Do dogs think like people?

The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 raised the bar for animal the treatment of animals in many states across, but it also solidified the fact that animals are property. There is new science that supports the long held belief that many of us in animal welfare have that dogs are people too. In fact, the New York Times wrote an opinion piece, reprinted below, that discusses the scientific finding of giving a dog a M.R.I. and the potential implications of those findings.

Dogs are People, Too

By GREGORY BERNS
Published: October 5, 2013

FOR the past two years, my colleagues and I have been training dogs to go in an M.R.I. scanner — completely awake and unrestrained. Our goal has been to determine how dogs’ brains work and, even more important, what they think of us humans.

Now, after training and scanning a dozen dogs, my one inescapable conclusion is this: dogs are people, too.

Because dogs can’t speak, scientists have relied on behavioral observations to infer what dogs are thinking. It is a tricky business. You can’t ask a dog why he does something. And you certainly can’t ask him how he feels. The prospect of ferreting out animal emotions scares many scientists. After all, animal research is big business. It has been easy to sidestep the difficult questions about animal sentience and emotions because they have been unanswerable.

Until now.

By looking directly at their brains and bypassing the constraints of behaviorism, M.R.I.’s can tell us about dogs’ internal states. M.R.I.’s are conducted in loud, confined spaces. People don’t like them, and you have to hold absolutely still during the procedure. Conventional veterinary practice says you have to anesthetize animals so they don’t move during a scan. But you can’t study brain function in an anesthetized animal. At least not anything interesting like perception or emotion.

From the beginning, we treated the dogs as persons. We had a consent form, which was modeled after a child’s consent form but signed by the dog’s owner. We emphasized that participation was voluntary, and that the dog had the right to quit the study. We used only positive training methods. No sedation. No restraints. If the dogs didn’t want to be in the M.R.I. scanner, they could leave. Same as any human volunteer.

My dog Callie was the first. Rescued from a shelter, Callie was a skinny black terrier mix, what is called a feist in the southern Appalachians, from where she came. True to her roots, she preferred hunting squirrels and rabbits in the backyard to curling up in my lap. She had a natural inquisitiveness, which probably landed her in the shelter in the first place, but also made training a breeze.

With the help of my friend Mark Spivak, a dog trainer, we started teaching Callie to go into an M.R.I. simulator that I built in my living room. She learned to walk up steps into a tube, place her head in a custom-fitted chin rest, and hold rock-still for periods of up to 30 seconds. Oh, and she had to learn to wear earmuffs to protect her sensitive hearing from the 95 decibels of noise the scanner makes.

After months of training and some trial-and-error at the real M.R.I. scanner, we were rewarded with the first maps of brain activity. For our first tests, we measured Callie’s brain response to two hand signals in the scanner. In later experiments, not yet published, we determined which parts of her brain distinguished the scents of familiar and unfamiliar dogs and humans.

Soon, the local dog community learned of our quest to determine what dogs are thinking. Within a year, we had assembled a team of a dozen dogs who were all “M.R.I.-certified.”

Although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain region: the caudate nucleus.

Rich in dopamine receptors, the caudate sits between the brainstem and the cortex. In humans, the caudate plays a key role in the anticipation of things we enjoy, like food, love and money. But can we flip this association around and infer what a person is thinking just by measuring caudate activity? Because of the overwhelming complexity of how different parts of the brain are connected to one another, it is not usually possible to pin a single cognitive function or emotion to a single brain region.

But the caudate may be an exception. Specific parts of the caudate stand out for their consistent activation to many things that humans enjoy. Caudate activation is so consistent that under the right circumstances, it can predict our preferences for food, music and even beauty.

In dogs, we found that activity in the caudate increased in response to hand signals indicating food. The caudate also activated to the smells of familiar humans. And in preliminary tests, it activated to the return of an owner who had momentarily stepped out of view. Do these findings prove that dogs love us? Not quite. But many of the same things that activate the human caudate, which are associated with positive emotions, also activate the dog caudate. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology, and it may be an indication of canine emotions.

The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child. And this ability suggests a rethinking of how we treat dogs.

DOGS have long been considered property. Though the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 and state laws raised the bar for the treatment of animals, they solidified the view that animals are things — objects that can be disposed of as long as reasonable care is taken to minimize their suffering.

But now, by using the M.R.I. to push away the limitations of behaviorism, we can no longer hide from the evidence. Dogs, and probably many other animals (especially our closest primate relatives), seem to have emotions just like us. And this means we must reconsider their treatment as property.

One alternative is a sort of limited personhood for animals that show neurobiological evidence of positive emotions. Many rescue groups already use the label of “guardian” to describe human caregivers, binding the human to his ward with an implicit responsibility to care for her. Failure to act as a good guardian runs the risk of having the dog placed elsewhere. But there are no laws that cover animals as wards, so the patchwork of rescue groups that operate under a guardianship model have little legal foundation to protect the animals’ interest.

If we went a step further and granted dogs rights of personhood, they would be afforded additional protection against exploitation. Puppy mills, laboratory dogs and dog racing would be banned for violating the basic right of self-determination of a person.

I suspect that society is many years away from considering dogs as persons. However, recent rulings by the Supreme Court have included neuroscientific findings that open the door to such a possibility. In two cases, the court ruled that juvenile offenders could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. As part of the rulings, the court cited brain-imaging evidence that the human brain was not mature in adolescence. Although this case has nothing to do with dog sentience, the justices opened the door for neuroscience in the courtroom.

Perhaps someday we may see a case arguing for a dog’s rights based on brain-imaging findings.

Gregory Berns is a professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University and the author of “How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain.”

