While doing a general Google search for some Pit Bull related information, I came up on an article on the Village Voice website titled, “Man’s Best Defense, Tyler Eison turns pit bull pups into deadly weapons“. The article starts out with a quote directly from Tyler Eison, a real estate investor and auto dealer, stating, “These are not normal dogs. I like having very vicious, angry dogs. I’m going to teach them not to like other dogs. I’m going to agitate them, make them aggressive. That way when it’s about business, they are going to be serious.”

He goes on through the article to describe the ways in which he trains his puppies, whom he admits are not vicious on their own, instead saying, “if you want a truly vicious dog you have to create it yourself.” Beginning at nine weeks old he started antagonizing the puppies, trying to weed out the tough ones from the weak so he could better focus his time on creating monsters out of the pups that showed some determination and aggression. He forces the puppies to scrap with one another, allowing the stronger willed pups to dominate their smaller, more scared, contemporaries. The reporter described an incident where he witnessed Eison force two dogs to go after one another, the smaller one eventually running into the yard and hiding, relieving himself in a secluded area of the yard.

It seems that every Pit Bull abuser wants to play the childhood card when explaining how their so-called “love” of Pitbulls began. He fondly spoke of a feral Pit Bull which his grandparents (assuredly) over-bred, that saved his life when a heater caught fire in their home. Then at 19, Eison was involved in a fender bender which erupted into an argument, at which point the other man proclaimed he was going to get something from the trunk of his car. Eison surmised this something was a gun, so he wasted no time in releasing Conan on him. “I wasn’t going to let him kill me, so my dog took care of him,” he remembers. “I sicced my dog on that guy, man, and beat the other one up myself. I had no choice.”

A backyard breeder, Tyler Eison keeps all of his dogs in kennels in the yard, and sells off the less aggressive pups from his litters for thousands of dollars. In total he has 4 dogs that live in separate kennels behind his home (separate because they are all extremely dog aggressive) – 3 Pits and 1 Cane Corso, in addition to 3 dogs that live at a friend’s house. He is the only one who is capable of handling his dogs, and he has found himself late to many business engagements and meetings because of the time commitments to his dogs. Through inbreeding—called linebreeding— Eison will isolate the traits he seeks, eventually mating the best female of this first litter with her father; leading to a greater chance for instability and genetic defects.

I really do not even know where to begin with expressing my disgust, sadness, and ill-will toward this man. He is the reason why breed specific bans are a false sense of security for all of the “Pit Bull Haters” of this earth; the epitome of irresponsible ownership. It is not the Pitbulls that are the problem, it is the irresponsible scum, like this ignorant backyard breeder, that need to be banned. Tyler Eison is using these dogs as living, breathing, feeling weapons, taking all of the wonderful qualities of the breed and morphing them into his own security system. It is a cowardly act indeed to create vicious dogs to make up for some sort of toughness complex within yourself.

It is fascinating to me that someone would be willing to be portrayed in an article showing them in such a negative light, basically glorifying their criminal activities and attempting to justify their mistreatment of animals. Anyone that says, “it would be embarrassing to be seen with a neutered dog”, should have their own reproductive organs removed – surgically, with no anesthesia; this is despicable. I would even go so far as to say that people like this should be banned from being able to take care of any living being.

I am just going to keep treading water by spreading the “good word” of these dogs if people like Eison are able to proliferate their beliefs and infect the public with aggressive, improperly trained dogs with poor temperaments. The key to solving this problem is to get to the root of the problem. Neighbors witnessing this sort of behavior, and family members of people like Eison, need to stand up and do what is right. Forget your childhood, forget what you have seen or heard, rise above your upbringing and realize that no dog deserves this type of life, and no dog is inherently vicious (as Eison’s article points out). The Pit Bulls are not the problem here, it is the people that need to be rehabilitated. So keep on believing in the false sense of security that Breed Specific Legislation offers, but until a fundamental change can be made amongst people who share the same views as Eison, dogs are going to continue to be abused, and act out because of their inhumane treatment, even after the Pit Bulls are long gone.