The Truth about BSL

I honestly never thought I would be writing an article for Atomic Dogg Magazine.  I have always loved pit bulls, don’t get me wrong, but never dreamed I would have gotten involved in the anti-BSL movement.

To tell you a little bit about us, before Justin and I were married, we were neighbors.  He had a pit bull, three kids and a wife.  I had an American Eskimo.

I loved his dog, whose name was Demon.  He was a black, game bred dog that would do anything for Justin. He would tackle a locomotive if he asked him to or baby sit his kids. He also hated his (now-ex) wife; he was a fantastic dog…and was my first introduction to pit bulls, as a fledgling veterinarian in 1997.

Eight years and one divorce apiece later, Justin and I became reacquainted, and that part is history that I won’t bore you with.  We’re here to talk about dogs. 

I still had my American Eskimo, and Demon had since passed.  Justin now had four sons (he’s nothing if not fertile--he calls himself the Inseminator, thanks to Bully the Kid), and another game bred female that we named Silk.  A great babysitter, an awesome companion.  She truly was Man’s Best Friend.

Justin has always been passionate about pit bulls, their bad image in the media, and trying to right the wrongs of the world.  I was content with not rocking the boat, or creating waves for the most part.  One day, that all changed.

I was working as an associate veterinarian in a small clinic in Van Buren, Arkansas.  The Animal Control Officer (anti-pit bull, cocky; you know the type) brought in a gangly pit bull that had been shot (by him, no surprise).  He said the dog “came at him in an attack and he had to shoot him at point blank range”.

I believed him.  Justin did not.

When I x-rayed the dog, I saw a bullet lodged in his abdomen.  I knew he needed an exploratory to get the bullet out, so we prepped him for surgery. The AC officer was only concerned with keeping the dog alive long enough to “prove” he was a vicious dog, information he could use in court.

When I opened the dog, I was astounded at what I found.  The bullet had traveled through the dog’s shoulder, into the chest, through the lung, and lodged in the liver.  For those of you familiar with anatomy, you’ll know where I am going with this.  For those that aren‘t, these are the facts…the officer could never have shot the dog at the angle required for point blank range, because the bullet had traveled in an almost straight line through the dog’s body, and lost momentum and lodged in the liver.  I was starting to feel like an episode of CSI.

The owners did show up, worried sick about the dog and explaining that he was not vicious, which we already knew.  He was very injured, and had to be in pain, and he never looked at us with even a thought of biting.  He was the epitome of the American Pit Bull Terrier.

This dog was the beginning of my own passion for the pit bull.  He was the start of our family fight against BSL and its repercussions.  But at the time, we were only being faced with prejudice, not legislation.  Van Buren did not have a ban, and so we thought we were immune to BSL’s wide reach. Surely that only happened in big cities, right?  Surely our conservative, God-fearing, gun-toting Arkansas would not adopt these ignorant ideas. Right?

But circumstances change, as circumstances do, and we moved. To Russellville, Arkansas.  A town that had already embraced the BSL propaganda. We were committed to moving when we discovered the ugly truth.

We now had Silk, and a new pit bull, an American bully that we got from Shawn at Blueforce Kennels, by the name of Jazz.  And we found out that if we were seen in town with either of them, they could be confiscated, no questions asked, and taken to the Animal Shelter and euthanized.  I was appalled. Justin was furious.  That could not be legal…could it?  My naïve Catholic school upbringing was shining through.

So, the fight began.

We actually moved out of the city limits, both because of the ban and because we have horses.  But we had to travel to and from the clinic everyday, and were nervous even having the dogs in the car with us.  Apparently, they were safe as long as they were at the clinic, but that was no way for a dog to live, long term.

We wanted to be prominent in the community, for the benefit of the dogs, all dogs.  We wanted to bring a service that was not available in the area thus far.  We saw a lot of behavior problems in a lot of my patients, and so the obvious solution was to start a dog obedience class, hosted by our clinic, Southwind Animal Hospital.

We had no idea what the demand for such a class would be.  The first one (an eight week course) had four dogs.  The second class started filling up before the first class ended.  The third class was double the number of the second class.  The idea was gaining momentum with lightening speed, all word of mouth.

We instituted what came to be known as “pit bull therapy”.  Dogs that had been confused by not having a true “alpha” to follow, or not knowing how to communicate as dogs are supposed to, were rehabilitated by our own pit bulls.  They would be put in with Jazz and Silk, who would teach a puppy not to be pushy and disrespectful, or teach an adult dog that there was a pecking order, and that he/she (the outsider) was at the bottom of it.  Jazz and Silk took the majority of the work out of teaching an unstable dog how to be a healthy dog.

Justin then started talking about the Ban.  We should try to lift the ban, which had been passed in 2005.  I let him talk, thinking, what could two people do against such prejudice?  Who would listen?  Who would care?  I never thought that it was something remotely feasible, to overturn a ban already in place.  I had a busy veterinary practice, we had (now) six children total, two dogs, eleven horses, four cats, two birds, and no time for BSL.

But BSL affected us, regardless.

We had clients that were losing their companions simply because they “looked” like a pit bull.  And they couldn’t do a thing to stop it.  We had clients that had to find homes outside the city limits because they refused to give up their dogs. We had Animal Control coming into our clinic to attempt to take dogs they deemed “vicious” or “potentially dangerous”, a label I found ridiculous.  Every dog was “potentially” dangerous!

So, in reality, the fight found us.

Even after I made a statement that one owner’s dog was not a pit bull, that it was not vicious or even potentially vicious, Animal Control discredited me and euthanized the animal anyway.  The officer that day, when asked, called our registered APBT a “chocolate lab mix”.  How qualified were these people in identifying dogs, much less euthanizing dogs for the benefit of the citizens?

