As I See it…The Joy of Pets

Sydney Morning Herald – Good Weekend Magazine

25 February 2012, Author Joel Meares

American pit bull terriers have a nasty reputation as the canine world’s most vicious breed. But are these “time bombs on legs” really as bad as their critics say? Joel Meares (cautiously) investigates.

Harnessed at the end of her hot-pink leash, Princess Dahlia Dogwollop Linke is dragging me down Canberra’s Bunda Street. She skims the hot pavement with her chocolate-coloured nose as we plough through the pre-Christmas foot traffic, pausing to sniff the feet of shoppers refuelling at a crowded streetside cafe. When a beefy Harley-Davidson crackles past, she jerks hard towards the road, but I hold tight. Pushing on, I notice a young couple cross to the opposite side of the footpath. It’s a quick reminder that this princess is a pit bull.

A stroll through the city with two-year-old Dahlia is a Saturday routine for owners Michael and Mardi Linke. For me, it’s more social experiment. Dahlia is an American pit bull terrier (APBT) at a time when it’s tough to be an American pit bull terrier. Long feared as the most vicious of dangerous dogs –Time magazine dubbed them “time bombs on legs” – a pit bull-mastiff cross last year killed four-year-old Ayen Chol in north-west Melbourne, sparking fresh hatred of the breed. The government clamped down, newspapers recycled “killer breed” headlines, and these “sharks on leashes”, as comedian Billy Connolly once called them, were back in the firing line.

There isn’t much that’s shark-like about Dahlia, though. Solid at 20 kilograms, with a short tan coat and yellow-green eyes, she might be scary if not for a jutting underbite that sets her expression to clownishly proud. On the street, she lights up kids’ eyes – one little girl tells another, “Look at the puppy, it’s so cute!” – but adults are less sure. In a car park elevator, a shopper presses her back to the wall, casting a cautious eye over Dahlia as we ascend. Rounding the corner from a side street, one young woman gasps and jumps out of our way.

Dahlia noses forward, oblivious. I, however, can’t help but feel I’ve done something wrong.

“It is as if the vicious hound of the Baskervilles that burst upon Sherlock Holmes out of the fog has returned to haunt the streets of America.”

Time, July 27, 1987

For the past three decades, APBTs have built a reputation as the canine world’s worst breed. According to legend, they are crazed and trap-mouthed beasts, bred for vicious combat, owned by thugs and set loose upon the suburbs of the Western world. The law has responded accordingly. Only in the ACT and the Northern Territory can Dahlia walk a street like Bunda unmuzzled. In other states, where pit bulls are “restricted”, they must be muzzled and leashed in public, neutered and, in some cases, cannot be bought, sold or rehomed. The goal? As former NSW premier Bob Carr once put it, “To breed these dogs out of existence.”

Public sympathy for the disappearing dog has never been easy to find, and the death of Ayen Chol made it near impossible. Following the August attack, Victoria’s Baillieu government increased penalties for owners whose dogs killed, expanded breed restrictions to all “pit bulls”, not just pure-bred APBTs, and cut short an amnesty period for owners to register their restricted-breed dogs. Unregistered pit bulls and crosses found thereafter would be destroyed.

But some people are asking whether the pit bull deserves its fierce reputation. Proud owners like Michael Linke, also head of the ACT RSPCA, say their pets have become scapegoats for a problem that is about all dogs, not just those that look like theirs. “It’s about being a responsible owner,” he says. “You recognise that pit bulls are strong, and Dahlia’s a strong dog. But there are a dozen breeds that are strong, and if they do bite you, they’re going to do some damage. All dogs have teeth.”

An afternoon with Dahlia shows it isn’t just the dogs facing scrutiny. Eyes that lock onto her with alarm seem to move their way up her leash. It’s a bad time to be pit bull in Australia and a bad time to own one.

Michael and Mardi Linke describe adopting Dahlia as the “biggest decision we’ve ever made”. Mardi, who also works at the RSPCA, spotted Dahlia playing in a yard at work shortly after she was surrendered with her brothers Stewie and Sméagol. When Mardi heard she was a pit bull, she had reservations. But they brought her home for a weekend among their nine cats and eventually decided to adopt. “I don’t know what it was, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about her,” says Mardi. Today, Dahlia happily roughhouses with grey tabbies Luigi and Normie.

The Linkes tell their story in the courtyard behind their home in Belconnen. With spectacles and ink-free arms, they’re not what you might expect of pit bull owners; and Dahlia, who has been known to dress in pink pyjamas and clumsily stalk along the top of the couch like Luigi and Normie, is no “typical” pit bull. She even has her own Facebook page, through which Michael pushes pro-animal causes to 700-plus “friends”.

