’s mother, dragged the boy into a nearby lot and shook him to death ”like a stuffed animal.”
In the last 18 months, 12 of the 18 confirmed dog-related fatalities in the U.S. — or 67% — have been caused by the pit bull terrier, a breed that accounts for only 1% of the U.S. dog population. And the maimings are far more numerous. Often it is small children who are the victims of unprovoked attacks. There is no definitive source for animal attack statistics, but pit bull fanciers claim that statistics show other breeds of dog bite more frequently — German shepherds lead the list — and accuse the media of publicizing only pit bull maulings.
DOG BITES MAN isn’t news, they say, but PIT BULL BITES MAN is. Unfortunately the pit bull, when it attacks, doesn’t merely bite man — or, most horribly, child — it clamps its powerful jaws down and literally tears its victim apart. ”The injuries these dogs inflict are more serious than other breeds because they go for the deep musculature and don’t release; they hold and shake,” says Sheryl Blair of the Tufts Veterinary School, in North Grafton, Mass., which last year held a symposium entitled Animal Agression: Dog Bites and the Pit Bull Terrier. ”Most breeds do not multiple-bite,” says Kurt Lapham, a field investigator for the West Coast Regional office of the Humane Society. ”A pit bull attack is like a shark attack: He keeps coming back.” ”A pit bull,” says Judge Victor E. Bianchini of San Diego, ” is the closest thing to a wild animal there is in a domesticated dog.”
A fair assessment of a growing problem? Or a bad rap against an animal which has suffered far more at the hands of man than it can possibly repay? It has been estimated that there are half a million pit bull terriers alive in the United States today. What about the 99% who have never bitten a human being? Are these dogs ”loaded hand guns,” as many have called them? ”There’s something a little scary about wondering, Is there a time bomb ticking in my dog?” says Dr. Franklin Loew, dean of Tufts Veterinary School, who opposes efforts to legislate against pit bull terriers and believes the breed is the victim of ”canine racism.” Loew adds, ”The pit bull does seem to respond more than other dogs to people trying to bring out aggressiveness. But everything I know professionally tells me that this is not a dog problem, but a problem of dog ownership.
”What exactly is a pit bull? Defining it has proved to be a formidable legal hurdle because the pit bull is not a specific breed. Rather, it is a kind of dog, a generic catchall like hound or retriever. The breeds most commonly referred to as pit bulls are the American Staffordshire terrier, which is the term used by the American Kennel Club, and the American pit bull terrier, the term used by the United Kennel Club. The men who match pit bulls in fight today do not bother with such formalities; they refer to their animals as bulldogs — a nickname which should not confuse pit bulls with the pug-faced and bowlegged English bulldog, a distant relative, or the bull terrier, another relation whose bloodline was softened long ago by crossbreeding with the English Terrier. Pit bulls come in almost any color; their ears may be cropped or uncropped; their noses either red or black; and their height and weight merely proportionate– with the weight parameters ranging from under 20 pounds to upwards of 100. Their muzzles are wedge like, their jaws powerful and their heads blocky. A pit bull’s coat will be short and glossy, shimmering over a compact frame tightly bound in muscle.
All the dogs referred to as pit bulls are thought to trace their ancestry back to the bull-and-terrier, which was developed in England in the early 19th century. The bull-and-terrier was a cross between the early bull-dog — the name comes from the fact that it was used in bull-baiting — and a game terrier of some kind, either English, or fox, or black-and-tan. The bull-and- terrier dog was also used for bull-baiting, and was sometimes referred to as a butcher’s dog. When a butcher wanted to slaughter one of his cattle, he would sic his bull-and-terrier on the unlucky bovine, and the game little dog would latch onto the bigger animal’s nose, and the butcher, hammer in hand, would move in swiftly and bludgeon the cow on the head. At some point, no one is sure exactly when, gentlemen sportsmen began matching bull-and-terrier dogs against each other. One of the more popular establishments in London used for such purposes was the Westminster Pit, an enclosure that could hold about 300 spectators. Admission was charged at the door (two shillings in 1816), odds would be established, wagers were made and purses put up. It was all very civilized. Sometimes, after the dogs had finished chewing up one another, a fight between bears would follow. In 1835, the English parliament outlawed the whole bloody business — bearbaiting, bull-baiting and dogfighting. All the law served to do was to drive dogfighting underground. The coal miners in Staffordshire were said to be particularly avid followers of the clandestine ‘’sport.” Now, more than 150 years later, in an age of computers and biogenetics, the blood of those miners courses throughthe veins of citizens in these 50 states, and the blood of the bull-and-terrier dog’s descendants continues to be splattered against the sides of pits.