Advocacy

Part of the advocacy work we perform involves engaging the public in a conversation about pit bulls. We cannot dispel myths about pit bulls without first educating people about the origin of those myths. It is through a positive non-judgmental public discourse that we learn what myths are still being perpetuated and what new myths have emerged.

- Pit Bulls do not have locking jaws.
- Pit Bulls are not a recognized breed by the American Kennel Club.
- Pit Bulls do not have the highest bite pressure.
- Merle coats are the only color pattern that is not recognized as an official color. Merle is more of a coat patter as opposed to a color, see photo below:

Media Hype - TM

The third and most slanderous article about pit bulls, published the same month as the Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated articles, was Time Magazine's Time Bombs on Legs. The article is a blatant attempt to shock American's into buying Time Magazine. In the time before the internet and shock jock radio, Time Bombs on Legs follows the creed if bleeds it leads and published many myths about pit bulls that advocates still work today to dispel.

Time Bomb On Legs

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. The creature last week attacked a 71-year-old woman in Stone Mountain, Ga., dragging her across her drive-way and savaging her so badly that she required 100 stitches. It snapped and tore at an unemployed man as he watched the July 4 fire-works in Rochester; last week he died from his multiple injuries, including a 15-in. wound from calf to thigh. And in Atlanta, Houston and Ramsay, Mich., it has seized small children like rag dolls and mauled them to death in a frenzy of blood-letting.

The new canine terror is the American pit bull, a dog with a squat, muscular body and thick, steel-trap jaws that is descended from the fighting bulldogs of 19th century England. In 2 1/2 years it has been responsible for 16 deaths across the country, six of them in the past year, leading many municipalities to pass laws to restrict ownership. It is estimated that there are now 500,000 unregistered, often poorly bred pit bull terriers in the U.S. So fearsome is the dog’s reputation that it has become imbued with much the same malevolent aura as the beast in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story. That is exactly the effect sought by some owners, among them dog-fighting enthusiasts, members of street gangs and drug pushers, many of whom use revolting and painful techniques to bring the animals to the verge of blood-lust.

Officials of animal-protection societies tell of pit bulls being given live kittens or small dogs, such as poodles, to tear apart. Often they are fed gunpowder or hot sauce in the mistaken belief that this will increase the animals’ pain threshold. Jean Sullivan, director of the Memphis-based Humane Society, charges that some owners have tried to increase their dogs’ (natural) aggressiveness by keeping them tied up with collars of baling wire or running them on treadmills until they are exhausted. The pit bull’s jaws — which can exert as much force as 1,800 lbs. per sq. in. — are strengthened by swinging the dog on a rope, its teeth clamped to a tire. This, she says, makes the animal a “lethal weapon. They hang on until their prey is dead.” Such techniques, says Franklin Loew, dean of the Tufts University veterinary school, turn the dogs into “time bombs on legs.” Many are used for high-stakes dog fighting, which has a sizable nationwide following, even though it is a felony in 36 states.

Ferocious pit bulls can be seen any day with their drug-dealer owners on the corner of Ninth and Butler streets in North Philadelphia. The dogs, with names like Murder, Hitler and Scarface, wear metal-studded collars concealing crack and cocaine and the day’s proceeds. They are equally visible on Chicago’s West and South sides, where teenage boys have taken to brandishing their fierce pit bulls just as they would a switchblade or a gun. “It’s a macho thing, like carrying a weapon,” says Jane Alvaro of the Anti-Cruelty Society.

Why are so many Americans indulging in this orgy of pain and violence “The dogs are almost like an extension of the owners’ egos,” says Orville Walls, a Philadelphia veterinarian. “The owners think, ‘I may be low man on the economic totem pole, but I have the meanest, toughest dog on the street.’ ” Owning a pit bull, says Robert Armstrong, Houston‘s chief animal controller, “is a warning to others to stay off the sidewalk.” Randall Lockwood of the Humane Society notes that the animals have become increasingly popular as dog fighting has moved from rural areas into cities. They appeal “to the disfranchised and the unemployed. The owners themselves are often violent.” Tufts’ Loew sees the bonding of owner and dog as akin to a “horror movie,” with maladjusted owners training their dogs to be an “extension of themselves.”

As a result of the growing fear of these killer dogs, responsible owners have been put on the defensive. The name pit bull loosely applies to a crossbred strain of the American Staffordshire terrier and the American pit bullterrier as well as to other varieties. The most ferocious dogs, says Pat Owens, director of the Women’s S.P.C.A. of Pennsylvania, are crossbred with German shepherds or Doberman pinschers. Richard Laue of the Northern California Pit Bullterrier Association accuses these “backyard breeders” of producing unpredictable “garbage dogs.”

Despite the dogs’ bloody reputation, owners such as Laue insist that purebred pit bulls have a “steady temperament and intense loyalty.” Indeed, breeders believe that in time the animal will regain its gentler image of the 1930s, when a pit bull played Pete in the Our Gang films. Only 30 years ago, notes Ed Almeida, a dog trainer in El Monte, Calif., the Doberman was the most vicious of dogs. Now, he says, after years of careful breeding, Dobermans are “big boobs” compared with the pit bulls.

Media Hype - SI

The 1987 Sports Illustrated article The Pit Bull Friend and Killer was published months after the Rolling Stone article and continued to project a negative image of pit bulls to mainstream America. Actually, the magazine's cover photo may have had a more lasting effect on the perception of pit bulls than the story itself.

