I'll Take Pitbulls Over People Most Any Day

I came in last week and hadn’t even put my bag down before a staff member said “There’s an issue.” Uh boy. Kennel cough? Heat exhaustion?

Worse.

“<name withheld to protect the not so innocent> was very unhappy to see her dog playing with Willy.” I looked around. I saw a Willy in the playroom. He’s a 5 month old pitbull puppy who comes to daycare. His main ambitions in life are to show everyone his belly and chew on his feet. Clearly I had the wrong Willy. “Which Willy?” She giggled and pointed in the playroom. “That Willy. She said he is a pitbull and she refuses to let her dog play with a pitbull because their jaws can lock and they‘re aggressive.” As she was talking, Willy saw me looking at him and rolled onto his back. Oh yeah. He’s ferocious. I heaved a sigh, “What did you tell her?” “I said we never breed discriminate and if she has any other questions she should talk to you. Here‘s her number”

Fine.

I call her. I introduce myself, go through some basic pleasantries and get down to discussing Willygate. I’ll spare you the details but she recounted every misinformed and baseless reason all ignorant people have for disliking pitbulls. I explained to her (not very nicely I’m embarrassed to say)…(I’m lying, I’m not embarrassed at all actually) that we welcome everyone here and if she can’t put her narrow minded opinions aside then she is not welcome. She paused, thought about it and said, “Oooook but -” “No buts. That’s how it is here.”

I’ve seen this same woman several times since and she makes it a point to be as nice as possible to me. Probably so I won’t feed her to dog a pitbull.

All kidding aside, breed discrimination on any level is no laughing matter. On a state level, we New Yorkers are lucky. According to Article 7, Section 107, Paragraph 5 of Agriculture and Markets law:

Nothing contained in this article shall prevent a municipality from adopting its own program for the control of dangerous dogs; provided, however, that no such program shall be less stringent than this article, and no such program shall regulate such dogs in a manner that is specific as to breed.

It goes on to state that ANY breed has to be determined “dangerous” by a court and if a town tries to enforce a breed ban, it is illegal and unconstitutional. Take that haters!

On a local and more personal level, many people fail to realize is there is no such thing as a pitbull. There are American Staffordshire Terriers, but “pitbull” is just a catch all name for any bully breed dog. At my job, when people take a tour and see an American Bulldog, English Bulldog, a Mastiff or some combination of the three, they assume it’s a pitbull. And while the majority of our customers are cool and don’t care who plays with who, there’s always That One who makes a snide comment. Without fail this results in me telling them how the only dogs who have ever bitten at daycare were labs and how they can walk into a playroom that’s wall to wall pits, covered in bacon grease and those dogs wouldn‘t so much as nibble on them - oh, it‘s a rant. They usually regret saying anything by the time I'm done.

Regarding the notion that ANY dog can lock it’s jaws - it can’t. Of course some dogs have stronger grips than others (think Jack Russell hanging off a rope) and some are more determined to hang on than others (my cavalier Magoo has jaws of steel when I try to get a bug out of his mouth) but no, the jaw never actually locks. It’s a ridiculous notion if you think about it.

Many people also throw the word aggressive around a little too freely. There are dogs who are more confident than others and have no problem being pushy or obnoxious but that by no means says the dog is aggressive. There are also dogs who, when being irritated beyond their capacity, will let out a warning growl or snap at the air to signal they have had enough. Again, that dog isn’t aggressive. It’s telling you to beat it.

Not unlike I told my customer regarding Willy.