According to The Complete Dog Book, the official AKC publication, the pit bull first came to America around 1870. Some pit bull breeders date their arrival much earlier. Byron Fortenberry of Akron, Ohio, a breeder and author on canine subjects, claims that of the two dogs that came over on the Mayflower, one was a spaniel and one was”a small mastiff.” Says Fortenberry, ”A bulldog was called a small mastiff in 1620. No way you can prove it was or it wasn’t a pit bull, but more than likely that’s what became our breed.”
Fortenberry does not explain how this particular small mastiff was able to reproduce itself — perish the thought that it was bred to the lowly spaniel — but one of the traits one discovers in talking with breeders of American pit bull terriers is that they consider the dog capable of almost anything, including virgin birth. At any rate, the breed was well established in America by the 20th century. In 1898 the United Kennel Club began registering American pit bull terriers under the auspices of C.Z. Bennett, who drew up breed standards and wrote a set of rules governing dogfighting. In 1909 the American Dog Breeders Association, which at that time was determined to distance itself from dogfighting, set up its own registry. These were the salad days of the pit bull terrier. The dog was the envy of the canine world. Buster Brown’s floppy-eared pal in the popular comic strip of that era was his pit bull, Tige. Theodore Roosevelt had a pit bull in the White House. And a pit bull named Stubby, used in World War I to deliver messages between battalions, assisted in the capture of a German spy and was decorated for bravery by General John (Black Jack) Pershing. The pit bull was America’s dog and was depicted as such in 1914 by artist Wallace Robinson, who created a poster in which an English bulldog, a German dachshund, an American bull terrier, a French bulldog and a Russian wolfhound were dressed in the military uniforms of each dog’s country. The caption on the poster was a remark by the pit bull, who appeared in the middle, slightly larger than the rest: ”I’m neutral, BUT — Not Afraid of any of them.” Later, the most famous pit bull of them all burst on the American scene, a star who was, ironically it now seems, surrounded by a cast of children. That was the Our Gang canine pal, Pete, a predominatel white pit bull with a distinctive black circle — almost certainly the work of a make-up artist — around its left eye. Pete is celluloid proof that there was a time when the pit bull terrier had ”a ridiculously amiable disposition.”
In 1935 the American Kennel Club finally decided to recognize the American pit bull terrier as a breed. The club, however, could not bring itself to call the animal by that name. The AKC wanted its own name for this courageous, personable dog, and it wanted a name that did not include the word pit. The AKC settled upon the Staffordshire terrier because so many of the dogs had come from that area of England. In the summer of 1936 the first Staffordshire terrier was registered by the AKC. Pit bull lore has it that Pete was the first Staffordshire. It’s a swell story, but not true. Pete was among the first, but the honor actually goes to a dog named Wheeler’s Black Dinah. ”It was exactly the same dog as our American pit bull terrier, ” says Andy Johnson of the rival UKC, which currently registers between 25,000 and 30,000 American pit bull terriers annually. ”They even opened their registry to our dogs. The AKC just didn’t want anything in their name that would remind people of the fighting history of the pit bull. It was like a family denying that it had horse thieves in its past. ”Perhaps. But most pit bull fanciers believe that in the 52 years since the Staffordshire terrier — renamed the American Staffordshire terrier in 1972 — was recognized by the AKC, it has become a dog significantly different from the UKC’s American pit bull terrier. Not in looks — which are nearly identical — but in temperament. Why? Because over the years the Staffordshire has been bred to show, rather than to fight. In one of his books, pit bull expert and breeder Richard Stratton addressed this subject in his glossary of pit bull terms: ”American Staffordshire terrier. . . . The show counterpart of the APBT. Except for some game strains that are dual-registered, these dogs could not be expected to be as game as the APBT or to have the same ability.
