Not Bullish On Pits

Dear Dog Lady,
I have six chinchillas, three hamsters and a Maltese. I need a good guard dog, so I picked out the American pit bull terrier. If I raise it as a puppy with all my other animals, will the native aggressive tendency of the pit bull go away towards the other animals?

Gui, Brooklyn, NY

Gui, fasten your seatbelt and prepare for a rant. Dog Lady warns you about introducing a pit bull into the menagerie.

Dog Lady cannot vouch for the behavior of any dog bred to fight and kill. Pit bull puppies may be adorable innocents, but they grow up. Many adult pit bulls are gentle as lambs. Many aren't. Are you prepared to do the work to raise a responsible animal? After all, a pit bull is only as gentle and responsibly behaved as its human keeper.

To be honest, pit bulls can scare Dog Lady. All you have to do is look at the square jaw of an adult dog to understand why a pit bull is a lethal weapon. Once that jaw locks down on the flesh of another animal or human, the consequences can be deadly.

The pit bull is an effective guard dog, but at what price? Are you brave enough to be a vigilant trainer of a pit bull? Why do you need such intense protection? If you’re trafficking in illegal substances, then surely you have worse things to do than write “Ask Dog Lady” for advice.

You are naive if you believe a cooped-up pit bull will not attack your other critters -- especially the Maltese. Recently, an off-leash pit bull attacked and killed Lucy, a Maltese in Boston’s South End. The incident happened in seconds, without provocation. Suddenly, the pit bull charged, lunged, and locked on to the leashed Maltese whose human guardian was powerless to protect the small dog in the face of such malevolent canine power.

Dog Lady’s dog was luckier when beset by a pit bull, although the shock still lingers. Early one summer morning, Dog Lady’s darling was sniffing out squirrels in a park when, suddenly, out of nowhere, a pit bull ran towards us. Its owner, screaming for the dog to stop, ran after the rampaging dog as it dragged its leash.

The pit bull jumped on darling who managed to bob, weave and elude the attacker while Dog Lady could only scream. The pit bull’s owner frantically tried to get control of the dog. The frenzied yells woke up every snoozing vagrant.

As quickly as the incident began, it ended when the owner managed to grab the pit bull’s leash. The owner collapsed to her knees as a quaking Dog Lady and her deflated darling (whose ears were at half-mast) hurried away without words or woofs.

Gui, there are caring, law-abiding keepers of pit bulls who insist their dogs are calm and predictable. And there are many pit bull puppies, brought irresponsibly into the world, who wait to be adopted in shelters. If you raise one from puppy hood, the dog will have a chance.

Animals are animals. If we train them well, they often behave reliably. But we cannot ever know when they will go atavistic ballistic. That primal instinct is the gulf between humans and dogs -- a gap as wide as a pit bull’s jaw.

Posted by Dog Lady at October 26, 2003 10:43 AM