Whereas, the Rolling Stone article focused on dog fighting as an aspect of inner city youth machismo. This Sports Illustrated article discusses the 'sport' of dog fighting while painting the picture of pit bulls as unpredictable and vicious killers. This is the first time the myth about pit bulls being inherently vicious is mentioned in popular culture. Here is E. M. Swift's article. The following story contains descriptions of animal cruelty reader discretion is advised.

One theory advanced to account for the breed's unusually stable and congenial-to-people disposition is that he is far too formidable a beast for it to be prudent to allow vicious individuals to survive (and thus to propagate).... This selective process tended to weed out the mean dogs and has left us with a dog with an almost ridiculously amiable disposition.
—RICHARD F. STRATTON
This Is the American Pit Bull Terrier (1976)

The mean ones are the aberrations still. But the aberrations are more numerous.
—RICHARD F. STRATTON
July 8, 1987

America has a four-legged problem called the American pit bull terrier. And the pit bull, its "ridiculously amiable disposition" notwithstanding, has a two-legged problem called Man, to whom Stratton's second quote could also be applied. These two species are not new to each other. They have intermingled for some 200 years, and some say their common history goes back as far as the Romans. But something has happened to the pit bull in the last decade that says as much about the nature of American society as it does about the nature of this aggressive animal. Far from being an aberration, the American pit bull terrier has become a reflection of ourselves that no one cares very much to see.

"They're athletes. They're wrestlers. They're dead game," says Captain Arthur Haggerty, a dog breeder and trainer in New York City who owns five pit bull terriers and has trained hundreds of others. "They will literally fight till they're dead. If you found that quality in a boxer or a football player, you'd say it was admirable. Will to win. That's what a pit bull has."

Others call it a "will to kill." At least 35 communities nationwide have considered banning the breed from within their city limits, and while such ordinances have run into constitutional problems stemming from the difficulty in defining exactly what a pit bull terrier is, their number is growing weekly. The horror stories involving pit bulls are voluminous. Recent tragedies include the death of two-year-old James Soto, who was mauled in Morgan Hill, Calif., on June 13 by a neighbor's pit bull. The attack rendered the child "unrecognizable as a human being," according to paramedics. Nine days later a national television audience watching the evening news was treated to the terrifying spectacle of a pit bull terrier attacking Los Angeles animal control officer Florence Crowell. The 33-year-old woman survived but spent five days in the hospital.

On April 6, a retired surgeon, 67-year-old William Eckman, was killed by two pit bulls on a street in Dayton, Ohio. On that same day, 16-month-old Melissa Larabee of Jones, Okla., was killed by the family's pet pit bull, who bit her in the throat. In June 1986, 20-month-old Kyle Corullo was attacked by a pit bull in Ramsay, Mich., while playing in his grandmother's backyard. The dog, fighting off the child's mother, dragged the boy into a nearby lot and shook him to death "like a stuffed animal."

In the last 18 months, 12 of the 18 confirmed dog-related fatalities in the U.S.—or 67%—have been caused by the pit bull terrier, a breed that accounts for only 1% of the U.S. dog population. And the maimings are far more numerous. Often it is small children who are the victims of unprovoked attacks. There is no definitive source for animal attack statistics, but pit bull fanciers claim that statistics show other breeds of dog bite more frequently—German shepherds lead the list—and accuse the media of publicizing only pit bull maulings. DOG BITES MAN isn't news, they say, but PIT BULL BITES MAN is.

Unfortunately the pit bull, when it attacks, doesn't merely bite man—or, most horribly, child—it clamps its powerful jaws down and literally tears its victim apart. "The injuries these dogs inflict are more serious than other breeds because they go for the deep musculature and don't release; they hold and shake," says Sheryl Blair of the Tufts Veterinary School, in North Grafton, Mass., which last year held a symposium entitled Animal Agression: Dog Bites and the Pit Bull Terrier.

"Most breeds do not multiple-bite," says Kurt Lapham, a field investigator for the West Coast Regional office of the Humane Society. "A pit bull attack is like a shark attack: He keeps coming back."

"A pit bull," says Judge Victor E. Bianchini of San Diego, "is the closest thing to a wild animal there is in a domesticated dog."

A fair assessment of a growing problem? Or a bad rap against an animal which has suffered far more at the hands of man than it can possibly repay? It has been estimated that there are half a million pit bull terriers alive in the United States today. What about the 99% who have never bitten a human being? Are these dogs "loaded handguns," as many have called them? "There's something a little scary about wondering, Is there a time bomb ticking in my dog?" says Dr. Franklin Loew, dean of Tufts Veterinary School, who opposes efforts to legislate against pit bull terriers and believes the breed is the victim of "canine racism." Loew adds, "The pit bull does seem to respond more than other dogs to people trying to bring out aggressiveness. But everything I know professionally tells me that this is not a dog problem, but a problem of dog ownership."

What exactly is a pit bull? Defining it has proved to be a formidable legal hurdle because the pit bull is not a specific breed. Rather, it is a kind of dog, a generic catchall like hound or retriever. The breeds most commonly referred to as pit bulls are the American Staffordshire terrier, which is the term used by the American Kennel Club, and the American pit bull terrier, the term used by the United Kennel Club. The men who match pit bulls in fights today do not bother with such formalities; they refer to their animals as bulldogs—a nickname which should not confuse pit bulls with the pug-faced and bowlegged English bulldog, a distant relative, or the bullterrier, another relation whose bloodline was softened long ago by crossbreeding with the English Terrier. Pit bulls come in almost any color; their ears may be cropped or uncropped; their noses either red or black; and their height and weight merely proportionate—with the weight parameters ranging from under 20 pounds to upwards of 100. Their muzzles are wedgelike, their jaws powerful and their heads blocky. A pit bull's coat will be short and glossy, shimmering over a compact frame tightly bound in muscle.