”The ability Stratton is talking about is the ability to fight. The gameness he describes is the willingness of the animal to fight to its own death. American Staffordshire terriers have not been valued as fighting dogs for at least half a century. ”A true Staffordshire terrier is not a fighting dog, even though it came from a fighting dog,” says the Humane Society’s Lapham. Is it just coincidence, then, that none of the killings of people in the past two years have been attributed to registered American Staffordshire terriers? Probably not. ”The American Staffordshire terrier’s chief requisites should be strength unusual for its size, soundness, balance, a strong, powerful head, a well- muscled body, and courage that is proverbial,” reads The Complete Dog Book. ”As to character, they exceed being dead game; nevertheless, they should not be held in ill repute merely because man has been taking advantage of this rare courage to use them in the pit as gambling tools. These dogs are docile, and with a little training are even tractable around other dogs.” Ginny Bazelak of Chepachet, R.I., president of the American Pit Bull Terrier Club of New England, feels the same way about the dogs that she has bred. ”They say pit bulls have natural aggressiveness,” she says. ”I don’t believe it. People who are breeding for aggressiveness will get it. For the last 12 years I haven’t been, and these dogs aren’t. My dogs are babies. They’ll lick you to death. The people who fight dogs tell me I’m ruining the breed. They say my dogs are wimps.” Sadly it is the responsible owners and breeders who are suffering the most from the recent wave of pit bull hysteria. ”You feel like a criminal walking your dog,” says Bazelak. ”You’re constantly approached by someone who says, ‘That’s a vicious dog,’ as if it’s a wild animal. I’ve stopped breeding mine. I don’t want to add to the population right now. I’m disgusted with the American people who believe the problem’s with the dog and not with the people raising the dog.
”But the hysteria, or concern, is understandable. To the untrained eye — or even to the trained one, in many instances — it is virtually impossible to tell a docile pit bull from a mean one. None of them looks like a wimp, and a friendly pit bull jumping up to lick you to death has an eerie resemblance to a pit bull jumping up to rip out your throat. Your best bet is to pass a fast judgment on its owner. Pit bulls do not usually growl before attacking; they seldom bark. The hair on their backs does not stand on end when they are enraged. These are not dogs given to threatening displays. The pit bull, when so trained, is all business, which has made it the dog of choice for drug dealers and street punks around the country. ”People whose insecurities are such that they need macho reinforcement feel a need for this type of animal,” says Loew of Tufts, ”and they are available because of the overflow from illegal dogfights.” ”I just saw a surprising statistic from a Los Angeles study, ”Steve Blackwood, a sergeant in the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, said recently. ”In two out of three narcotics raids, pit bulls were used as the guard dogs.” San Diego investigators also were told that local members of motorcycle gangs were stashing their drugs beneath the doghouses of their pit bulls. ”Street dope dealers and street gangs have gone to pit bulls,” says Budd Johnson, an inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service who is based in San Diego. Law enforcement officials are seeing the same thing all over the country, and the pit bull populations in urban areas have mushroomed as a result. There have also been instances when pit bulls were used in armed robberies, in effect taking the place of a weapon, and one case in which a 16-year-old girl was raped by a man who allegedly threatened her with his two pit bulls. ”You’ve got a bunch of kooks out there who are getting these dogs and making them mean and registering them,” says Andy Johnson of the UKC. ”Every time somebody writes how mean these dogs are, the demand for them jumps up. You can make any dog mean if you work at it.” Now, and historically, at the core of the breed’s problems is dogfighting. This loathsome ‘’sport” is, by most accounts, more widespread than ever in the U.S. At the same time it is even less humane, having passed from the hands of the old-time ”gentlemen” breeders into the mitts of the borderline sadists. Once primarily a rural dementia, dogfighting has become a city problem as well, the outgrowth of the popularity of pit bulls.
