DogTown (23 page)

W
atching the big caramel-colored dog Meryl run through the obstacle course called Tara’s Run is like going to the circus without having to buy a ticket. Meryl is a gorgeous animal, sleek as a seal, with that combination of grace, power, and agility that only the finest human athletes can approach. In fact, Meryl is a regular agility superstar, effortlessly navigating twisting tunnels, bouncing seesaws, stairs, and tires and deftly weaving through a series of tightly spaced poles at high speed like a daredevil downhill racer threading the gates.

There is clearly a bond of trust and affection between Meryl and her trainer, Ann Allums. Ann guides her through each obstacle with the gentlest of directions—Ann shows Meryl where to go, and then Meryl enthusiastically attacks each new challenge. Deeply muscled, especially across the chest and shoulders, Meryl is nevertheless lithe as a dancer, nimbly weaving, explosively sprinting, carefully balancing. At the end of the run, she pants happily and lathers Ann all over with wet, sloppy kisses, while Ann rewards her with praise and pats. It’s been a good workout for both of them, and Meryl is worn out and content.

To witness the affectionate teamwork between Meryl and Ann makes it difficult—almost impossible—to believe that this dog is under a federal court order never to leave Dogtown. Meryl is one of the dogs rescued by Best Friends in 2007 from a dogfighting ring run by former NFL quarterback Michael Vick. The society and other rescue organizations became involved in the high-profile Vick case when it looked as though all the dogs involved, regardless of history or temperament, would be euthanized. Both the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals felt that the pit bulls could not be rehabilitated because they had been trained as fighters, not pets. Best Friends felt differently and took decisive action to save the dogs’ lives.

Best Friends and ten other animal welfare groups filed a brief arguing that the dogs could be turned around if only they were given the right environment. They outlined their approach for assessing and rehabilitating the dogs. It was a thorough plan, one that succeeded in persuading the court to spare the lives of the dogs. Twenty-two of the dogs went to Best Friends (the rest were placed with other rescue groups), but there was a catch. Of these 22 dogs, Meryl, with her history of aggression toward people, and another dog, Lucas (said to be a five-time fight champion), remained under a protective court order: They could be released to Dogtown, but the court deemed them too dangerous ever to leave it.

In spite of this prohibition, Best Friends Animal Society accepted Meryl without hesitation because they believed that given the right care, she could turn things around. They were willing to give Meryl a permanent home at Dogtown, where they could get to know her and work with her to give her the best life possible—even if adoption was not in her future.

FEAR OF A BREED

Anyone encountering Meryl for the first time might understand the judge’s initial fears and the decision to keep her at Dogtown for the rest of her life. She is a formidable-looking animal with a massive, hammer-shaped head, oversize jaws, and heavily muscled forequarters. When behind the chain-link fence of her enclosure, she would sometimes bark relentlessly and snarl when a stranger approached. To anyone unfamiliar with her, the behavior could be frightening. But Meryl’s behavior was only one problem. The other obstacle: prejudice against her breed.

The reputation of pit bulls in the past 20 years has taken a hit. Once adored and trusted companion animals, pit bulls are now believed by many to be terrifying “superpredators” bred for ferocity and aggression and unfit for human society. They have become the dog of choice in illegal fighting operations, which has only done more damage to their reputation. Even the best behaved pit pull, with no history of aggression, must overcome this pervasive bias before being adopted. Because of breed stereotypes, Meryl’s barks and growls take on a more frightening quality. But where does this stereotype come from?

In a book called
The Pit Bull Placebo,
vet tech and author Karen Delise argues that every age seems to have a “villain” dog—and at this particular moment in history, pit bulls are it. In the late 1880s, bloodhounds were said to be vicious and bloodthirsty, and no stage production of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
was complete without a pack of baying bloodhounds chasing the escaped slave Eliza. Later it was bulldogs, then German shepherds and Doberman pinschers—especially after World War II, when they became associated with Nazis.

Pit bulls (in reality, a vague term that can refer to about 20 different breeds) have been maligned partly because of several frightening myths, Delise argues. One of the most prominent untruths is that pit bulls have a unique jaw structure that allows them to “lock” on to their victims. This is simply untrue, says Dr. Howard Evans, veterinarian and author of
Anatomy of the Dog
, considered to be the definitive work on canine anatomy: “There is no anatomical structure that could be a locking mechanism in any dog.”

It’s widely believed that one quality setting pit bulls apart from all other breeds is phenomenal biting force, as measured in pounds per square inch, or psi. But one study, which measured (by means of a bite sleeve attached to a computerized instrument) the bite force of a German shepherd, a Doberman pinscher, and an American Staffordshire terrier (one of the breeds commonly called a pit bull), found that the American Staffordshire’s bite exerted the
lowest
amount of pressure.

“A TIME BOMB”

It is such misconceptions that cause pit bulls to loom so large in the public consciousness. They have become so frightening to so many, in fact, that an increasing number of localities have enacted “breed-banning” or “breed discriminatory” laws, which make it illegal to own, import, or even possess certain breeds of dog, usually pit bulls or other “bully breeds.” Some believe that pit bulls are so dangerous that the entire bloodline should be wiped out; while arguing in favor of a pit bull ban in the city of Denver, Assistant City Attorney Kory Nelson claimed in the late 1990s that “the breed should be terminated as simply being a time bomb waiting to go off.”