Yet when we first meet, I’m nervous. Dahlia backs away when I enter the courtyard, her yellow eyes trained on me, growling softly. As I sit and chat with the Linkes, she ventures close enough to sniff my hand; after a while, I scratch the wrinkly skin under her neck. But like Mardi, I have initial reservations.

“Pit bull” technically refers to an APBT, but in general use, particularly in the US, the term is a catch-all that can bring in Staffordshire bull terriers, the bigger American Staffordshire terriers, and other “bully” cross-breed lookalikes. They date back to the 19th-century British sport of dog fighting, where bulldogs used in bull-baiting – in which dogs leapt up to latch onto a bull’s nose with their jaws – were bred with terriers to produce agile fighters to rip at each other in arenas like the Westminster Pit. The new dog eventually made it to the US, and in 1898 the United Kennel Club there began registering them as American pit bull terriers.

The dog’s reputation in the early 20th century differs starkly from its reputation today. Then, the pit bull was America’s family pet: president Theodore Roosevelt kept one in the White House and Helen Keller had one. The breed came to our own shores on the back of this goodwill – genetic tests suggest Dahlia’s forebears arrived about 112 years ago. But as the century wore on and images of urban dogfights and pit-bull-owning drug dealers proliferated alongside reports of vicious pit bull attacks, the breed saw its cachet slide. In 1989, the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) reported that pit bulls were involved in nearly 42 per cent of American dog-related fatalities, where breed was reported, between 1979 and 1988 – three times the figure for German shepherds.

A new chapter in the dog’s history soon began. The UK outlawed the breed in 1991, the same year the Hawke government banned the importation of pit bulls and three other breeds after a fatal attack on a two-month-old baby north-west of Sydney. (The killer was a bull terrier cross.) Tougher breed-specific legislation (BSL) followed, and the pit bull found itself muzzled, desexed and housed in escape-proof enclosures – 1.8-metre fences, self-closing gates, often concrete floors. Hardening Victoria’s laws after Ayen Chol’s death, Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh echoed Carr’s words from earlier: “These types of dogs have lost their right to exist in Victoria.”

In her book The Pit Bull Placebo, the founder of America’s National Canine Research Council, Karen Delise, describes outrage over pit bulls as a “moral panic”, and one the world has seen before. During the mid-19th century, Americans feared the frothy-mouthed bloodhound, which had been trained to hunt down escaped slaves. In the early 1900s, wolfish German shepherds were canine fiends. (Their importation into Australia was banned from 1929 to 1974.) Dobermanns next emerged as villains as the world watched SS guards and their Dobermanns stalk across Europe. Then came Rottweilers and pit bulls.

Dogs often earn their reputations because of the people who own them – Dobermanns are associated with Nazis, purse-size Chihuahuas with socialites. James Serpell, a professor of animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania, says the pit bull’s status as a “bad breed” comes from its association with the now illegal world of dog fighting. “The possession of a large, powerful and potentially dangerous dog is clearly a badge of status among members of this criminal class, and the dog is therefore viewed as guilty by association,” says Serpell.

Whether based on panic or not, there is compelling evidence that breed-specific legislation does not work. The attack on Ayen Chol happened with BSL in place and similar legislation has been repealed in the Netherlands and Italy.

More fundamentally, claim BSL’s opponents, our current bad breed has been miscast as a villain. The pit bull has no “locking” mechanism in its jaw, a charge that has gained traction in the media since the 1980s. As a former bull-baiter, it has been bred to bite, hold and shake, and scientists I speak to say they have observed the breed to be impulsive. But studies have concluded that there is nothing unique in its jaw structure. Comprehensive records are not kept of dog bites in Australia, and doubters say damning statistics like the CDC’s rely heavily on newspaper reports and hospital records that often misstate breed. Meanwhile, less damning figures go mostly ignored. According to Monash University statistician Linda Watson, a fierce opponent of BSL, just two of the dogs involved in the 33 Australia dog-related fatalities she has counted since 1979 could be described as pit bull crosses.

James Serpell, who directs the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for the Interaction of Animals and Society, surveyed 5000-plus dog owners for a 2008 report on canine aggression that delivered surprising results. He found that while pit bulls were among the most aggressive breeds towards other dogs, they were no more aggressive than other breeds when it came to people; Chihuahuas scored higher. “It has not been selected to attack people,” he says. “What it has been historically selected to do is to fight other dogs.” Serpell has had first-hand experience. Pit bulls have attacked his own lurcher four times in Philadelphia and his dog is now “something of a racist – he recognises pit bulls from a distance and will stop and ask to cross the road”. But Serpell remains open. “There’s so much variation within a breed. There’s going to be plenty of dogs within a sample that aren’t at all aggressive towards other dogs and make wonderful pets.”

