A pit bull, according to dictionary.com, is an American Staffordshire terrier defined as one of an American breed of strong, muscular terriers, originally developed in England, with a short, close-lying, stiff coat of any color or combination of colors except solid white. If you stopped and asked numerous people on the street what they believed a pit bull was you would hear a mix of negative and positive adjectives such as "nasty," "mean" and "frightening" or "sweet," "loveable," "playful." It makes one wonder why there is such a broad perspective on this particular breed. The reality is: most people don’t know the story behind the breed.
Pit bulls were brought over to America commonly during World War I as people fled from the warring countries. They were used to protect homesteads, hunting and often left to attend to the children. A pit bull used to carry the reputation, and in some cases still today, as a nanny dog. Note the famous Petey from the Little Rascals. He was a pit bull and he was always left to take care of the children. Pit bulls still to this day take easily to children and have a natural instinct to protect them. This breed did not always have the fowl stigma that surrounds them. They used to be honorable dogs, respected for their hard work and loyalty. It wasn’t until the recent decade in America that they became commonly known as vicious fighting dogs.
I have two pit bull mixes myself, who you see in the picture above. Baily, bottom, who is 5 years old and Zoey, top, who is almost 2 years old. I never once stopped to think if I shouldn't trust these two around children or visitors. My two are sweet, loveable, smart and often think they are lapdogs. There are countless stories of pit bulls who serve as police dogs, service dogs and even used as therapy dogs for children with special needs. Unfortunately, according to studies, pit bulls account for 58 percent of euthanized dog breeds a year. That's almost over a million! Found at http://blog.dogsbite.org/ America makes it hard to keep these numbers down. Families are often forced to take their pit bulls to shelters due to home insurance rates rising, apartments banning you from bringing them with you or adopting while renting. Recently, more and more senior citizen communities will not permit retired families to bring their dogs with them strictly due to their breed.
The bottom line and truth is, no matter what breed you own, whether full-breed or a mutt, they all can bite or have a mean side, just the same as humans. All dogs have their own personalities. Some are bright while some aren’t so bright, some eat anything while others don’t like anything, and some dogs are loud while some are quiet. Just like us, a dog acts according to his or her environment. You can teach a dog anything with the right amount of patience and persistence; even old dogs are smart enough to learn something new. Humans have to be tested to get into things such as college, why not put a test in place for a dog before denying families the right to take them along? It truly is unfair to judge a dog based on its breed and the negative stigma that is associated with it. Unfortunately though with the decline in the economy, more and more families are being forced into apartments and other means of living. It’s a tragedy that on top of losing a life they worked so hard to establish, they have to go through the traumatizing shock of leaving a piece of their family at a local shelter. If we work hard enough to change the stigma around these beautiful dogs, maybe more families could keep their beloved pets during their hard times. It could even be possible to break the discrimination of certain breeds and lower the numbers of shelter dogs and euthanizations of dogs around the country.