All the dogs referred to as pit bulls are thought to trace their ancestry back to the bull-and-terrier, which was developed in England in the early 19th century. The bull-and-terrier was a cross between the early bull-dog—the name comes from the fact that it was used in bull-baiting—and a game terrier of some kind, either English, or fox, or black-and-tan. The bull-and-terrier dog was also used for bull-baiting, and was sometimes referred to as a butcher's dog. When a butcher wanted to slaughter one of his cattle, he would sic his bull-and-terrier on the unlucky bovine, and the game little dog would latch onto the bigger animal's nose, and the butcher, hammer in hand, would move in swiftly and bludgeon the cow on the head.

At some point, no one is sure exactly when, gentlemen sportsmen began matching bull-and-terrier dogs against each other. One of the more popular establishments in London used for such purposes was the Westminster Pit, an enclosure that could hold about 300 spectators. Admission was charged at the door (two shillings in 1816), odds would be established, wagers were made and purses put up. It was all very civilized. Sometimes, after the dogs had finished chewing up one another, a fight between bears would follow.

In 1835, the English parliament outlawed the whole bloody business—bear-baiting, bull-baiting and dogfighting. All the law served to do was to drive dogfighting underground. The coal miners in Staffordshire were said to be particularly avid followers of the clandestine "sport." Now, more than 150 years later, in an age of computers and biogenetics, the blood of those miners courses through the veins of citizens in these 50 states, and the blood of the bull-and-terrier dog's descendants continues to be splattered against the sides of pits.

According to The Complete Dog Book, the official AKC publication, the pit bull first came to America around 1870. Some pit bull breeders date their arrival much earlier. Byron Fortenberry of Akron, Ohio, a breeder and author on canine subjects, claims that of the two dogs that came over on the Mayflower, one was a spaniel and one was "a small mastiff." Says Fortenberry, "A bulldog was called a small mastiff in 1620. No way you can prove it was or it wasn't a pit bull, but more than likely that's what became our breed."

Fortenberry does not explain how this particular small mastiff was able to reproduce itself—perish the thought that it was bred to the lowly spaniel—but one of the traits one discovers in talking with breeders of American pit bull terriers is that they consider the dog capable of almost anything, including virgin birth. At any rate, the breed was well established in America by the 20th century. In 1898 the United Kennel Club began registering American pit bull terriers under the auspices of C.Z. Bennett, who drew up breed standards and wrote a set of rules governing dogfighting. In 1909 the American Dog Breeders Association, which at that time was determined to distance itself from dogfighting, set up its own registry.

These were the salad days of the pit bull terrier. The dog was the envy of the canine world. Buster Brown's floppy-eared pal in the popular comic strip of that era was his pit bull, Tige. Theodore Roosevelt had a pit bull in the White House. And a pit bull named Stubby, used in World War I to deliver messages between battalions, assisted in the capture of a German spy and was decorated for bravery by General John (Black Jack) Pershing.

The pit bull was America's dog and was depicted as such in 1914 by artist Wallace Robinson, who created a poster in which an English bulldog, a German dachshund, an American bull terrier, a French bulldog and a Russian wolfhound were dressed in the military uniforms of each dog's country. The caption on the poster was a remark by the pit bull, who appeared in the middle, slightly larger than the rest: "I'm neutral, BUT—Not Afraid of any of them."

Later, the most famous pit bull of them all burst on the American scene, a star who was, ironically it now seems, surrounded by a cast of children. That was the Our Gang canine pal, Pete, a predominately white pit bull with a distinctive black circle—almost certainly the work of a make-up artist—around its left eye. Pete is celluloid proof that there was a time when the pit bull terrier had "a ridiculously amiable disposition."

In 1935 the American Kennel Club finally decided to recognize the American pit bull terrier as a breed. The club, however, could not bring itself to call the animal by that name. The AKC wanted its own name for this courageous, personable dog, and it wanted a name that did not include the word pit. The AKC settled upon the Staffordshire terrier because so many of the dogs had come from that area of England. In the summer of 1936 the first Staffordshire terrier was registered by the AKC. Pit bull lore has it that Pete was the first Staffordshire. It's a swell story, but not true. Pete was among the first, but the honor actually goes to a dog named Wheeler's Black Dinah.

"It was exactly the same dog as our American pit bull terrier," says Andy Johnson of the rival UKC, which currently registers between 25,000 and 30,000 American pit bull terriers annually. "They even opened their registry to our dogs. The AKC just didn't want anything in their name that would remind people of the fighting history of the pit bull. It was like a family denying that it had horse thieves in its past."

Perhaps. But most pit bull fanciers believe that in the 52 years since the Staffordshire terrier—renamed the American Staffordshire terrier in 1972—was recognized by the AKC, it has become a dog significantly different from the UKC's American pit bull terrier. Not in looks—which are nearly identical—but in temperament. Why? Because over the years the Staffordshire has been bred to show, rather than to fight. In one of his books, pit bull expert and breeder Richard Stratton addressed this subject in his glossary of pit bull terms: "American Staffordshire terrier.... The show counterpart of the APBT. Except for some game strains that are dual-registered, these dogs could not be expected to be as game as the APBT or to have the same ability."

The ability Stratton is talking about is the ability to fight. The gameness he describes is the willingness of the animal to fight to its own death. American Staffordshire terriers have not been valued as fighting dogs for at least half a century. "A true Staffordshire terrier is not a fighting dog, even though it came from a fighting dog," says the Humane Society's Lapham.

Is it just coincidence, then, that none of the killings of people in the past two years have been attributed to registered American Staffordshire terriers? Probably not.

