Dr. Beth Vesco-Mock: The truth about pit bulls
As animal welfare and animal care and control professionals, our biggest challenge and opportunity is to educate our constituents: staff, volunteers, potential adopters, donors, and elected officials. Education is crucial to success because lack of education or miseducation can deeply hurt animals by perpetuating detrimental myths.
The long-held myth that black cats or dogs are bad luck, for example, can leave shelters overflowing with them. Luckily, that myth does not appear to hold much water here in Doña Ana County because our shelter does a decent job of adopting out black animals.
Pit bulls are surrounded by some of the most damaging myths, leaving more of them unwanted and in shelters than any other breed. Pit bulls have been getting a lot of negative press recently, and it makes me sick because we are judging dogs based on their appearance and a few incidents.
This past Saturday I was walking through the "bite" ward to sign off on bite dogs — we had a total of 10 bite dogs being quarantined at that time and only two were pits. One of those was a juvenile pit that I am fairly certain did not bite, but rather playfully mouthed someone and needed the appropriate correction.
Important note: The term "pit bull" does not represent a single breed. The term applies to American Pit Bull Terriers, Staffordshire Terriers, American Bull Terriers and mixed breeds.
Myths are just myths
Pit bulls have locking jaws. False.
I always laugh and probably roll my eyes at this one because that is physically impossible. A pit bull's jaws are not anatomically different than those of other dogs. A pit bull has no unique mechanism that would cause the dog's jaws to lock. This myth is often perpetuated by a common and dominant characteristic of pit bull dogs — gameness, the desire to complete, or succeed at a task. The gameness in a dog is what drives a pit bull not to let go, especially if you are playing tug with a favorite toy.
Pit bulls will turn on you. False
A dog's stability is an individual trait that is a complex result of many factors, including both genetics and environment. In fact, 86.8 percent of American Pit Bull Terriers passed the stability test administered by the American Temperament Test Society, making it an overall stable breed. Again, the complexity of factors make any dog's temperament a completely individual trait.
Pit bulls are aggressive. False
Aggression, too, is an individual trait and the result of many factors. Because of the history of earlier breeds, some pit bulls may be more likely to exhibit dog aggression, but aggression toward humans is actually highly uncharacteristic.
Pit bulls don't feel pain like other dogs. False.
This is another one that I have no idea how anyone in their right mind can think pit bull dogs experience pain differently from other breeds. Do people think they have a different set of pain receptors or transmitters? Dogs are just like humans. We have different pain tolerances, and the same goes for dogs. Their response to pain varies by the individual dog.
You are probably wondering why I am bringing all this stuff up.
Doña Ana County has an overabundance of pit bull-type dogs. In the past two months (July and August), the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley killed 37 dogs just because they looked like a pit bull breed. Please understand this means they had passed the human aggressive, dog aggressive, high arousal and resource-guarding behavior tests that we administer on a continual basis. I am sure you are asking, so why in the world did you do that? Well, because intake was so much higher than adoptions, return to owners and rescues, that we had to make some tough decisions. The reason pit bull-type dogs are the first to go is because few rescues will take them, they are much harder to adopt and they are the most abundant.
So what can we do? Become educated and educate others, and be responsible for the dogs that you currently own, which means spaying and neutering and taking care of them for their natural life.
Dr. Beth Vesco-Mock is executive director of the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley.