FOR OVER ONE HUNDRED YEARS AMERICANS KNEW PIT BULLS FOR WHAT THEY DID BEST: BABYSITTING

By Y.W. Grossman

Astoundingly, for most of our history America’s nickname for Pit Bulls was “The Nanny Dog”. For generations, if you had children and wanted to keep them safe you wanted a Pit Bull, the dog that was the most reliable of any breed with children or adults.

The Nanny Dog is now vilified by a media that always wants a demon dog breed to frighten people and LHASA-APSO BITES MAN just doesn’t sell papers. Before Pit Bulls, it was Rottweilers. Before Rottweilers, it was Dobermans, and before them German Shepherds. Each breed in its order were deemed too vicious and unpredictable to be around people. Each time people wanted laws to ban them. It is breathtakingly ironic that the spotlight has turned on the breed once the symbol of our country and our national babysitter.

In temperance tests (the equivalent of how many times your kid can poke your dog in the eye before it bites him) of all breeds, the most tolerant was the Golden Retriever. The second most tolerant was the Pit Bull.

Pit Bulls’ jaws do not lock. They do not have the most powerful bite among dogs; Rottweilers have that honor. They are not naturally human aggressive. In fact, Pit Bull puppies prefer human company to their mother’s two weeks before all other dogs, and they feel as much pain as any other breed (accidentally step on one’s toe and you’ll see).

The most tolerant, patient, gentle breed of dogs is now embarrassingly portrayed as the most dangerous. It would be funny if the new reputation did not mean 6,000 are put to death every day, by far the highest number of any other breed euthanized. That’s a lot of babysitters.