The problem for BSL’s opponents is that no amount of research can compete with the raw shock of tragedy. And Ayen Chol’s death last August was the kind of tragedy that called for bloody vengeance: unprovoked, a neighbour’s dog chased Ayen’s cousin into the St Albans house where the Chol family was staying, turned on the four-year-old as she clung to her mother, and charged at her neck. She died quickly and violently.

Ayen’s maternal grandmother had not met Ayen before the girl was killed, and her health deteriorated when she heard the news, so the Chols were with family in Sudan as Good Weekend reported this story. In lieu of meeting with the family, I meet their lawyer, Ike Nwokolo, who raised $13,000 for the Sudan trip by running the Melbourne marathon last October. Sitting in one of legal firm Slater & Gordon’s sleek meeting rooms, Nwokolo says, “This is the most horrific case I’ve had to deal with in 17 years at the firm.”

He tells me he disagrees with those who say the pit bull has been harshly judged. “I don’t know that they have a greater propensity to attack. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the 10 dog-attack cases I’ve dealt with have been pit bull cases.” And he says the family is happy with the government’s response. “They see it as going some way to ensuring what’s happened to them won’t happen to anyone else.”

Mostly, though, we talk about why Ayen’s death hit such a public nerve – why a portrait of a blankly staring girl in a tartan top, the glint of a stud in her tiny left ear, would dominate Melbourne’s papers and TV news for weeks. “It affected most people who had children – someone is in their home and a dog rushes in and kills their child,” says Nwokolo. “It struck a chord with me because I have a four-year-old daughter, the same age as Ayen when she died.”

Discussing the attack in his courtyard, with Dahlia resting against my foot, Michael Linke says he was similarly moved by Ayen’s death, and that the case has had an impact he’s never seen before. “It’s not the first time a pit bull’s attacked somebody and it’s not the first fatality,” he says. “But it was like the stock market. You could map that event on a timeline as the one that shifted the whole psyche of people around pit bull terriers.”

Emotions are running higher than ever on both sides. Those who oppose BSL describe it as “genocide” and compare it to apartheid. Their numbers are significant – the Facebook page “Help Save the Pitbulls in Australia” has almost 5000 “likes” – and the rhetoric is strong. Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Walsh says the public has reacted positively to Victoria’s crackdown – a “dob in a dangerous dog” hotline had attracted nearly 1200 calls by mid-December – and supporters ask how anyone can put the lives of animals before humans.

Having a pit bull in this climate is something you only confess to when asked. At least, that’s how I feel when answering the “What is she?” question with Dahlia. On a small crescent of beach along Canberra’s Lake Ginninderra, a dog owner asks me what breed Dahlia is as she splashes in the water with the woman’s cattle dog and Jack Russell terrier. “She’s a pit bull, actually,” I answer almost apologetically. “Oh?” she says, watching the dogs play. “She’s a nice, quiet one.”

In Melbourne, people don’t get close enough to ask. That’s the experience of 28-year-old policewoman Sarah, who meets me at her friend’s home east of the city and asks that I not reveal her real name, or her dog’s, for fear that it will be “baited”. Her registered seven-year-old black pit bull, Maple, is hardly frightening – splashes of white across her four paws make her look like a gloved dandy as she begs for a sausage. But muzzled on the street, she intimidates. “I was jogging with her not far from my house and we were approaching a lady with two little white fluffy dogs,” says Sarah. “Spotting us, the lady stopped, scooped her white fluffies under her arms and bolted like I’ve never seen someone bolt.” Other times, parents pull their kids behind them as she passes. “I am used to everybody staring because I’m always in uniform, but it feels uncomfortable when people are avoiding you.”

Sarah is also a qualified dog trainer. So it’s unsurprising that Maple is perfectly behaved – she begs, sits and licks me to say “hi”. Jumping onto my lap, wet after a short swim, she’s almost too friendly. But Sarah worries that because she adheres to the letter of the breed-specific law, there’s a chance Maple could behave unpredictably. The dog has never run off-lead at a park nor socialised normally with people. Without knowing how Maple behaves unleashed and unmuzzled, Sarah says, “I honestly couldn’t say what Maple would be like if she were to get out and people were trying to catch her.”

Tammie King, who is developing a behavioural test for amicability in dogs at Monash University, shares that concern. She says the net impact of legislation that isolates “dangerous dogs” is that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “If you’re imposing restrictions based on appearance, people aren’t going to be forthcoming in letting their children come up to a dog. That dog doesn’t then get adequate socialisation with children, which is important if they’re going to be safe with them.”