Justin talked to the Mayor, who, in his words, was “worthless as tits on a boar hog”.  We would get no help from him. He did everything in his power to keep us from finding out how the system worked, prevented us from getting to City Council meetings, and smiled the entire time, pretending he was a friend.  We thought he might sympathize with the discrimination theory, as he himself was African American, but we were wrong.  He was a politician, through and through.

When we finally discovered the date of the next city council meeting and got on the agenda despite much attempts to stop us, we decided it was time to present to them and try to get the ban uplifted.  We met with Brandon and Lori Richardson of Diamond State Bullies, who gave us a huge amount of information on fighting BSL, as they had done recently in their hometown.  I compiled my own packet, using some of their information and some of my own.

In talking with Brandon and Lori, we found out the first Arkansas Bully show, that they were planning, was going to be cancelled.  Everyone was disappointed that all their hard work was going to be for nothing, and I looked at Justin, and saw his wheels turning furiously.

“Oh, no,” I said when we got into the truck after that visit.  “What are you thinking?”

He smiled, smugly.

“We could use a show in our cause in lifting the ban. If we could show the city how much money they stand to gain by lifting the ban so we can have this show, then I think that would be a big mark in our favor.”

“Yes,” I said slowly.  “That is true…” How big was this thing going to get? I wondered.

Justin, the ultimate people-person, started talking to experts in BSL, like Dave, John from DetroitBullee, and Cecil (Skip) Miller.  He talked to experts about having a show in Russellville, like John Downing, Ron Ramos and, once again, Skip Miller, all ABKC judges. Skip was very excited to come in person to help in any way possible. Ron and Skip both agreed to judge in the event of a show in Russellville.  Justin had another idea. What about doing temperament testing in place of banning breeds?  And as a way to raise money for a full-time (qualified) animal control officer? 

Skip was extremely helpful and offered to donate a portion of his fees to the cause.  We made arrangements for him to come down, with his dog, for the day of the council meeting.  What a statement it would make to have a man come in with a dog, a pit bull, certified as a therapy dog and allowed in any public establishment in the nation, to speak about the unconstitutionality of this ban!  That, coupled with my statement as a veterinarian would make a strong argument, I thought.

I prepared Justin’s and my speeches for the council meeting, getting more incensed the more I read about dog bite statistics, myths people believed, and the propaganda that was on the internet against pit bulls.  Surely the public was smarter than this?

As luck would have it, Skip had a family emergency and was unable to travel to Russellville for the first council meeting.  Justin and I would have to do it on our own.

The night of the council meeting, I was really nervous, surprisingly.  Justin was, too, even more surprisingly.  I had never seen him nervous.  That made me more nervous.

We had to wait two hours before it was our turn to talk.  Finally, we began our presentation.

I talked about the anatomy of the dog, about dog psychology and my own experiences with pit bulls.  Justin talked about the fourteenth amendment and its violation with BSL, the statistics behind dog bites, the inability to correctly identify pit bulls and the far greater likelihood of drowning in a bathtub, getting shot by a police officer, being killed by one’s own parents, or getting hit in the head by a falling coconut than being attacked by a pit bull dog.  He briefly went into our desire to host a dog show, and what that would mean monetarily for the city of Russellville. The shock on the council members’ faces was clear.  They asked few questions.  Whether that was good or bad, we had yet to determine.

A few weeks later, we were told that the council members had a private meeting immediately following our presentation and they collectively decided that there was no way, regardless of anything we said, that they would vote to overturn the ban.  Then John Easterly got involved.

John must have called every politician and city official in our town. I reminded him, jokingly, that we still had to live in this town after he pissed all these people off.  At first, no one would call him back.  Then he started mentioning bringing in the ACLU, as there were civil liberties that were being violated.  His phone lines suddenly went haywire.

When John spoke to one council member and explained his interest in our town as an ABKC representative, the council member asked who had told John that we weren’t allowed to host a dog show in Russellville. John had, of course, been told by Justin.  The alderman let loose a string of obscenities beginning with “That fucking Justin and Dr Key are both liars! They’ve never asked us for a dog show and we never said they couldn’t have one!”

When we heard this, we were both livid.  How could we possibly host a dog show in a town where any pit bull passing through with its owner could be taken and killed? That was ludicrous! Justin and I were passionate and determined, but we weren’t stupid.  And even after our presentation to the council, this alderman was still convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that pit bulls were baby killers with locking jaws!  I was astounded at the blind conviction even in the face of reason.  How could we change the mindset of such stupidity?  We thought at first they were just ignorant, meaning uneducated.  We attempted to educate, and yet they refused to learn.  That made them nothing less than stupid.  

Our fight is not over.  Next week we will have to present an actual proposal of how to replace the current ordinance that bans our dogs.  We have a group of people to convince that have already been conditioned by the media, the general public, and God-knows who else to believe that our dogs are born to kill.

As Cesar Milan so perfectly said, “No pit bull ever born has said to his littermates, someday, I want to be in the news.”

BSL affects every American pit bull Terrier, American Bully, American Staffordshire Terrier, and  American bulldog and their owners everywhere.  If you think your town, city or state is immune, think again.  If you think you, as one individual, can’t stand up and fight, you are wrong.  Everyone with a love of these dogs should be furious and passionate and educate themselves and their communities. BSL will find you.

Several weeks ago, I watched my eighteen-month-old daughter, every night, lay her head on the belly of our pregnant American bully and watched Jazz cradle her like one of her own offspring. When Jazz went into labor, and was having some painful contractions, our daughter leaned on her lovingly, as the dog had taught her. People used to call pit bulls “nanny dogs”.  Justin and I still do.