The following is an excerpt from Galunker, a children's book about a misunderstood but lovable pit bull. Part Two has also just been published, and can be read here.

Why write a children's book about a pit bull? Because these dogs are being massacred. One million pit bulls will be killed in shelters next year, and children can save them. Because of misinformation and bigotry aimed at these dogs (no, their jaws don't lock), most are killed automatically when they enter a shelter. Galunker aims to rectify this.

Nobody is suggesting -- leastwise us -- that children should be exposed to dangerous dogs. All dogs are potentially dangerous, if they have an irresponsible owner: it depends entirely upon their upbringing. And a pit bull is no more dangerous than any other dog its size. Even a mistreated pit bull can be rehabilitated: one of Michael Vick's abused dogs ended up a therapy dog in a hospital. Galunker will include an essay directed at parents, with the facts -- rather than the myths -- regarding how to keep children safe.

This book has been written by Douglas Anthony Cooper and illustrated by Dula Yavne. Both have had their work published and shown worldwide, but there was no possibility that any conventional publishing house would touch a children's book about a pit bull. Hence it is being launched as a Kickstarter project, with the passionate support of pit bull advocates across American and Canada. The opening of Galunker will be serialized here, on the Huffington Post. And this is the first section.

Galunker was hated by all of mankind.

And it bothered Galunk. And I'll bet that you'd mind.

Because nobody likes to be hated, I deem,

No matter how hateful they happen to seem.

You would hate to be hated if you were a worm

Or a spider or lizard or rodent or germ.

You'd find this forlornsome if you were a snake

Who snuck through the forest and lurked in the lake.

(It is hardly your fault if you sneak and you lurk

If sneaking and lurking are just how you work.)

You'd resent this if you were a freak or a frog

And Galunker was none of these things.

Just a dog.

No, Galunker was not even hateful at all.

He bolted and bounced; he did not even crawl.



(And crawling is not such a rotten thing, too

If crawling is what you were brought up to do.)



But hated he was, and he always had been

For Galunker, though never his fault, Looked real mean.



His name was tattooed on the back of his ear

Which helped him look fierce (didn't help him to hear).



It was never his fault that the people he met

Upon meeting Galunker became so upset,



That they flinched or they frowned or they scrammed or they screamed --

He was not even slightly the way that he seemed.



And today poor Galunker was really a mess

So it's time that we started this story, I guess...





Today our Galunker was looking a lout,

Like a boxer returned from a bruisulous bout,

Which was not very far from the truth we'll find out.



Galunker was black-eyed, his paws were a wreck

As big as a bull was Galunker's great neck



And as loud as a bull his belaborous breath.

He looked like a dog who'd done battle with Death.



Which was not all that far from the case we shall see

(And Death had near won this, between you and me).



Galunker was plunked in the back of a van

Looking mean as can be, and in front sat a man



Who was cursing his horrible badness of luck

To have such a beast in the back of his truck.



That morning there'd been a spectacular raid

On a dog-fighting ring in the center of town



And our man was a catcher of canines by trade

And our man had been called by the cops to come down.



"We've busted the boys who were betting," they'd said

"And half of the dogs there are wounded or dead.



But this one's a brute and as live as can be

A dangerous dog-fighting dog, you can see.



This dog is a bully, a beast and a bruiser

A pit bull! Don't come much more scary than those are."



And you'd think that a dog catcher wouldn't be frightened.

His eyes though had widened; his face it had whitened.



A pit bull! He knew them from words that were murmured

Most darkly, between those who murmur such rumors.

He was new at the job, and his duty thus far

Had been helping a poodle escape from a jar,



Appeasing an Afghan stuck high in a tree,

And soothing a sheepdog who'd sat on a bee.



He had yet to take nary a pooch to the pound

For those circumstances had not yet come round.



(Although "shelter" was now the more popular word

Since "pound" sounded old-time and weird and absurd.)



He'd been hired just yesterday, Follicle Philty

(Yes that was his name), and now he felt guilty



Because -- though Galunker looked ugly and vicious,

(This pit bull that must have thought he looked delicious)--



He was still quite alive, and quite kicking you see

And the pound was no place for the living to be.



It was known through the town and the state and the earth

By every good citizen worthy of worth



That this shelter was no kind of shelter, alack:

No dog ever sent there had ever came back.

- TO BE CONTINUED -

Galunker is being funded with the aid of Kickstarter. Because, as we say, no conventional publishing house will go near it. We were told: "You might as well write a children's book about meth."

Part Two will appear later this week in the Huffington Post.