It matters little that dogfighting is illegal in every state, and a felony-level crime in 36 states. ”You can virtually find a convention (as dogfights are called in the jargon of the sport) on any weekend in any of the 50 states,” says Eric Sakach of the West Coast Regional office of the Humane Society in Sacramento. There are probably more matches taking place today than ever before because of the popularity of the breed,” says Stratton, whose books on pit bull terriers include such chapters of general interest as: ”Dimensions of the Dog Pit” and ”Fluid Therapy for Treating Hypo-Volemic Shock.” ”Dogfighting is the greatest perversion of the special relationship that exists between people and dogs,” says Randall Lockwood of the Humane Society. ”It is people subjecting dogs to incredible cruelty. And now that has turned into dogs killing people.” Dogfighters vehemently dispute this, and with a straight face one writer compared pitting a bulldog with taking a greyhound out on a run. When, as a youth, Stratton asked Mrs. William J. Lightner, thewife of a legendary pit bull breeder, if dog fighting was cruel, he recalls that she responded, ”It was cruel all right, but not to the dogs, for fighting was the very breath of life to them because of their breeding. But it was cruel to the people because it was hard not to get especially attached to your best dog, the very one likely to be matched, and sometimes they were lost.” The dog, in the warped perspective of the dogfighting zealot, dies happy, fulfilled, like an Iranian soldier. Next stop, puppy heaven. As one pitman bragged to Benno Kroll, who wrote a superb account of dogfighting in the November 1979 issue of Geo: ”My dogs die with their tails up and wagging.” Perhaps. They also die with their legs broken, their ears mangled and their flesh torn. ”We’ve seen them, with both front legs broken, push themselves across the ring to fight,” says Blackwood, the San Diego sheriff. Many times the dogs die hours after the fight of hypovolemic shock — dehydration — since the prevailing wisdom says to dehydrate your animal before fighting him to cut down on his potential loss of blood. And sometimes a dog dies minutes after the fight from a bullet to the brain, if the dog happens to ”cur out” — refuse to engagein battle.
Of course they don’t all die. Pit bulls are incredibly hardy animals that, some folks would have you believe, are impervious to pain. The majority of the pit bulls recover from their fights, which routinely last more than an hour and sometimes as long as three hours, and live to fight again. Before each match, the handlers wash their opponent’s pit bull, a tradition which started after some ”gentleman sportsman” discovered that by putting poison on his own dog’s coat, he could paralyze his adversary’s animal. When the fight begins, the two dogs share the 16-foot-square pit with two handlers and a referee. It’s close quarters in there, no place for a man-eating dog. And the bloodthirsty spectators, with fistfuls of cash, are separated from the participants by only a 30-inch-high wall. ”In the old days the fighting dogs were people-gentle,” says Lockwood. ”But that’s not true any longer. It’s not unheard of now for dogs to come out of the pit and attack spectators. Some of our investigators have seen it.” It has become a new game. It’s commonplace these days for a dogfighting raid to turn up a veritable storeroom of illegal weapons and illegal drugs. ”People who think they are dogfighters are into it now, but they have no concept what it’s about,” says one pit bull breeder from Ohio. ”True dogfighters had a lot of money tied up in their dogs, and they didn’t want to lose them. Today these clowns steal somebody’s pet and put him in the pit without training him. Then they watch while the dog gets torn up. At best, they’re sadistic.” Training a fighting pit bull terrier is something the Marquis de Sade certainly would have appreciated. Treadmills are the most commonly used apparatuses, and sometimes a kitten or a chicken is hung in a mesh basket at the top of the treadmill to hold the dog’ s attention. At the end of the hours- long workout, guess what the reward is? To increase the dog’s biting power, trainers will hang tires from tree limbs, bidding their pit bulls to leap up and latch on, sometimes making them hang there for 15 to 20 minutes. Those are the sophisticated methods. ”In Toledo we arrested a guy who was paying kids to collect cats for him,” relates Lapham of the Humane Society. ”He’d throw them into the basement where he kept his pit bull, to let him taste blood. ”