"The American Staffordshire terrier's chief requisites should be strength unusual for its size, soundness, balance, a strong, powerful head, a well-muscled body, and courage that is proverbial," reads The Complete Dog Book. "As to character, they exceed being dead game; nevertheless, they should not be held in ill repute merely because man has been taking advantage of this rare courage to use them in the pit as gambling tools. These dogs are docile, and with a little training are even tractable around other dogs."

Ginny Bazelak of Chepachet, R.I., president of the American Pit Bull Terrier Club of New England, feels the same way about the dogs that she has bred. "They say pit bulls have natural aggressiveness," she says. "I don't believe it. People who are breeding for aggressiveness will get it. For the last 12 years I haven't been, and these dogs aren't. My dogs are babies. They'll lick you to death. The people who fight dogs tell me I'm ruining the breed. They say my dogs are wimps."

Sadly it is the responsible owners and breeders who are suffering the most from the recent wave of pit bull hysteria. "You feel like a criminal walking your dog," says Bazelak. "You're constantly approached by someone who says, 'That's a vicious dog,' as if it's a wild animal. I've stopped breeding mine. I don't want to add to the population right now. I'm disgusted with the American people who believe the problem's with the dog and not with the people raising the dog."

But the hysteria, or concern, is understandable. To the untrained eye—or even to the trained one, in many instances—it is virtually impossible to tell a docile pit bull from a mean one. None of them looks like a wimp, and a friendly pit bull jumping up to lick you to death has an eerie resemblance to a pit bull jumping up to rip out your throat. Your best bet is to pass a fast judgment on its owner.

Pit bulls do not usually growl before attacking; they seldom bark. The hair on their backs does not stand on end when they are enraged. These are not dogs given to threatening displays. The pit bull, when so trained, is all business, which has made it the dog of choice for drug dealers and street punks around the country. "People whose insecurities are such that they need macho reinforcement feel a need for this type of animal," says Loew of Tufts, "and they are available because of the overflow from illegal dogfights."

"I just saw a surprising statistic from a Los Angeles study," Steve Blackwood, a sergeant in the San Diego Sheriff's Department, said recently. "In two out of three narcotics raids, pit bulls were used as the guard dogs."

San Diego investigators also were told that local members of motorcycle gangs were stashing their drugs beneath the doghouses of their pit bulls. "Street dope dealers and street gangs have gone to pit bulls," says Budd Johnson, an inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service who is based in San Diego. Law enforcement officials are seeing the same thing all over the country, and the pit bull populations in urban areas have mushroomed as a result. There have also been instances when pit bulls were used in armed robberies, in effect taking the place of a weapon, and one case in which a 16-year-old girl was raped by a man who allegedly threatened her with his two pit bulls.

You've got a bunch of kooks out there who are getting these dogs and making them mean and registering them," says Andy Johnson of the UKC. "Every time somebody writes how mean these dogs are, the demand for them jumps up. You can make any dog mean if you work at it."

Now, and historically, at the core of the breed's problems is dogfighting. This loathsome "sport" is, by most accounts, more widespread than ever in the U.S. At the same time it is even less humane, having passed from the hands of the old-time "gentlemen" breeders into the mitts of the borderline sadists. Once primarily a rural dementia, dogfighting has become a city problem as well, the outgrowth of the popularity of pit bulls. It matters little that dogfighting is illegal in every state, and a felony-level crime in 36 states. "You can virtually find a convention [as dogfights are called in the jargon of the sport] on any weekend in any of the 50 states," says Eric Sakach of the West Coast Regional office of the Humane Society in Sacramento.

"There are probably more matches taking place today than ever before because of the popularity of the breed," says Stratton, whose books on pit bull terriers include such chapters of general interest as: "Dimensions of the Dog Pit" and "Fluid Therapy for Treating Hypo-Volemic Shock."

"Dogfighting is the greatest perversion of the special relationship that exists between people and dogs," says Randall Lockwood of the Humane Society. "It is people subjecting dogs to incredible cruelty. And now that has turned into dogs killing people."

Dogfighters vehemently dispute this, and with a straight face one writer compared pitting a bulldog with taking a greyhound out on a run. When, as a youth, Stratton asked Mrs. William J. Lightner, the wife of a legendary pit bull breeder, if dogfighting was cruel, he recalls that she responded, "It was cruel all right, but not to the dogs, for fighting was the very breath of life to them because of their breeding. But it was cruel to the people because it was hard not to get especially attached to your best dog, the very one likely to be matched, and sometimes they were lost."

The dog, in the warped perspective of the dogfighting zealot, dies happy, fulfilled, like an Iranian soldier. Next stop, puppy heaven. As one pitman bragged to Benno Kroll, who wrote a superb account of dogfighting in the November 1979 issue of Geo: "My dogs die with their tails up and wagging."

Perhaps. They also die with their legs broken, their ears mangled and their flesh torn. "We've seen them, with both front legs broken, push themselves across the ring to fight," says Blackwood, the San Diego sheriff.

Many times the dogs die hours after the fight of hypovolemic shock—dehydration—since the prevailing wisdom says to dehydrate your animal before fighting him to cut down on his potential loss of blood. And sometimes a dog dies minutes after the fight from a bullet to the brain, if the dog happens to "cur out"—refuse to engage in battle.

Of course they don't all die. Pit bulls are incredibly hardy animals that, some folks would have you believe, are impervious to pain. The majority of the pit bulls recover from their fights, which routinely last more than an hour and sometimes as long as three hours, and live to fight again.

