Doggone Shame

It's a sad and all too familiar story that you can read about from the Salt Lake City Weekly.

City Week - June 22, 2006
Doggone Shame
Whether bred for battle or back yards, pit bulls don’t have much of a fighting chance.
by Shane Johnson



A mangy red heap was curled up beneath a winter display at the 2003 Christmas Village festival on Ogden’s 25th Street. Other passersby didn’t dare approach the emaciated and motionless pit bull, says Paul Schultz, who stopped despite his own leeriness of the breed.

“He honestly looked like he laid down there to die,” Schultz says. “I took off my camera strap, put it around him and coddled him along to my car.”

The now 3-year-old pit bull that Schultz named George likely went by a more menacing handle in his puppy days.

At the time of his rescue, George bore the marks of a gladiator: a streaking scar across the rib cage, fresh gashes about the head and face, and puncture wounds to the throat. His ears were sliced off—apparently two fewer appendages to be torn apart in battle. It’s as likely that George was discarded “bait”—a noncontender tethered to a wall used to rile up other dogs before a match—otherwise his tail would have been docked, too.

After a week of nourishment and cautious affection, George was hopping into Schultz’ bed for cuddles and wrestling with his children in the living room. Heaven’s Gate Animal Sanctuary kicked in for vaccinations, some much-needed veterinary attention and a trainer specializing in problem dogs. But George’s stay with Schultz was short-lived. Six months after being taken in, he bit a neighbor boy.

“Didn’t even break the skin,” Schultz insists, adding that the kid taunted George with food and whipped him with a rope. Though George will never get along with other animals, a trait exacerbated by his upbringing, Schultz says he’s as acclimated to people as any dog. Still, a judge ordered George banished from Riverdale city limits or destroyed. So it is that George now spends his days awaiting adoption at the Heaven’s Gate “no-kill” sanctuary in Morgan.

George’s story would be extraordinary if it weren’t so common, says Temma Martin, spokeswoman and education coordinator for Salt Lake County Animal Services. Of the 755 pit bulls and pit-bull mixes that strayed into the county shelter last year, a handful each month share George’s hallmarks of combat and are therefore unadoptable. A good many more are too aggressive to be offered for adoption in good conscience.

Compounding the dilemma, people in the market for a well-tempered pit bull, of whom there are plenty, are often the type who’d feed—and feed off of—its aggressive predisposition.

The commonly known “pit bull” isn’t a breed per se but shorthand for a family of dogs which originated in England—including the American Pit Bull Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier and the American Staffordshire Terrier. For centuries, pit bulls have been bred for “gameness,” a euphemism for the killing instinct. They were pitted against bulls and bears until the British Parliament outlawed such displays in 1835, but underground dog-on-dog contests persisted. The blood sport made its way to the United States, where it continues in basements and off the beaten path.

“They wanted an animal that would go in and fight and not stop until the other animal was dead or gave up,” explains John Paul Fox, chief animal cruelty investigator for the Humane Society of Utah. Those stocks were meticulously preserved so that now the pit bull’s stout physique, crushing jaw power, unmatched pain threshold and reputation as the meanest beast on four legs make it a trophy for less-than-upstanding dog owners—toughs, sundry criminal types and dog fighters.

“If it’s aggressive, it probably won’t get adopted, because the people who want an aggressive dog often aren’t people we want to adopt to,” Martin explains. “And the people who want a nice family dog often don’t even look at pit bulls.

“On the other hand, the people who know the breed and know that if you get a pit bull, and socialize it, and train it, and raise it with the mentality of a golden retriever—it can be a perfectly nice dog.”

But local headlines suggest pit bulls’ bully rap will get worse before it gets better. Around the Wasatch Front, menacing pit bulls have forced police officers to their holsters more than a few times lately. For example, two escaped pit bulls terrorized a Tooele neighborhood, biting five children and a woman before responding officers killed the dogs. And, furthering the scumbag-canine-of-choice premise, Salt Lake City SWAT officers shot a pit bull dead while serving a search warrant at a suspected drug house.

In years past, Martin could fall back on hard statistics to disprove pit bulls’ reputation as the worst of the worst. Though they regularly ranked among the top five or six breeds for biting people, the far-less-notorious Labrador historically took top honors. In 2005, however, Martin says pit bulls lived up to the hype, notching 99 reported bites in Salt Lake County compared to 83 for Labs. Those numbers reflect a surge in pit-bull demand, Martin reckons, with more owners drawn to their “mystique.”

Municipalities across the country have responded with a wave of breed-specific ordinances aimed at cracking down on pit bulls and, to a lesser degree, maligned breeds such as the Rottweiler. Most notably, Denver reinstated a city- and countywide pit-bull ban last year, with surrounding cities following suit to fend off four-legged refugees. Among Utah municipalities, Morgan requires that pit bulls be leashed and muzzled at all times in public; Springville and North Salt Lake both mandate insurance bonds for owners; the breed is illegal in South Jordan; and some shelters have adopted 100-percent euthanasia policies for pit bulls.

Martin says a better approach than ostracizing pit bulls is to crack down on dog-fighting circuits and abusive owners while pressing breeders to recognize the inevitable fate of their litters. At that, of 505 purebred pit bulls taken into the county shelter last year, 39 percent were returned to their owners, 46 percent were destroyed and only 8 percent were adopted, she says.

All of which adds up to a grim outlook for George. Nonetheless, Schultz and the rest of Heaven’s Gate’s committed volunteers are rooting for their rehabilitated bruiser. George’s perfect human can’t have any other pets and will need a strong hand along with a kind heart.

“He’s not a bad dog, but he’s a special dog,” Schultz says.