Prejudice n. 1. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand without knowledge of the facts. 2. Irrational suspicion of a particular group, race, or religion.
Prejudice does not only apply to humans. We are animals, mammals.
Mammal n. Any of various warm blooded vertebrate animals, including human beings, marked by a covering of hair on the skin and, in the female, milk producing glands.
I don’t doubt that whoever wants Pit Bulls to be banned had a bad experience with one. I was robbed along with my family at knife point by a group of Colombians. Do I believe all Colombians are bad and need to be killed? No. Those particular people need to be punished. Not all Colombians are bad. Does every Pit Bull attack humans? No. Pit Bulls have a bum rap. Would-be dog fighters use their background against them. Pit Bulls have had no other choice but to fight. If you take every Pit Bull attack case, I would bet that most of them were owned by bad people. People who trained that dog to be aggressive. The fact of the matter is, all reported dog bite cases say the dog “looked” like a Pit Bull. This, unfortunately, continues to hurt the breed’s reputation. Why are Pit Bulls the attack dog of choice? Pit Bulls have an extreme loyalty to their human. If you tell a Pit Bull to be bad, it will be bad to satisfy you. Pit Bulls are strong. And, Pit Bulls are smart, making them easily trained. We, on the other hand, have been trained to be prejudiced, just like Pit Bulls are sometimes trained to be bad. They are not born bad, just like no baby is born bad. Why are the only dog attack stories on the news about Pit Bulls? No other dog in the world has ever attacked a person? Because it’s easy to pinpoint a specific breed and say get rid of it. The world would be a better place without Pit Bulls. The media makes us think these things. We need to step back and try to figure out what is really bad and try to fix that. Guns, crime, unemployment, the deficit, babies without homes…. Pit Bulls are not the problem. People are the problem. Punish the owner of a bad Pit Bull. They probably made it like that.
If you go to a shelter, a large percentage of dogs there are Pit Bulls or Pit Bull mixes. Why? Because people believe the stories. People are scared for their families and give their loving family pet to the shelter. Because Pit Bulls are so smart and strong, they do need to be trained, just like any other large breed dog. The Pit’s natural tendency is to be the Alpha dog. The owner needs to be the Alpha dog, at least in the Pit’s eyes. The Pit Bull’s only concern is protecting it’s pack.
Back in the early 1900s, Pit Bulls were the dog of choice for protecting the wife and children while the husband was off at work. These were the loyal, hard working family pet that we still have now.
If you’re thinking about a new pet, don’t judge the breed, just as we wouldn’t judge a race or religion. Get to know the individual animal, train it right, and love it as a part of the family, just as you would any animal.
