A few weeks ago, I heard Jeff Styles of Talk Radio say
something on the air that really bothered me. He was talking about dogs, and
said something to the effect that all pit bulls should be killed, and that he
would do it himself.
I've heard sentiments expressed like this so often,
and might have agreed with them at one point in my life. I would like to tell
you how one of these dogs affected my life, so that Jeff and maybe others can
learn from my experience.
Five years ago,
I was walking through the parking lot of Sam's Club, when I saw an awful
looking dog, head down, cowed and broken. People skirted him, walking wide
circles around him as I watched from a safe distance. As I examined him more
closely, I realized that he was a pit-bull. He was about knee high, white all
over, with one big brindle patch on his haunches. His head was as wide as my
thigh. When I saw him, and his behavior, I was instantly curious and touched by
the way he was acting. I had heard all of the stories about pits. I've always
heard it said that they are savage monsters who maul and kill without warning.
It's said that they are inherently bad and that they are mean no matter what.
It was obvious to me, even though I had just met this dog that he wasn't
looking for someone to bite, but for someone to love and for help. Not everyone
is a "dog" person, but I've owned dogs my whole life. I've lived with
a grumpy Jack Russell Terrier for 11 years. I walk with him miles every week.
When I first saw this pit bull, I was shocked at his
condition. The most obvious problem he had was malnourishment. His ribs stood
out like steps. His spine was curved in a long odd shape and he walked sideways
because of it. The ridge of his spine stood high over his back, with each
individual bone standing, easily discerned from the next. I looked at him as he
searched that parking lot for human kindness and it did something to me that
I've never completely recovered from. It started a chain of events in my life,
which would bring great change and great joy into my life. I knew at that very
moment that I was either going to have to help him, or have him put down.
There was no way I could walk away from him, and know
that this wonderful animal, who had so effortlessly reached out and touched me,
a total stranger, would continue to live in such suffering. I went to my truck,
and retrieved a piece of rope. I then went and sat on a curb near the side of
the building. When he saw me, he came directly to me, and sat right beside me,
as if we had come to the park to sit and talk.
This is the
part that was hard to explain and it sounds silly to say it out loud. It
seemed, though, that he knew immediately that I was interested in helping him,
and it seemed as if it's what he had been looking for.
I was afraid. His appearance was intimidating to say
the least. I decided that I would first lay the rope around the back of his
neck and see if it made him angry. If it did, I would have to think of some
other way to help him.
That gesture had an immediate and obvious effect on
him. He sagged toward me, leaning on my right side, and seemed to deflate. The
effect of the rope around his neck would have been comical if he weren't in
such bad shape. He seemed relieved. There was nothing I could do. I tied the
rope around his neck, and led him to my truck. My little Isuzu truck was very
low to the ground, but he was too weak to jump into the back of it. I had to
pick him up. I knew that I couldn't put this strange animal in my little two
seat truck cab for the ride home, so my girlfriend drove, and I rode in the
back with my new friend. My girlfriend was trying to remember how to drive a
manual as the dog and I held on in the back, trying not to get whiplash. As we
drove, I had a chance to look him over.
He was a wreck. He had only one front tooth, which was
broken in half. The rest had been ground down to nubs. He appeared to have a
large growth or infection under his skin, around his neck. It looked as if
someone had inserted at 10 inch long piece of garden hose under the skin of his
neck. It occurred to me that he had spent a lot of time on a chain that was too
tight, and that it had cut into his skin. His right front foot was fractured.
An 8- inch long gash had healed just under his right armpit on his chest. It
had healed with no stitches, so it was a large lump of fused flesh. His head
was covered with hundreds of tooth marks, as were his back and flanks. One of
his nipples had been ripped completely off, and had healed back as a flap of
skin hanging down. He had literally been chewed all over. His right ear was a
stump, the rest chewed almost completely off. He was covered with other scars,
big and small. His malnourishment was severe. There was no bone in his body that
you couldn't trace on paper.