Before each match, the handlers wash their opponent's pit bull, a tradition which started after some "gentleman sportsman" discovered that by putting poison on his own dog's coat, he could paralyze his adversary's animal. When the fight begins, the two dogs share the 16-foot-square pit with two handlers and a referee. It's close quarters in there, no place for a man-eating dog. And the bloodthirsty spectators, with fistfuls of cash, are separated from the participants by only a 30-inch-high wall.

"In the old days the fighting dogs were people-gentle," says Lockwood. "But that's not true any longer. It's not unheard of now for dogs to come out of the pit and attack spectators. Some of our investigators have seen it."

It has become a new game. It's commonplace these days for a dogfighting raid to turn up a veritable storeroom of illegal weapons and illegal drugs. "People who think they are dogfighters are into it now, but they have no concept what it's about," says one pit bull breeder from Ohio. "True dogfighters had a lot of money tied up in their dogs, and they didn't want to lose them. Today these clowns steal somebody's pet and put him in the pit without training him. Then they watch while the dog gets torn up. At best, they're sadistic."

Training a fighting pit bull terrier is something the Marquis de Sade certainly would have appreciated. Treadmills are the most commonly used apparatuses, and sometimes a kitten or a chicken is hung in a mesh basket at the top of the treadmill to hold the dog's attention. At the end of the hours-long workout, guess what the reward is? To increase the dog's biting power, trainers will hang tires from tree limbs, bidding their pit bulls to leap up and latch on, sometimes making them hang there for 15 to 20 minutes.

Those are the sophisticated methods. "In Toledo we arrested a guy who was paying kids to collect cats for him," relates Lapham of the Humane Society. "He'd throw them into the basement where he kept his pit bull, to let him taste blood."

Steven Creighton, a sergeant with the San Diego police department, recounts the gruesome tale of the arrest on Dec. 4, 1986, of 18-year-old James Madison. "We got a call that a guy put a noose around a live cat's neck and threw it over a branch so that it hung about eight feet off the ground," says Creighton. "Then the guy let a pit bull loose who attacked the cat while [a group of neighborhood children] watched in horror. He would let the pit chomp on the cat for a while, and then he'd lift the cat up out of the pit's reach. The dog was going crazy." The cat eventually died. Madison, who has pleaded not guilty, will go on trial next month for felony cruelty to animals and raising a dog for fighting.

"It's ridiculous," says Stratton. "The taste of blood doesn't make a pit bull a better fighter. But people write that kind of stuff about people who train pit bulls, and these kids read it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

And in some instances, it is literally the kids who get involved. Last year in Philadelphia five boys between the ages of 11 and 14 were arrested and charged with participation in a dogfighting ring in which the losing dogs were thrown out the window and hanged. All five were found guilty. "They call it "gambling the dog,' " Sam McClain, a police officer with Philadelphia's 19th District, told reporters. In a follow-up article on Philadelphia street dogfighting, which appeared in the July 2 issue of Rolling Stone, writer Mike Sager described the training regimen of a pair of pit bull handlers, brothers aged 13 and 14: "They'll starve him to make him mean, fatten him on twenty-five-cent-a-can dog food and leftover beans and rice, run him around the block behind their bicycles, feed him chicken blood, take him on a safari around the neighborhood looking for cats and strays, shoot him up with black-market penicillin and vitamin B12 to help heal his wounds, and rub him with used motor oil to make his fur grow back over his scars."

Some feed their dogs hot sauce to make them mean, while others subscribe to a dosage of gunpowder. It is not clear whether these dogs, when they die, do so with their tails up and wagging.

Who has suffered more, then? The pit bull for his association with man? Or man for his association with the pit bull? It should be pointed out that pit bull terriers serve man in a number of legal and interesting ways. They are not just guard dogs and fighters. The stamina and courage of the pit bull make the breed unparalleled as a hunting dog for wild pigs, a popular quarry in parts of the South and Southwest. Some ranchers, particularly those who graze livestock in brushy country where it is difficult to rope, use pit bulls as catch dogs for cattle. They can also be trained to herd sheep—pity the coyote that would bother a pit bull's flock. And, recreationally, pit bull owners have started to show enthusiasm for weight pulling. The pit bull's the hardest-pulling dog in the world," brags Ralph Greenwood of the American Dog Breeders Association. Last year in Seguin, Texas, a 78-pound pit bull named Bighead set a record by pulling 5,650 pounds over rails for a distance of 15 feet.

Clearly, though, steps have to be taken if man and the pit bull terrier are to continue to coexist. "Dogfighting needs to be prosecuted," says Blair of Tufts. "And effective vicious-dog legislation needs to be enacted."

There are a number of reasons why "vicious dog" legislation is preferable to ordinances that specifically target the pit bull terrier. As has been noted, it is virtually impossible to define a pit bull in legal terms. There is also the nettle-some question of punishing innocent, responsible bleeders of American Staffordshire terriers and American pit bull terriers for the abuses of irresponsible, often criminal, owners. And finally, the pit bull is not the only aggressive dog on the street. Rottweilers, Dobermans, German shepherds, akitas and chows are all breeds that can be aggressive and that are large enough to inflict severe damage on people and other animals. For that matter, any breed that is improperly raised or is allowed to run loose can become a menace. The population of this country is more than 240 million people, and "Ninty-seven percent of Americans now live in cities, towns or villages," says Loew of Tufts. "There are 50 million dogs in this country, more than at any time in our history. How are we going to live with them?"

"We suggest a procedure by which a dog can be identified as 'dangerous' or "vicious' that does not just take into consideration bites," says the Humane Society's Lockwood. "A dog that assumes a threatening posture when unprovoked, that lunges at its fence when someone walks past, that chases kids—that is a dangerous dog, even if it hasn't actually bitten anyone. The new thrust is to make owners responsible for their dogs before there's a problem."