Steven Creighton, a sergeant with the San Diego police department, recounts the gruesome tale of the arrest on Dec. 4, 1986, of 18-year-old James Madison. ”We got a call that a guy put a noose around a live cat’s neck and threw it over a branch so that it hung about eight feet off the ground,” says Creighton. ”Then the guy let a pit bull loose who attacked the cat while ((a group of neighborhood children)) watched in horror. He would let the pit chomp on the cat for a while, and then he’d lift the cat up out of the pit’s reach. The dog was going crazy.” The cat eventually died. Madison, who has pleaded not guilty, will go on trial next month for felony cruelty to animals and raising a dog for fighting. ‘It’s ridiculous,” says Stratton. ”The taste of blood doesn’t make a pit bull a better fighter. But people write that kind of stuff about people who train pit bulls, and these kids read it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” And in some instances, it is literally the kids who get involved. Last year in Philadelphia five boys between the ages of 11 and 14 were arrested and charged with participation in a dogfighting ring in which the losing dogs were thrown out the window and hanged. All five were found guilty. ”They call it ‘gambling the dog,’ ” Sam McClain, a police officer with Philadelphia’s 19th District, told reporters. In a follow-up article on Philadelphia street dog fighting, which appeared in the July 2 issue of Rolling Stone, writer Mike Sager described the training regimen of a pair of pit bull handlers, brothers aged 13 and 14: ”They’ll starve him to make him mean, fatten him on twenty- five-cent-a-can dog food and leftover beans and rice, run him around the block behind their bicycles, feed him chicken blood, take him on a safari around the neighborhood looking for cats and strays, shoot him up with black- market penicillin and vitamin B12 to help heal his wounds, and rub him with used motor oil to make his fur grow back over his scars.” Some feed their dogs hot sauce to make them mean, while others subscribe to a dosage of gunpowder. It is not clear whether these dogs, when they die, do so with their tails up and wagging.
Who has suffered more, then? The pit bull for his association with man? Or man for his association with the pit bull? It should be pointed out that pit bull terriers serve man in a number of legal and interesting ways. They are not just guard dogs and fighters. The stamina and courage of the pit bull make the breed unparalleled as a hunting dog for wild pigs, a popular quarry in parts of the South and Southwest. Some ranchers, particularly those who graze livestock in brushy country where it is difficult to rope, use pit bulls as catch dogs for cattle. They can also be trained to herd sheep — pity the coyote that would bother a pit bull’s flock. And, recreationally, pit bull owners have started to show enthusiasm for weight pulling. ” The pit bull’s the hardest-pulling dog in the world,” brags Ralph Greenwood of the American Dog Breeders Association. Last year in Seguin, Texas, a 78-pound pit bull named Bighead set a record by pulling 5,650 pounds over rails for a distance of 15 feet. Clearly, though, steps have to be taken if man and the pit bull terrier are to continue to coexist. ”Dogfighting needs to be prosecuted,” says Blair of Tufts, ”And effective vicious-dog legislation needs to be enacted.” There are a number of reasons why ”vicious dog” legislation is preferable to ordinances that specifically target the pit bull terrier.
As has been noted, it is virtually impossible to define a pit bull in legal terms. There is also the nettlesome question of punishing innocent, responsible breeders of American Staffordshire terriers and American pit bull terriers for the abuses of irresponsible, often criminal, owners. And finally, the pit bull is not the only aggressive dog on the street. Rottweilers, Dobermans, German shepherds, akitas and chows are all breeds that can be aggressive and that are large enough to inflict severe damage on people and other animals. For that matter, any breed that is improperly raised or is allowed to run loose can become a menace. The population of this country is more than 240 million people, and ”Ninty-seven percent of Americans now live in cities, towns or villages,” says Loew of Tufts. ”There are 50 million dogs in this country, more than at any time in our history. How are we going to live with them?” ”We suggest a procedure by which a dog can be identified as ‘dangerous’ or ‘vicious’ that does not just take into consideration bites,” says the Humane Society’s Lockwood. ”A dog that assumes a threatening posture when unprovoked, that lunges at its fence when someone walks past, that chases kids — that is a dangerous dog, even if it hasn’t actually bitten anyone. The new thrust is to make owners responsible for their dogs before there’s a problem.” This much we have learned from the pit bull: The so-called ”one free bite” concept of dog control is out to lunch.
This is the policy in effect in many communities where a dog is not considered to be a problem until it has bitten on two occasions. In the case of the pit bull terrier, that is usually two occasions too many. David Sholes, a Rhode Island state senator, proposed and drafted vicious-dog legislation for his state in 1985. It is now considered a prototype for others to follow. ”We had a tremendous explosion of pit bull attacks, you were reading about a new one practically every week,” says Sholes. ”One child lost part of a buttock, another part of her face. A pit bull managed to get on a school bus and terrorize the children. It was apparent that the current law was not working.”