Despite all of this, this dog never, ever, in any way,
shape, form or fashion, showed me the slightest hint of anger or violence, then
or ever. From that day forward, this dog, gave me love. He gave me more love
than any other dog ever has. There was a subtle intelligence in this animal and
it was as if he realized that I had rescued him. I sensed gratitude in him that
I never expected to sense in an animal. From that day forward he was my boon
companion.
Our first task was to get him to the vet. The vet
ended up costing us $2,200. We named him Jonah. For those of you who know your
Bible, Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and lived through it. The pit bull
reminded of Jonah because the artifacts of a past life, a past suffering I
could only guess at, were etched into his skin and shined from his eyes.
Jonah was big for a pit bull. Emaciated, he tipped the
scales at 49 pounds. Later on, he would bulk up to a healthy 64 pounds. That
day at the vet, when we took him in, Dr. Federico just shook his head. They ran
tests, poked and prodded. Dr. Federico, in his matter of fact way, felt him all
over, and quickly grew to like him, as I had. Jonah took all of this, with that
same look of gratitude. He never snarled, he never bit, he never showed
anything but love to anyone at any time.
The diagnosis was severe. Heartworms, Infection,
emaciation and starvation were our battle. He had hip and joint deterioration
due to poor nutrition. He had all of these things, and he had them bad. The
cost would be high, and we were given the option to put him down, but I just
couldn't do it. We decided to fight. You could sense that he wanted to live,
and we wanted him to. The doctor gave him a shot of something to kill the heartworms.
There was a good chance that he would die during this treatment. Jonah had had
the worms for years. The adults live in the heart, and when they die, the
release from the wall of the arteries and travel downstream until they reach an
area too narrow for them to pass, where they create a blockage in the arteries
of the lungs. When this happens, lung tissue begins to die from blood
starvation.
They gave him the medicine, and we waited. The next
night, Jonah almost died. He could barely breathe. I lay beside him on his bed
on the floor, holding his head as he gasped for air for hours. Finally, at 11pm on a Friday night, I couldn't
take it anymore, and I took him to the emergency vet. They gave him a shot of
steroids, and after a while he was ok again. We had one other scare, and one
other trip to the emergency vet before he was finally cured of the heartworms,
and through all this, he endured.
Most of the other problems, the infection, the cracked
paw, got better over time. A round of antibiotics seemed to really help. Within
6 months, he was like a completely different dog and I loved him more than
ever. I would walk with him, often. I live in North
Chattanooga , and back then it was risky to walk late at night.
With Jonah, I walked with relish, late into the night and early in the morning.
There used to be a crack-head who lived on my street. He was a giant man with a
bottle of booze always in one hand, half naked. He would break into empty
houses and have "parties" with his girlfriends. I was on speaking
terms with him and gave him a wide berth. One night, Jonah and I went out
walking. We came down the hill at the bottom of my street and were bathed in
darkness. There's a spot down there where the lights are far apart, and it's
very dark. Ahead of us, my neighbor was walking with a strange, jittery man I
had never seen before. The jittery man, looked back at us, and did a double
take. He said something to my neighbor, and they had a brief struggle. It
seemed the jittery man was saying something and my neighbor was saying no. The
man turned back toward us and began to march up the hill. He walked in an
aggressive manner. The set of his shoulders and the way he moved made me feel
that this man was about to rob me.
We continued walking, and the man stomped toward us, I
took comfort from the feel of the leash in my hand. I held Jonah close by my
knee. The man approached to within 50 feet of us and suddenly saw Jonah. His
back stiffened, he straightened up and stopped dead in his tracks. We continued
walking toward him and then Jonah picked up his scent. I knew Jonah had been
watching him. He was like that, he watched, and missed nothing. Miscreant
number two, ahead of us, abruptly did an about face on a dime and walk/ran back
down the hill. Jonah and I walked many, many miles together, at all times of
the day and night.
Jonah's appearance, once he was no longer sick and
suffering, reminded me of the old world war II Sherman tank. His head was
bigger around than my thigh. I liked to call it his alligator head. His chest
rippled with muscles and he walked with a panther like grace that can only be
understood when it is seen. Jonah was with me for 5 years.