This much we have learned from the pit bull: The so-called "one free bite" concept of dog control is out to lunch. This is the policy in effect in many communities where a dog is not considered to be a problem until it has bitten on two occasions. In the case of the pit bull terrier, that is usually two occasions too many. David Sholes, a Rhode Island state senator, proposed and drafted vicious-dog legislation for his state in 1985. It is now considered a prototype for others to follow. "We had a tremendous explosion of pit bull attacks, you were reading about a new one practically every week," says Sholes. "One child lost part of a buttock, another part of her face. A pit bull managed to get on a school bus and terrorize the children. It was apparent that the current law was not working."

The new Rhode Island law provides a workable definition of a "vicious dog": One that has either committed an unprovoked attack on a person or animal, or that approaches a person in an apparent attitude of attack when unprovoked. That is the key word: unprovoked. Any dog that is unlicensed falls into the "vicious" category until it is licensed. Rhode Island's procedure for having a dog declared "vicious" is as follows: 1) the complainant calls the local animal control officer; 2) the officer investigates the complaint and holds a hearing to examine the circumstances; 3) he then declares whether the animal in question is "vicious" or not; 4) if the owner of the dog disagrees with his verdict, he may appeal to District Court.

Should his appeal fail, the owner of the "vicious" dog must keep it in a secure enclosure, at least six feet in height, that is both childproof from the outside and dogproof from the inside. The dog is tattooed for identification. Furthermore, the dog owner must show that he has a $100,000 insurance policy for liability, and he is required to display a sign that can be read from the road: vicious DOG ON PREMISES. The dog officer has the right to inspect the enclosure at any subsequent time and without need of a warrant, and has the right to seize and impound the dog if any of the specifications are not met to his satisfaction. If the dog bites again, the owner is fully liable, much as if he had been keeping a wild tiger in a cage.

"Most owners would rather turn in their dog than comply," says Sholes. "So the net effect was to keep these vicious dogs off the street."

Of course the vast majority of problem pit bulls are unregistered and unlicensed. These are the animals that law enforcement officials must focus on, and quickly. Unlicensed dogs should be impounded. And anyone who knows of individuals who are keeping unlicensed dogs, or whose dogs are allowed to run loose, should be encouraged to report them to the proper authorities. "We've got to make bad-dog behavior impersonal," says Loew. "It should be like asking someone who is smoking in a no-smoking area to stop. No offense, but your dog is a problem."

"For a long time the judicial system has not taken dogfighting and dog-biting seriously," says Lapham. "That laissez-faire attitude cannot persist. Dogfighting is not just aberrant behavior in a civilized society, it has become a lethal liability within that society. The best new ordinances and leash laws in the world will be worthless unless the courts deal with these people seriously. They have to send a message that says: You want to own these dogs, fine. But you'll pay the consequences if you screw up."

It is a message that is already being sent. In February, Hayward Turnipseed of De Kalb County, Ga., was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison after three of his pit bulls attacked and killed four-year-old Billy Gordon as the child walked through a neighbor's yard. Michael Berry, 37, the California man who owned the dog who killed two-year-old James Soto, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter. And Edlyn Joy Hauser, the woman whose dog, Benjamin, attacked animal control officer Crowell, has pleaded innocent to three felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon—Benjamin—and intentionally inflicting great bodily harm.

As for the American pit bull terrier, it, too, has taken its lumps. In the three weeks following those two grisly June incidents in California, more than 300 pit bulls and pit bull crosses were turned in to the Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control Department, most of them by owners who no longer wanted the responsibility of keeping them, or who had simply become frightened of their own pet by the breed's reputation. The animals were all put to sleep.

Overpopulation of the breed remains one of the chief concerns about pit bulls, especially in already crowded urban areas. Law enforcement officials, animal control officers, animal rights groups and legislators are just beginning to address that particular problem.

And the American pit bull terrier's aberrant sidekick? They're going to be dealing with the human part of the puzzle for a long, long time.

Media Hype - RS

In July 1987 Rolling Stone Magazine published A Boy and his Dog in Hell. The first article published that described dog fighting and the cruelty inflicted on pit bulls to mainstream America. These articles shaped our view of pit bulls even today. It took some digging, but we were able to find a copy of Mike Seger's article in his Wounded Warriors essay collection. The following story contains profanity, descriptions of animal cruelty and drug use, reader discretion is advised.

A Boy and His Dog in Hell

The kid in the alley calls himself Zeke. He’s waiting for Beo, his older brother. It’s early yet, 8:00 in the evening in spring. Dogs bark behind a back-yard fence, rain drums on the hood of a car, rap rumbles from a boom box in an open window. Zeke cups his hand beside his mouth and lifts his chin toward the roof line. “Yooooooooo!” he howls—a lone, shrill note that pierces the rot smell and the amber light and echoes across the ruins of North Philadelphia. Once upon a time, this area was populated by Irish and Italian immigrants; they worked in the factories along American Street, turning out ball bearings and steel rollers and conveyor belts, little parts of bigger parts that made the machine age run. Today the neighborhood is called Little Puerto Rico. The factories have moved to the suburbs, the Sunbelt, offshore. American Street is wide and empty.

“Yoooooooooo!” Zeke howls again. He tilts his ear and listens. From a distance comes a faint response. “Yooooooooo!” Beo is coming. He’s got the dog.