The new Rhode Island law provides a workable definition of a ”vicious dog”: One that has either committed an unprovoked attack on a person or animal, or that approaches a person in an apparent attitude of attack when unprovoked. That is the key word: unprovoked. Any dog that is unlicensed falls into the ”vicious” category until it is licensed. Rhode Island’s procedure for having a dog declared ”vicious” is as follows: 1) the complainant calls the local animal control officer; 2) the officer investigates the complaint and holds a hearing to examine the circumstances; 3) he then declares whether the animal in question is ”vicious” or not; 4) if the owner of the dog disagrees with his verdict, he may appeal to District Court. Should his appeal fail, the owner of the ”vicious” dog must keep it in a secure enclosure, at least six feet in height, that is both childproof from the outside and dogproof from the inside. The dog is tattooed for identification. Furthermore, the dog owner must show that he has a $100,000 insurance policy for liability, and he is required to display a sign that can be read from the road: VICIOUS DOG ON PREMISES. The dog officer has the right to inspect the enclosure at any subsequent time and without need of a warrant, and has the right to seize and impound the dog if any of the specifications are not met to his satisfaction. If the dog bites again, the owner is fully liable, much as if he had been keeping a wild tiger in a cage. ”Most owners would rather turn in their dog than comply,” says Sholes. So the net effect was to keep these vicious dogs off the street.
Of course the vast majority of problem pit bulls are unregistered and unlicensed. These are the animals that law enforcement officials must focus on, and quickly. Unlicensed dogs should be impounded. And anyone who knows of individuals who are keeping unlicensed dogs, or whose dogs are allowed to run loose, should be encouraged to report them to the proper authorities. ”We’ve got to make bad-dog behavior impersonal,” says Loew. ”It should be like asking someone who is smoking in a no-smoking area to stop. No offense, but your dog is a problem.” ”For a long time the judicial system has not taken dogfighting and dog- biting seriously,” says Lapham. ”That laissez-faire attitude cannot persist. Dogfighting is not just aberrant behavior in a civilized society, it has become a lethal liability within that society. The best new ordinances and leash laws in the world will be worthless unless the courts deal with these people seriously. They have to send a message that says: You want to own these dogs, fine. But you’ll pay the consequences if you screw up.” It is a message that is already being sent. In February, Hayward Turnipseed of De Kalb County, Ga., was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison after three of his pit bulls attacked and killed four-year-old Billy Gordon as the child walked through a neighbor’s yard. Michael Berry, 37, the California man who owned the dog who killed two- year-old James Soto, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter. And Edlyn Joy Hauser, the woman whose dog, Benjamin, attacked animal control officer Crowell, has pleaded innocent to three felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon — Benjamin — and intentionally inflicting great bodily harm. As for the American pit bull terrier, it, too, has taken its lumps. In the three weeks following those two grisly June incidents in California, more than 300 pit bulls and pit bull crosses were turned in to the Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control Department, most of them by owners whono longer wanted the responsibility of keeping them, or who had simply become frightened of their own pet by the breed’s reputation. The animals were all put to sleep. Overpopulation of the breed remains one of the chief concerns about pit bulls, especially in already crowded urban areas. Law enforcement officials, animal control officers, animal rights groups and legislators are just beginning to address that particular problem. And the American pit bull terrier’s aberrant sidekick? They’re going to be dealing with the human part of the puzzle for a long, long time.
SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PIT BULLSLET THE BREED DISAPPEAR
Salina put in a pit bull ordinance, and since then we haven’t had not one serious mauling.
No, not all pits are bad, but they all have the ability to do serious damage when they do bite. And it’s not in how you handle the dog. Could it be poor breeding? Yes. But I’m proof positive that it’s not always environment.
I ran into a Pit Bull out at the Lake a month ago. Vicious looking, of course. But it was a sweet heart. Very well trained and docile.
What about the people who banned Horses from Human Consumption? Why?
I think people should eat cats and dogs if they want.