After he healed, Jonah was as strong as a mule. He
could pull a car up a hill, if he had the right kind of harness. Jonah was
great with people and children, but had little tolerance for other male dogs.
Pits are bred as hunting and fighting dogs. They are bred to fight other
animals, not people. I believe that he had been fought. His scars spoke volumes.
Jonah would usually be tolerant of other dogs, but they would always approach,
snarling and barking and he would only ignore it for so long. I think his
appearance intimidated them. They would go after him but there always seemed to
be an air of desperation in. It always seemed like they were barking at him
because they were afraid of him. His bark reverberated down the spine in a
primal way. It had a chopped, meaty sound that commanded respect.
Once we walked downtown to the coffee house and Carl
and his dog Cowboy were across from us. I needed to use the phone and a guy
offered to hold Jonah's leash for me. I told him to be careful. He swore to me
that he used to raise Rottweilers, and that he "knew how to handle
dogs." I let him take the leash, and he wrapped it around his arm. Cowboy
must have looked at Jonah funny because before I knew it, Jonah had snatched
the 220 pound, Rottweiler wrangler out of his chair and dragged him under a
bench and across the sidewalk, trying to get to Cowboy. Jonah was great with
people, but boy dogs were anathema to him. Jonah pulled that man like a paper
cutout. I had to use a special collar with him, called a "pinch"
collar. It's a collar that looks cruel, with metal spikes on the inside, but
it's the only way I could keep him from choking himself on the leash. It's also
the only way I could walk him on a reel leash and keep him from dragging me
around.
He was forced to live in a tiny part of the front of
my house. My other dog, Rocky, who I've had for 11 years and who was born in my
closet, would not allow Jonah to be a part our regular life. On the few
occasions, when I let Jonah into Rock's part of the house, Jonah would ignore
him, for a while. He would be happy to be at the "big peoples table."
He would stumble, dance and jump around gleefully, always ending up on my bed.
Rocky would immediately lose his mind. He would attack Jonah, biting at him,
snarling.
Once Rocky ended up with a broken jaw. He went after
Jonah, and Jonah closed Rock's little mouth in his big one and one bite was all
it took. Jonah would always ignore him for a little while. Usually it took
about 5 minutes, and then the fight would start. So for five years, Jonah lived
in half of my house, and Rocky lived in the other half. I can't explain to you
how complicated this made my life, but I just couldn't bring myself to let go
of Jonah, or to have him put to sleep. His zest for life now that he was
healthy was wonderful to behold. There was something joyous about the way he
greeted people and things around him. He seemed grateful for each day.
Jonah had so many wonderful and funny character
traits. He was terrified of lightning. Any time the thunder rolled, I would go
into the other room and find him in the bottom of the utility storage cabinet, with
cans of wd-40 and paint knocked over and fallen on his head. He would push
aside car wash buckets, paint-brushes and anything else that was in his way to
burrow down into a dark space to get away from the noise and the flashes.
Sometimes I would go sit beside him on the floor and hold his big alligator
head in my lap when he was scared. He would shiver and shake.
Over the years, Jonah and I really got to know each
other. Jonah was so tolerant of me. He loved to play. I would push him on the
chest to get him worked up, and he would run at me, jump up in the air, and hit
me hard with the side of his body. It was like a broadside tackle, and when he
did it, it would knock you off your feet. When he really got going, he would
run frantic circles around the tiny front yard, tearing large chunks of turf up
from the ground. When he would get tired because of his worm damaged heart and
lungs, he would run up to me and stop on a dime, leaning down on those giant
front paws, butt sticking up in the air, tongue lolling, eyes rolling and
daring me to do it again. He would jump up at me and play bite, always going
for the underside of my arms. He would pinch me a little sometimes with his 1/2
tooth, but even with that he managed to tear holes in two of my shirts. He
loved to play.
He took scolding very hard. Any time he did something
I didn't like, I would scold him verbally and give him a slap on the butt. He
took this so hard. His face would melt, his eyes would squeeze shut and he
would cow down to the floor. He would turn his head and look up at me, trying
to gauge the depth of my anger. For months after he came to live with me, he
didn't bark. It was a long time before I heard his voice. For months, he would
also cower in fear any time he saw me carrying something, be it a broom or a
wrench in my hand.
