The Problem with Pit Bulls

I don’t know about you, but I spent this summer finding myself missing the days when Animal Farm Foundation put breed discrimination at the front and center of all conversations in animal welfare. They were in our faces constantly, challenging our beliefs about ‘pit bull’ dogs and visual breed identification and showing us with science that looks don’t equal behavior. At one point, I almost got their tagline, “All Dogs are Individuals” tattooed on my arm. In 2017, the culmination of this shift was beautifully detailed in Brownyn Dickey’s “Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon,” which provided us a thorough understanding of the role people have played in constructing what we imagine today to be the ‘pit bull,’ and the ways in which this name has come to be so heavily imbued with socially constructed meaning, none of which has much at all to do with the dogs themselves. Those were, without question, the most generative, critically thoughtful days for the conversations around ‘pit bull’ and therefore ‘shelter’ dogs. Since then, we’ve gone sliding backward.

Over the summer of 2021, we’ve consistently read, talked about, and seen two complementary, and equally problematic narratives. The first, articulated in the Axios story entitled, ‘The Great American Dog Shortage,’ is that there are not enough dogs for all the people who want them and that animal shelters no longer have enough desirable pets to meet the market demand. The second is that the animals left in shelters just aren’t the ones that people want (keep in mind, 6.5 million animals are still entering shelters, and an estimated 1.5 million are still dying in them each year). Behind this assumption are the underlying assertions that dogs left in shelters have medical or behavioral challenges and/or are a member of a less desirable ‘breed.’ Tragically, the pets left in shelters who are still dying, are being rendered almost entirely invisible in these conversations. We don't see them and we don't hear their stories. If these conversations continue unchecked, dogs (disproportionately pit bull dogs) are likely to continue to die and we’re likely to justify those deaths because ‘no one wants those dogs.’

We need to take a sharp U-Turn and return to the conversations once led by organizations like Animal Farm Foundation. For the sake of dogs and the people who love them, we must not allow ourselves to move on from the critical questions about why ‘pit bull’ dogs still fill our shelters, languish in our shelters, and die in our shelters. Here are just a few starting points for the conversations desperately need be having on behalf of dogs labeled as ‘pit bulls.’

1. Housing discrimination: Shelters are still full of dogs people want to adopt, but cannot, due to discriminatory housing policies that ban certain sizes and breeds of dogs, with sweeping bans of dogs labeled as ‘pit bull’ dogs. The Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) has proven that 8.7 million pets could find homes if housing restrictions were lifted. https://habri.org/pet-inclusive-housing-initiative/. If you’ve worked in animal welfare for any amount of time, you’ve likely encountered countless adopters who cannot even consider a pit bull dog because their apartment complex or homeowners association has a discriminatory policy. In addition, ‘pit bull’ dogs disproportionately end up in shelters because their human family members, despite their best efforts, simply cannot find a place for them and their pets to live.

2. Discrimination against dogs is discrimination against people. As Animal Farm Foundation writes, “Public and private policies that ban or restrict dog ownership based on a dog’s known breed or appearance have a deep impact on individuals and on society at large. What is often misguidingly called ‘canine discrimination’ is not about dogs at all. All breed-specific policies and laws can be traced to racism, classism, and ableism.” As we work to fight inequity and barriers to create more diverse and inclusive animal welfare organizations, we must consider how our narratives about ‘pit bull’ dogs have enabled thinly-veiled racist and classist discourse and practice in animal welfare to continue mostly unchecked. https://animalfarmfoundation.org/endingbreedrestrictions/

3. The system itself is causing the behavior issues that make ‘pit bull’ dogs unwanted. Months-long, solitary confinement cage housing in a loud, high-stress environment is making otherwise good dogs have mental breakdowns. This is true to some extent for all shelters pets, but for ‘pit bull’ dogs, who fall into a category of ‘big’ dogs, the stakes of life and death are higher. The animal sheltering system, in our case, is the problem. In our conversations about dogs, we must put the transformation of animal sheltering at the very top of the list. Long-term, institutional, isolation confinement of pit bull dogs must be replaced by a new system that gives dogs freedom to exercise, interact with people and other dogs, and live in a home environment while we work to find them a new home. Foster care must replace cages as the primary means of housing dogs and we should be considering subsidizing in-home care, just as the child welfare industry has done.

4. Animal shelters are still full of good ‘pit bull’ dogs and those dogs are still dying. We must not turn our backs on ‘pit bull’ dogs, while we plan for a different future. If animal welfare is to continue to serve as the supply source for pets, it is reasonable for us to consider creating humane breeding standards and working with ‘responsible’ breeders (including ‘backyard’ breeders). It is also reasonable for us to consider how supplying particular types, ages, or breeds of animals can subsidize our work to save the lives of ‘pit bull’ dogs. However, we cannot ethically have these conversations about the future of animal welfare without always also talking about what is still happening to ‘pit bull’ dogs in shelters in every state, every day.

Today, as we sit at a critical juncture in our movement, so much is at stake for the dogs still left behind, who face invisible deaths at the hands of broken-hearted shelter workers, while we, the animal welfare industry plan for a future of needing to supply more of what we keep telling ourselves the public wants. Here is what I hope: I hope we’ll have many more diverse voices leading these conversations around ‘pit bull’ dogs. I hope we won’t forsake them because the constructs of power that have built the ‘pit bull’ are just too big and complicated for us to fix. I hope we’ll stop the en masse institutionalization of all companion animals in favor of a new Human Animal Support Services. I hope young people will take on this fight and lead us in new and radically different directions. I hope the story of every dog will begin to be told, because it is in those stories, and only in them, that we can see the truth of what we’ve done to create this mess and how we may realize something better.

PIctured here: A post by my friend and colleague Renena McCaskill who works tirelessly at Detroit Animal Care and Control to save the lives of 'pit bull' dogs.

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Nicole Bruckman and Andrea Copeland