There’s no doubt that pit bulls cast a larger cultural shadow in America than any other breed of dog. They’re often misunderstood, misrepresented, and mistreated, but like the sexy hot vampires in teen emotional-porn movies, they’re also idealized, romanticized, and pathologized. They’re one of the most popular breeds in America, yet they’re also outlawed in some states and shunned in others, depending on the year or even month. They’re sorta like the McRib, except I’d actually let a pit bull near my mouth.
As a “type” of dog, pit bulls have always been part-breed/part-brand. I actually didn’t even know until pretty recently that pit bulls aren’t even a real breed. There is no true “purebred” pit bull: they’re usually a mix of the American Staffordshire terrier, bull terrier, and bulldog. They’re the anti-breed breed, which is part of their beauty to me. They’re like the America of dogs, comprised of many different backgrounds, shapes, and sizes. Also, like America, a pit bull can be seen as, well, a bully.
To be very clear in terms of the history of pit bulls, many have absolutely been bred to fight. I’ll stay away from the more gruesome details, but as early as the 1830s they were selected and bred to have large jaw muscles in their heads and a very high arousal rate, which means they can go from 0 to 60 incredibly fast. If a pit bull were a car, it would be a Porsche. I don’t know that much about cars, so if there’s a sports car that can accelerate faster than a Porsche, then a pit bull would be whatever car that is. I hate comparing them to sports cars because whatever car I select, it’s probably driven by a man with hair plugs having a midlife crisis, but I think it’s a useful metaphor nonetheless.
Because pit bulls have essentially been bred to be weapons, they can and will literally fight to the death if they’re trained by a terrible person to do so or are defending their own lives. They’re born with the tools and the body to be wildly successful at violence, but they aren’t born with an inherent desire or need to be violent toward people. In fact, the tragic irony of their fighting heritage is that they were also selected to have an inherently low incidence of aggressiveness toward humans. Dog handlers who had to step in and pull their dogs out of the fighting pit didn’t tolerate dogs that would go after people. People who run dogfights are incredibly sick and stupid, but I guess not stupid enough to put themselves in danger, so the result of it all is that breeders created one of the most tragic creatures there is: an animal with the teeth of a shark, the muscles of a lion, and the heart of a teddy bear.
Many people conflate a pit bull’s behavior with the crimes of their abusers. In my experience, if dogs have any tendency toward violence, it is a direct result of human abuse, training the dog to behave in such a way so it sees no choice or having been taken from their mothers too young, which creates maladaptive behaviors. Dogs are extensions and reflections of their owners, which explains why mine are needy attention whores who live for eye contact. That said, like all animals, they’re wired to survive and defend their lives, so I’m the first to say that if a pit bull—or any dog for that matter—feels threatened or has a history of abuse, I’d get out of the way very quickly and contact a professional.
Statistically, small dogs actually bite more frequently than pit bulls, but a pit bull bite is obviously going to be a bigger news headline given it will leave more damage. When a Chihuahua bites you, it’s not going to do much harm unless you’re made of mayonnaise. I found a dog on the street in Compton, who I think is part shih tzu, part something else—my guess is psycho albino rat. She has a deformed foot from being a product of backyard breeding and God knows what kind of trauma while living on the street, so at first when I picked her up or tried to clean her ears, she’d bite me no less than forty times in a row. She actually cut skin, whereas my pit bulls only hurt me emotionally, like when out of nowhere one of them will just get off the bed and walk into the other room, leaving me momentarily paralyzed with heartbreak.
Although I love all dogs—and especially mixed alien weirdo street mutts (honestly, the fewer legs, the better)—in the last five years or so, I’ve gravitated toward pit bulls because they remind me of, well, me. They have big teeth, their menacing look tends to belie their mushy insides, and they very frequently break valuable things by accident.
Pit bulls are the most abused dog in the country. Beagles and greyhounds are also horrifically abused in lab testing and racing, respectively, but bullies at the moment are the most common breed found in shelters and hence the most frequently euthanized, but then again who knows what goes unrecorded. People who run backyard dogfighting rings train the dogs to minimize their need for human contact and of course to fight other dogs to the death. Perhaps I see myself in pit bulls because I feel like I, too, was conditioned for the same things. That said, saying I’m like a pit bull is a huge insult to pit bulls. Every pit bull I’ve met has shown more patience and loyalty than I ever have. They also usually smell way less like a dog than I do.
I relate to the baggage bred into a pit bull’s brain because I grew up watching family members battle it out, slam doors, and yell at each other about stuff I learned about from Melrose Place. Fighting became my comfort zone because not only was I taught by pros how to do it, but it was a kind of attention that I could understand. I wrongly thought arguing was an expression of love or that it just came with the territory of being “in love.” When there wasn’t some kind of conflict in my relationships, I’d get anxious, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Considering the type of guys I dated, that shoe would be one of those weird finger sneakers that outline every toe.
In my family of origin, conflict was the primary mode of communication, followed closely by passive aggression. But the key to conflict, I learned, is never backing down from a fight. As a result, I developed a very tough exterior to protect my fragile insides, which to this day I think are made of actual Peeps. I subconsciously wanted to become the scary-looking pit bull people see walking down the street and sheepishly cross to the other side to avoid. Nobody can hurt you if they can’t get close to you.
But there’s no victory in being scary. In my experience, the scariest people are usually the most scared. They’ve learned to be intimidating as a self-defense mechanism in order to avoid being hurt. When I look back at myself in my twenties, I see a terrified girl fighting wars that had been over for twenty years. I was still living by the now-obsolete rules that had gotten me through life in one piece. I thought being intimidating was going to protect me, when in reality nothing can protect you from the harsh lessons of life. Trust me, I’ve tried everything from vodka to Icy Hot to ointment with weed in it, and annoyingly, the only way out is through.