Often, I would go into his little space to say
goodnight to him, and sit on the floor beside his blanket. He would lay his
head in my lap and we would sit there in the silence and the darkness.
Sometimes, I would grab him his big head and his bony rear end, scoop him up
and roll him over so that he lay face up on my lap. He hated this position, but
he tolerated my doing it. He would lay in my lap looking put upon and
uncomfortable, as I cradled him like an infant. His big orange brown eyes would
be inches from mine and he would take one big paw and place it up against my
chin, trying to keep my face away from his.
I liked to kiss him on the face. I would sometimes
kiss him right on the lips, just to bug him, and he absolutely hated it. It
bothered him so much. I would play games where I would try to get my face close
to his, and the way he would avoid it was comical. He would always keep that
stiff arm up against my chin, to ensure that I didn't try to kiss him on the
face. He always stared at me from those eyes, which had seen so much suffering
and they never changed. They were always full of tolerance and love for me.
My tiny yard was never enough for him. He wasn't
fixed, and occasionally the urge to roam would overwhelm him. He would go to
work on my fence like the expert escape artist he was. There were two doors in
his part of my house. Once I locked him in the laundry room to keep him
separate for a night. I can't remember the reason, but he was so upset by it
that he ripped a hole in the door with his gums. Remember, he only had one
tooth in the front. That door still has a sheet of plywood on it.
When he decided he needed to get out of the fence, he
could do it. It took me a while to figure out how he did it, but once I did, I
was amazed. Jonah would run his side along the fence, pushing, feeling for a
weak spot. When he found the appropriate spot in the fence, he would use his
one tooth, to pry a piece of chain link out like a thread from a sweater. He would
then grasp that metal ribbon in his pink gums and work it back and forth, back
and forth until eventually it would snap. He would then take his soft, black,
wet nose, and jam it as hard as he could into the wiry hole made by the broken
piece of chain link. He continued to push his face into this hole, working his
head back and forth, as the hole grew larger and larger. Once the hole was big
enough for him to get his entire snout in, he knew that he had won. He worked,
eyes squeezed shut, pushing with his back feet, as hard as he could, until
finally, bleeding and torn, he would jam his entire alligator head out of that
tiny hole. Next, one foot would come through, then another. He would push until
he crammed his entire 60 pound body through a hole in a fence that was barely 6
inches across.
The first time he did this, I found him missing from
the front yard but I had no idea how he had gotten out. He escaped from my yard
a total of 4 times. The longest he was ever gone was 45 minutes, but it always
terrified me. I had grown so attached to this animal, that the thought of him
back in the world, where he was mistreated made me want to pull out my hair.
The animal shelter doesn't adopt out old pit's. They just kill them.
The first time he escaped, I examined the fence before
setting out after him, and I saw nothing wrong with it. I thought that he must
have climbed over, which he was certainly capable of. So, I put him back in the
fence, and watched from the window to see where he was climbing over. As I
watched from my perch, I saw him go back to the same hole he had gotten out of
the first time. I was amazed to see him bow down, and slip out like a snake
exiting its skin. I was shocked that this animal could make it out through that
hole. Later on, as I examined the hole, I realized that it was perfectly round.
It's edges were tight, and it had the look of a drawstring bag. It took me 20
minutes with pliers and wire cutters to pull the fence back together and wire
it closed.
Jonah and I spent some really good years together. He
taught me something about animals that I'm trying to share with you now, but
which is something you can really only learn from experience. If there are any
of you out there who think that pit bulls are bad, I'm here to tell you that
they aren't. People are bad, and they sometimes shape animals in their own
image. Pit's ban be mean, and vicious and all of those things, but they aren't
born that way. That behavior is almost always the result of training.