Such a waste of Blog Space… and a double post at that!! LOL
Hank – I share Dog Lover’s concerns about Pits. The scary thing to me is their incredible strength – I think I can handle other dogs if I have to but the Pit’s massive jaw muscles …
A neighbor has a Pit; I have known him since he was a puppy. Well taken care; not a ‘fighter’. However, he still makes me nervous with the children.
I don’t know what the answer is – I see TWO good arguements above – on both sides.
As an aside – perhaps the worst bite I ever got was from a Cocker Spaniel. Turned out he had been abused by a prior owner; the woman who had him at the time was rehabilitating him. I told her the cut wouldn’t require stitches so ‘no harm no foul’ – but I would have loved to have been able to sue the original owner!
Hank – looking at p-mom’s comments: How much inbreeding is happening and exacerbating the situation?
Hey Ben,
I think that breeding is a lot of the problem. Pit Bulls are not a recognized breed. (At least not by the AKC) A pit bull is whatever a person wants to call one.
The new legislation uses AKC breed standards to define what a pit bull is and therefore makes a few AKC breeds pit bulls by definition. Breeds that have never been a problem in Wichita.
When the legislation propose does’t work then that will begat more stupeid legislation that again will not work.
Define what a ‘dangerous dog’ is, no matter what the breed. Then (here’s a thought) enforce the damn law! Make people responsible for the havoc their dogs cause.
Case in point, that fool they caught with over 60 pit bulls in his basement with evidence of dog fighting was never charged with a crime! This man was violating almost every local ordinance concerning dogs. He was violating State and federal laws. He was responsible for endagering childred. (the original reason for authorities coming to his house) I also have it on good authority that he didn’t even recycle.
No charges. Scott free. Yet the nitwits are using him as an example for new BSL laws.
Hank
Part of what bothers me is that we saw a similar thing with Dobermans, Shepards, even Huskies. My old Husky mix was a pussycat – she only nipped the boys a bit AND THEY DESERVED IT. That was when she was old and a bit arthritic. As we told them “you keep picking on her and she WILL bite you … and I WILL laugh!”
I recall some years ago a similar thing happened with dalmations of all things. Poor breeding; particularly inbreeding. Puppy mills. And all the rest.
Give me a barn dog with unknown male lineage …
And as for the Michael Vick types … well, lets just say my punishment wouldn’t make me look much like a ‘liberal’
Hey Ben,
Dalmations were ruined by the puppy mills trying to keep up with the demand after the movie. Dalmations aren’t the best dog for everyone.
After Disney got through with them Dalmation rescue was bankrupted. I’m glad that most people that went to the ‘Shaggy Dog’ movie had no idea what kind of dog it was.
Hank
PS Oh, by the way, you’re probably more conservative than you’ld like to admit!
Hank – I know – and I have no rpoblem admitting it. That is why I refer to myself as a moderate. Heck, I even favor the death penalty if we are damn sure the guy is guilty.
More than 200 firefighters will convene this weekend for the first annual Wichita HoT, a major training exercise hosted by the Wichita Fire Department.
Firefighters from Wichita, other Kansas communities and several other states are registered for this intensive hands-on training (HoT) exercise. The daylong training exercises are offered Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 8-9, at various training sites offered by the Wichita Fire Department.
The gathering is expected to be the second largest in the state and allows local and regional firefighters to participate in training that previously was only available in other major cities and other states, according to WFD Capt. Bill Wenzel.
“These firefighters recognize this is a great opportunity to receive top-level training locally,” Wenzel said.
Training activities will cover a wide range of specialized firefighting techniques, such as forcible entry into a building with minimum property damage, Wenzel said.
“For example, a building could have steel bars in the windows, and we will train firefighters to remove the bars in the most efficient method,” he said. “For commercial property, it’s extremely important to get in the building with minimal damage.”
The Wichita Fire Department is providing the instructors and facilities for the exercise. The Wichita Fire Rescue Association, a non-profit organization created to promote firefighter training, pays other expenses.
Media coverage of the two-day exercise is welcome. Inquiries should be made to Capt. Wenzel, 648-5421. Capt. Wenzel will also be on site at the Wichita Fire Department Training Academy, 31st and Oliver.
Inbreeding is extremely common among all AKC breeds. It explains a lot of the various health problems each breed suffers in the pure breds.
Give me a Heinz 57 mutt any day of the week.