It is not just the pit bull feeling the pinch. The breed has few clear genetic markers – it was bred in the pursuit of a warrior, not a show-perfect pedigree – and physically, it is almost indistinguishable from the American Staffordshire terrier and other stocky cross-breeds. Most governments use a list of physical indicators known as a “standard” to determine whether a dog is a pit bull or close enough to be restricted. But critics say the standard is hazy enough to pull in “innocents”. Owners have successfully appealed against declarations of breed based on standards in the past. The most famous of these appeals in Australia is the 2005-06 case of “Rusty”. The supposed pit bull from south-east Queensland spent 14 months in council custody before his owner proved he was a Staffordshire terrier cross.

A similar case kicked off last December at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal – expected to be the first of many. Shire officers had seized Tracy Ricardo’s two-year-old dog and puppy in October. Ricardo was at the VCAT claiming that her unregistered dogs were not pit bulls. As a mediation date was set, she sat at the back of the hearing room, wiping away tears. Afterwards, she shows me a folder with photos of her two young children sleeping next to the dogs. “They will have had no access to us for five months,” she says, flicking through the pages.

Breed confusion is mediated less formally in the suburbs. Patrick and Kelly Glennon live in a modest brick home in the shadow of the Dandenongs with their new daughter, Bridie, and three-year-old Staffordshire terrier, Dexter. They say they’ve seen a change in the way people respond to their dog since Ayen Chol’s death. They’ve stopped taking Dexter to cafes because of the “sighs and looks”. Kelly, 29, has watched a mother rush her kids into the car as she and Dexter approached. And when Patrick asked a woman at his local park to put her two Jack Russell terriers on a lead, she responded, “Don’t worry about my dogs, worry about yours.” He asked what his dog had done and she replied, “That’s the one that kills babies.”

Of the dogs I meet for this story, Dexter looks the most like Time‘s terrifying hound, despite not being a pit bull. He’s a loveable sloth inside the Glennons’ home, curled quietly in a dog bed as his owners talk, but later, at the local park, he’s a brindle blur sprinting after a ball and leaping into the air with teeth bared. There’s amazing strength in his brick-like legs and bullish face, and when he woofs loudly, I begin to wonder how close I’d get with my silky terrier. Electrician Patrick, 30, also looks the most like a bloke who might get about with a pit bull – 196 centimetres tall, tattooed, and every bit as brick-like as his dog. “I feel that some people look at us and say, ‘Nah,’ ” says Patrick, showing me a forearm with the word “Bridie” inked along it. “We’re a package, me and Dex.” Just as Dexter’s a Staffie, Pat’s a softie.

The Glennons say they’re comfortable having Dexter around Bridie, who was born three months premature and suffers from chronic lung disease. (There is a sign on the front door instructing people to disinfect their hands as they enter the home, but no “Beware of the Dog” sign next to it.) In the five months that Bridie was in hospital after her birth, Kelly would bring home her used blankets to introduce Dexter to her scent. In the living room when we meet, Pat holds Bridie upright and tells the dog to give the little girl a kiss – Dexter approaches slowly and licks her cheek. “It’s upsetting that we can’t take him places,” says Kelly. “He’s part of our family. That’s exactly how we see him. He’s Bridie’s hairy little brother.”

Hearing that, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would choose to have a dog who evokes the kind of response these breeds do? Why not cut your losses and buy a more socially acceptable Labrador? Academics say bull breeds can make wonderful pets because of their breeding – fighting dogs were always very close to their handlers. And there’s a case to be made for anthropomorphic appeal. Serpell points to their short fur, expressive eyes and “rather humanoid” look. Despite pictures you might see in papers, pit bulls can be cute.

Patrick says he’s always been interested in more active dogs. “A lot of it for me is the fact that I am six-foot-five and weigh over 100 kilos. I need something that’s a little more sturdy.”

But policewoman Sarah’s reasons are different. As a teen, she says she was too scared to even approach dogs in the street. But the pit bull won her over with an aspect of its personality you seldom read about. At home, her muzzle off and leash hung up, Maple will run through the lounge room, tuck her head and somersault. “She does it because I laugh – she’s very much a clown.”

Dahlia, it turns out, is also a bit of a clown. Back at the Linkes’ house after a splash in the lake, she’s refusing to say goodbye, and I’m beginning to think we’re back to where we started. But as I’m saying my farewells to her owners on their white leather lounge, Dahlia suddenly leaps onto my lap, curls her neck into me and squirms her thick body about.

I smile, and I think she does, too.

It’s amazing what a single dog can make you think about an entire breed.