Twice people approached me on the street and asked me
if they could breed their female pit with Jonah, and I would smile a toothy,
angry grin and say no. I could just picture this person throwing the puppy he
raised into the ring to fight to the death, while he placed bets from the
sideline. I would thank God at that moment for my self control, because I would
wish in my heart that I could beat him within an inch of his life before he
caused an animal like Jonah one moment of suffering.
This sounds extreme, I know, but I came by it
honestly. After Jonah and I found each other, I began to do a lot of research
on Pits and the way some people treat them. The pictures I've seen will make
you sick and if you love animals, they will make you burn with rage. I think
that people who fight pits should be treated just like they treat their
animals. If you've ever seen a dog strangled to death with baling wire for
losing a fight, after being beaten, starved and abused for years, you might
know how I feel.
The old saying is true. You can't judge a book by its
cover. I would've never guessed that Jonah would have the effect on me that he
did. While I'm sure that I did a lot to help him, in a really important way, he
did more for me than I ever did for him. He helped me. He showed me a depth of compassion,
gratitude and love that I thought impossible in an animal. It wasn't something
I can really express to you. It's not something you can hear. It's something
that you have to feel to understand.
Have you ever met a person who always seemed to have a
dark cloud hanging over their head? Jonah was the exact opposite of that. He
always seemed to be walking around in a little bubble of sunny weather, where
the wind was always cool and the flowers were always in bloom. Just being
around him made people happy. He was like a big, goofy kid.
I had him put to sleep, Jan. 23rd, 2004. One final
effect of the malnourishment he had suffered was arthritis. All of the
cartilage had disappeared from his hip joints. It was bone against bone, and
the pain he suffered was terrible. Finally, he began to succumb to paralysis.
It came on him quickly, and I had seen it coming, but when it finally did, I
wasn't prepared for it.
One day I looked outside and saw him walking on the
knuckles of his back feet, impervious to the fact that his feet weren't flat on
the ground. I knew then that his time was done. I wasn't going to watch him
suffer through long final days, so I gave myself a few hours to say goodbye and
then loaded him into the truck for one final ride to Dr. Federicos. When we
arrived at the Dr's, I walked over to the drug store and bought a giant magic
marker and some note cards. I coated his paw with black ink and made a
paw-print that sits framed over my desk as I write this.
I gently lifted Jonah out of the truck, and we walked
inside as I saw him wince from the pain in his back. It took me a few minutes
to make Dr. Federico understand how I wanted to do it, and he never really did
until I showed him. He put a catheter into a vein in Jonahs front leg and taped
it tight. I sat cross-legged on the floor.
I pulled Jonah, flipping him upside down into my lap
and held him tight in my arms. His alligator head lay in the crook of my right
arm, and I pulled his nose to mine one final time. I wept. I howled. I held him
in a vice grip in my right arm and stared into his eyes, while Dr. Federico
gave him first the shot that drugged him, then the one that stopped his heart.
His eyes never strayed from mine and mine never moved from his. I stared into
his eyes as his life slipped away and long after he was gone.
That night I laid him out on a blanket in my front
yard where he had lived. I kissed him a final time on the cheek and a friend
and I dug a hole in the dark night, under the glare of a halogen work light. I
let Rocky out into the front yard, and he sniffed at and growled at the dead
form in jealousy. Even dead, Jonah intimidated Rocky.
That day I became an amputee. I lost a limb and I can
still feel the phantom pains of it when I flex the muscles that were the
overwhelming love that grew in me for this pit, this dog.
Jeff, you're wrong. If you want to point and rail
against something, do it against the people who abuse innocent creatures for
fun and profit. Get angry at them.
There are many myths about pits. One is that they are
more likely to bite than other dogs. Take a look at these statistics!
In Ohio in 1987 a breed restriction was placed on the
Pit Bull because of claims that it was vicious. When reviewing Ohio
Ohio's Dog Bite Statistic (2001-2002)
Mixed Breeds ~ 34%
Shepherds ~ 7%
Labs ~ 7%
Rottweilers ~ 6%
Boxers ~ 4%
Chows ~ 3%
Pit Bulls ~ 2 % (ACF2003)
(Fil Manley)
(Text from 2007)
No comments:
Post a Comment