A few months ago, I wrote a blog about an “emotional support pit bull” that mauled a young girl at the Portland airport. In the blog, I wrote a one-off joke about how pits are vicious killing machines or something. At the time, I wasn’t aware of the pit bull lobby, nor did I know that many pit bull owners are as loyal to the breed as their dogs are to them. In turn, I was pretty surprised by the plague of DMs and emails I received. Here are a few winners:

Last Friday, my parents were walking down to the boat for a picnic with our two older yellow labs, Milou and Rosie. The boat was docked in a slip at the local marina in Freeport, Maine. As they walked down the dock toward our boat, a pit bull jumped out of a nearby boat and latched on to Rosie’s neck. Don’t even think about accusing Rosie of inciting the pit bull: she’s not that type of dog. She knows our boat and was walking toward it happily when the pit grabbed her by the throat. She whimpered, cowered, and tried to curl up in a ball (she’s an 11-year-old lab, long retired from fighting pit bulls). The pit wouldn’t let go and was ripping her neck around, and his owner couldn’t get out of his boat in time, so my dad tried to push the dogs apart. That’s when the pit bit my dad through the hand, which required stitches. As you can see, Rosie needed stitches as well.

Good thoughts, guys! You seem fun.

Not all the responses were so weirdly sexual and violent:

Hey guys, do you guys see how much better that message is? I actually learned something there. This dude made salient points because he wasn’t asking me to suck his “veiny long skin cock.” (Buddy, get that droopy dick tightened. Yikes.) Nor was he threatening to break my jaw or calling me a retard. But all these responses led me to do some research because being smarter than people is a great way to beat them. Here’s what I found:

Time- Most dogs of all breeds are spayed and neutered — about 80%, by Clifton’s estimation. But only 20% of pit bulls are sterilized, partly because the population that owns pit bulls tends to resist the spay-neuter message.

Even PETA, the largest animal-rights organization in the world, supports breed-specific sterilization for pit bulls. “Pit bulls are a breed-specific problem, so it seems reasonable to target them,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA’s senior vice president of cruelty investigations. “The public is misled to believe that pit bulls are like any other dog. And they just aren’t.”

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I’m citing PETA, people. PETA. The most irrational organization on fucking earth. And even they acknowledge that, at the very least, pit bulls should be targeted for breed-specific sterilization (neutering/spaying). Yet for some reason, pit bull owners are far less likely to sterilize their dogs. I’m not sure why, but they resist it.

Onward…

Livescience- A 2006 study from the Journal of Interpersonal Violence revealed that owners of vicious dogs were significantly more likely to have criminal convictions for aggressive crimes, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, crimes involving children and firearms.

These findings were confirmed in a 2009 report published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. The authors of that report wrote, “Vicious dog owners reported significantly more criminal behaviors than other dog owners,” and they were ranked “higher in sensation seeking and primary psychopathy.“

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This study says that our choice of dog breed can be a reflection of our own personality. This holds up given what we’ve seen—owners of aggressive dogs tend to be more aggressive. Owners of pit bulls threaten to break my jaw. A + B = C.

If you actually want to change the perception of pit bulls, you need to be open to options like spaying/neutering or telling a child “don’t pat the dog” because maybe, just maybe, the dog woke up a little pissed off today. Don’t use that day as an opportunity to “socialize” your dog. And don’t say some dumb shit like “I bet your yellow lab looked at the pitbull the wrong way!” She’s practically blind.

I can’t help but feel eerily responsible for the pit attack on my dad and Rosie. As though the pit bull supreme leader read my blog and placed a fatwah on the heads of my loved ones. It’s only a matter of time before they get to me. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, you know what happened.