America is two countries now—the country of its narrative and the country of its numbers, with the latter sitting in judgment of the former. In the stories we tell ourselves, we are nearly always too good: too soft on criminals, too easy on terrorists, too lenient with immigrants, too kind to animals. In the stories told by our numbers, we imprison, we drone, we deport, and we euthanize with an easy conscience and an avenging zeal. We have become schizophrenic in that way, and pit bulls hold up the same mirror as the 2.2 million souls in our prisons and jails and the more than 350,000 people we deport every year. Every year, American shelters have to kill about 1.2 million dogs. But both pro- and anti-pit-bull organizations estimate that of these, anywhere from 800,000 to nearly 1 million are pit bulls. We kill anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 pit bulls a day. They are rising simultaneously in popularity and disposability, becoming something truly American, a popular dog forever poised on the brink of extermination. There is endless argument over the reliability of bite statistics and breed identification and over the question of whether aggression in dogs is associated with specific genes or environmental triggers common to all dogs: that is, whether pit bulls who bite do so because they are pit bulls or because they are more likely to be intact male dogs at the end of a chain. But even if you concede the worst of the statistics—even if you concede the authority of a fourteen-year-old CDC report that implicated pit bulls and rottweilers in a majority of fatal dog attacks—one thing is certain about pit bulls in America: They are more sinned against than sinning.
My daughter is an only child who has found her sibling in her dog, Dexter. She feeds him; he allows her to take his food. She rides her bike when I walk him; he cries and whimpers and moans when she strays from his side. He has been, from the start, the most obedient dog we've ever had, the quickest to learn and most eager to please; and so when she had to write an essay for school, she wrote one extolling his intelligence. When she had to write a poem, she wrote a cycle of four with him as her muse, including one that contemplated his difficult passage to our home: "trying/sighing/crying/not dying—Dexter." She calls him Bro and writes him letters; and when her school asked her to do her spring project on the subject of change, she decided to raise money for an advocacy group called StubbyDog.
StubbyDog is dedicated to changing how people think about pit bulls. It offers online education and resources; its leaders also join the debate when states and cities contemplate breed-specific legislation. When Cedar City, Utah, contemplated banning pit bulls, StubbyDog's chairman, Russ Mead, began his presentation to the city council this way: "In looking at your dog-bite statistics, you don't have a pit-bull problem, you have a cocker-spaniel problem." When my daughter found StubbyDog, she found an ally for her own cause, and so one afternoon in March she perfected a spiel, rigged a cardboard box for the purpose of taking donations, and went door-to-door in our neighborhood. My wife went with her. So did Dexter.
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My daughter is an only child who has found her sibling in her dog, Dexter. She feeds him; he allows her to take his food. She rides her bike when I walk him; he cries and whimpers and moans when she strays from his side. He has been, from the start, the most obedient dog we've ever had, the quickest to learn and most eager to please; and so when she had to write an essay for school, she wrote one extolling his intelligence. When she had to write a poem, she wrote a cycle of four with him as her muse, including one that contemplated his difficult passage to our home: "trying/sighing/crying/not dying—Dexter." She calls him Bro and writes him letters; and when her school asked her to do her spring project on the subject of change, she decided to raise money for an advocacy group called StubbyDog.
StubbyDog is dedicated to changing how people think about pit bulls. It offers online education and resources; its leaders also join the debate when states and cities contemplate breed-specific legislation. When Cedar City, Utah, contemplated banning pit bulls, StubbyDog's chairman, Russ Mead, began his presentation to the city council this way: "In looking at your dog-bite statistics, you don't have a pit-bull problem, you have a cocker-spaniel problem." When my daughter found StubbyDog, she found an ally for her own cause, and so one afternoon in March she perfected a spiel, rigged a cardboard box for the purpose of taking donations, and went door-to-door in our neighborhood. My wife went with her. So did Dexter.
- More Here
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