The wave of fear—some would say hysteria—over pit bulls began to build in the early 1990s, when Denver, Miami, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Toledo, and dozens of other smaller cities enacted bans on them. By 2000, more than 200 cities and counties had enacted breed bans or restrictions. Most of these laws were aimed at pit bulls or dogs with “pit bull characteristics.”

Although breed bans are intended to solve the problem of vicious dogs, when a dog bites a person, the issues involved are far more complex than just breeding. In a 2006
New Yorker
article called “Troublemakers: What Pit Bulls Can Teach Us About Profiling” by Malcolm Gladwell, Randall Lockwood, a senior vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, summed up the complexity of the problem: “A fatal dog attack is not just a dog bite by a big or aggressive dog. It is usually a perfect storm of bad human-canine interactions—the wrong dog, the wrong background, the wrong history in the hands of the wrong person in the wrong environmental situation.”

Lockwood, a leading expert on dog bites, told Gladwell that he never saw any fatal attacks involving pit bulls until the late 1980s, when the breed’s popularity began to surge. (Before then, Lockwood said, he saw fatal attacks by every breed of dog except beagles and basset hounds.) It could very well be, Gladwell argues, that pit bulls are involved in a fairly large number of attacks primarily because there so many pit bulls—a kind of statistical fluke suggesting that they are more dangerous than they really are.

Meryl’s life was spared by a 2007 court order, which also deemed that her entire life be lived out at Dogtown.

Which is why, in a nutshell, breed-banning legislation is too generalized an approach to tackling the problem of aggressive dogs. Best Friends’ view is that an animal’s breed alone should not result in an outright ban or a death sentence. They see dogs as individuals, as products of their training, their personality, their temperament, and their level of socialization, in addition to their breeding.

Best Friends’ decision to take on a “difficult” dog like Meryl is based on this belief in treating the dog as an individual. Rather than classifying Meryl as some sort of demon dog because she is a pit bull, the sanctuary chose to assess Meryl using everything they could learn about her—their professional observations and assessments, her known history from the dogfighting organization, and the qualities of her breed. There is no denying that Meryl can be a dangerous dog, one who could bite in the wrong situation. But Best Friends believes that introducing Meryl to a better set of circumstances, socializing her to interact safely with people and other dogs, and teaching her behaviors that will enrich her life will help Meryl to change. She may not get all the way there, but Best Friends is determined to try. As Ann Allums has described it, “Here at Dogtown is where the dog gets a chance to be who she is, not who humans fear she
might
be.”

BUILDING TRUST

Just because Best Friends is willing to work with aggressive dogs, it doesn’t mean that they are naive about the potential risk involved. Ann Allums has worked hard to develop a bond with Meryl, who still has trouble trusting new people and unfamiliar situations. She has devoted countless hours of careful work with her, both for the dog’s sake and for her own safety. Ann knows where Meryl has come from and can only guess what she has been through, but the trainer’s insight and patience have yielded a strong bond.

The close relationship between the pair is evident whenever Ann approaches Meryl’s enclosure. As Ann gets closer, Meryl stops barking, drops down onto all fours, and begins wagging her tail, nosing up to the fence. Her brown eyes look up at Ann beseechingly, as though begging for a treat or perhaps a romp at Tara’s Run.

“Hello, Meryl,” Ann whispers soothingly. “What’s up with you today, big girl?” Ann slips her a chicken treat through the enclosure fence, and Meryl sloppily tries to lick her hand.

Ann lets herself into the run, and Meryl, desperate for her attention, playfully bows down toward her front paws, rump up, tail wagging, and then dances forward in anticipation of another treat or maybe a back scratch.

Sometimes she jumps up and spins around like a puppy on a spring day. She runs off to fetch a favorite stuffed toy, brings it back, and drops it at Ann’s feet. Unlike some pit bulls whose ears have been cropped (some dogs’ ears are cut for fighting purposes, while others, like Great Danes’, may be cut for cosmetic reasons), Meryl’s ears are uncut and floppy, which softens her face, giving it a cuddlier, more endearing quality. Her fur is mostly chestnut brown, with a white blaze on her chest. She is quite young (Ann guesses she is about four years old), and surprisingly, her muzzle and body are almost completely free of scars, unlike some of the other Vick dogs, which indicates she was probably not a fighting dog (Meryl has also shown great affection for other dogs, another sign that she was most likely not used as a fighter).

A FRIGHTENING FIRST ENCOUNTER

Dogtown staff first came to know Meryl when they traveled to Virginia in 2007 to assess the dogs rescued from the Michael Vick dogfighting operation, dubbed Bad Newz Kennels (it was named after the neighborhood in Newport News, known as Bad Newz, where Vick grew up). Best Friends sent vet tech Jeff Popowich and dog trainer John Garcia to Virginia to where the dogs were being housed temporarily. They wanted to get to know the animals, assess their needs, and make the transition to the sanctuary in Utah a bit smoother.

Both guys had a special affection for pit bulls, or pitties, as they call them. John has one at home called Spikey Doo. He describes her as “a couch potato” whose “official position in life is making me happy, pretty much.” Before he began working with animals, John had no idea what kind of reputation pit bulls had in the wider world, because his experience with the breed had been very positive; the dogs he knew were so eager to please, exuberant, loyal, and sweet. “I just love pitties. I mean, what can you not love about them?”