Education

I'll start with a bit of a rant because I had a bad experience today. I own a (deep breath and then a gasp, if you will) Pit Bull. She is almost 2 and is wonderful. I never knew all the trouble I would get into by owning one. It is not the dog but simply the name of the breed that brings this trouble. When we met Eleanor, she was 8 weeks old. She was so sweet and just curled up in our arms. This was the day after Christmas 2004. She was about 5lbs and just licked our hands and loved us. A few days after arriving home with her we went to the local petstore (unnamed) and a food representative began telling us horror stories about having a Pit. My husband and I don't have kids yet so he (we) began to worry that we had made a mistake. She was only 8 weeks old but she might hurt our future babies! I have to say that after a week we were already emotionally attached to her and just thinking about getting rid of her made me burst into tears. Because getting a dog was sort of an impulse decision, I recommended to my husband that we not make an equally hasty decision getting rid of her. "Lets do a little research before we make any decisions," I said. Boy, am I glad I said that. For two reasons. One, Eleanor is the best dog (sure I am a little bit biased) and I would have missed out on the experience of being her doggie Mom. Two, the rumors weren't all true and many of them were just plain urban legends and myths.

Now, where was I going with all this? Oh yeah, education. One of my tenants as a Pit owner is to educate people on the myths ad so called truths of Pits. At the end of this post will be some links to some of my favorite sites for dog (and Pit) information. Please visit the sites and you too will fall in love with some of the greatest dogs on earth. So, back to the tenants. I now have a much more enlightened view of Pits and dogs in general. The way I see it they are a lot like people (I'll be making this parallel a lot so I hope it doesn't make you uncomfortable). If you treat people badly, deny them basic rights and ignore them or are unkind to them, generally they will reciprocate this same behavior. This is the same with ALL dogs. Likewise, many people think that all dogs should get along with all other dogs. This simply isn't true. Like people, some dogs are the social butterflies of the group whereas others are the loners in the corner with a drink in their hand at the party. That is the way it is. We can't make the loner be the butterfly, it just doesn't work. Truly I am ranting now. I do wish to get something off my back that happened today.

My husband and I are foster dog parents through the Alternative Humane Society and I was telling a fellow coworker about how busy my life is because of the 2 extra doggies. When asked what kind of dogs, I responded "pits." Now, here was my first mistake. I have gotten used to "educated" dog owners that think like I do. These people don't care about the breed but look to the actual dog themselves to make a final call based on behavior, manners and social interaction. I should have said the PC term (and unknown term) of Staffordshire Terrier. When you say this, people generally say, "oh, I've never heard of that kind of dog." So with the name dropping already out there, one woman gasped and another woman in the background whispered something under her breath about how they should be taken out and shot. Now, I will tell you now that I don't care who you are, you just don't say that. It is mean. In the near future I will be handling that situation. But it reminded me that people need to be educated about dogs. I am by NO MEANS an expert of any kind but I feel that I am pretty open minded about dogs and how to make judgement calls. I hope you enjoy these links. Please feel free to comment about my ranting or the links (let me know if they don't work also).

Eduation really is the key to unlocking the door of freedom. In this case, it unlocks the mind and allows us to love many VERY loving and loveable dogs.

http://pitbulllovers.com
http://workingpitbull.com
http://badrap.org/rescue/ If you are going to go to anyone's site, I HIGHLY recommend this one. It is my absolute favorite one. Go to the "Happy Endings" section and you'll likely shed a tear at the great success stories.

I'll post more links next time. Thanks for reading Dog Lovers.