Zeke crosses a vacant lot, crunching over the tin cans and car parts and bedsprings and pieces of foam and Pampers that cover the ground like mulch. He jumps atop an old washing machine and lights a joint. The rain is harder now. He tugs the collar of his jacket to his neck. It is a 76ers jacket, red and shiny and much too large for a seventy-five-pound kid. The waistband hits him mid-thigh. The sleeves keep falling over his hands. He took it from somewhere, he can’t remember; it was a while ago, before his last stretch at St. Michael’s School for Boys. A name is stitched on the left chest in white letters: SAUL.

Zeke has been home from St. Michael’s for two weeks. He likes being home, being free, doing anything he wants—like all day today, like tonight, a night sharp with the promise of dogs and drugs, blood and adventure. St. Michael’s was far away from the neighborhood, in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, in the woods near the mountains. They locked him in there, and he went to school, took baths, watched TV. They tried to make him eat, but the food was nasty, nothing tasted like nothing. Zeke didn’t know nobody but one boy. One night the boy tried to pinch Zeke’s ass. Zeke punched his lights out. Or so he says.

To hear him tell it, Zeke should never have gone to jail in the first place. It was his lawyer’s fault—his lawyer wouldn’t let him talk to the judge. Had he been able to talk, Zeke says, he would have got himself off. Like he told that lawyer, he didn’t fight no pit bull dogs to the death. He didn’t hang no dogs from no roof with no telephone wire after they lost a fight. And he didn’t know nothing about no ten dog bodies. He didn’t do nothing.

The lawyer told him to shut up. Zeke was appearing before the same judge who’d sent him away the last time. This time, his sixth at St. Michael’s, Zeke got five months. By his own rough count, that makes a total of three years that he has spent locked up in one place or another. He is thirteen years old. When he totals his time, he smiles and shows his dimples. He is a pretty boy, with high cheekbones and dark hair cropped close to his head. His eyes sparkle like the broken glass in the gutter.

Beo rounds the corner, issues a quiet “Yo.” He’s got the dog by a choke chain. It pulls him through the alley, weaving here and there to sniff and piss, wheezing a bit from the pressure of the chain around its neck. A young male pit bull, about one year old, it is fourteen inches tall at the shoulder, maybe twenty-five pounds. Its brown and tan coloring is called brindle by breeders and aficionados; on the street it’s tiger stripe.

He’s a good-looking animal, handsome in the same way a man can be—chiseled jaw and high cheekbones. His body looks like something by Nautilus, with a muscular chest and slightly bowed front legs, as if he’d done a lot of pushups and biceps curls. The waist is tapered, the ass small, the gait wide-legged and sturdy.

Zeke neither waves nor says hello. His expression says he doesn’t give a shit whether Beo showed up or not. He doesn’t even look at the dog. In Zeke’s world, he says, “If you want something, you don’t get it.” Zeke don’t want nothing from nobody. If he did, he’d take it himself.

Beo is fourteen, the oldest boy in his mother’s brood of seven children by three fathers. Beo is four-foot-eleven, one inch taller than Zeke, five pounds heavier. He’s wearing a leather jacket with the hood pulled up over his head. As he comes closer, his soft face and big brown eyes put you in mind of the time Tom Sawyer wore a bonnet to fool the old lady. Like Tom, Beo is a legend, at least around here.

“We tried to catch this kid for two years,” says Sam McClain, a Philadelphia police officer. One morning at 6:00, McClain came to Beo’s house with warrants for theft, receiving stolen property, dog fighting, cruelty to animals, and killing or maiming a domestic animal. The fire department set up ladders on either end of the block. Fifteen police officers covered the rooftops and the street. “Somehow the kid got away,” McClain says, only half-grudgingly.

Around the neighborhood, the stories about Beo have reached mythic proportions. One time, it is said, he was running through an alley, trying to elude the cops, and a pit bull flew out of nowhere and locked onto Beo’s back. He flipped the dog over his shoulder and crushed its skull with a brick, never even breaking stride. In the next block, a stray German shepherd clamped onto Beo’s leg. He beat it to death with a board. In the end, the cops found the two dead dogs but could not catch Beo. Or so it is said.

According to McClain, Beo is now wanted in connection with a murder. In March, a kid answering Beo’s description rode his BMX bike past an old woman at high speed and snatched her purse, knocking her down in the process. She died later from her injuries.

Beo says that he owns four pit bulls at the moment, scattered at three different houses in the neighborhood to protect them from confiscation by the SPCA. They are named Voltron, Hitler, Murder, and Atlas. By his own account, over the past three years, Beo has had, for varying lengths of time, literally hundreds of pits. He has fought them all, many to the death. They are never around for very long. In one recent five-day period, Beo and Zeke had eight different pits in their possession. Most of the dogs are stolen; sometimes the boys will trade, either dog for dog or dog for dog plus considerations, like maybe a little cocaine.

Both of the boys earn money selling powder cocaine on a street corner—they both have regular shifts. Like dedicated managers, Beo and Zeke put their dogs in training. They fatten them on twenty-five-cent-a-can dog food and leftover beans and rice, run them around the block behind their bicycles, feed them chicken blood to make them game, take them on safaris around the neighborhood hunting for cats and strays, shoot them up with black-market penicillin and vitamin B12 to help heal their wounds, rub them with motor oil to make their fur grow back over scarred areas.

Unlike his big-shot brother, Zeke has no dogs at the moment, though he had one last night—a white bitch he’d stolen to celebrate his return from St. Michael’s. He named her Canna, short for Canna Be Stopped. She was a good fighter. But she wasn’t as good as Beo’s dog, Murder. The fight lasted only five minutes.

After the fight, Beo and Zeke threw Canna’s carcass on a trash heap, then went hunting for a new dog. A couple of miles away, in a back yard, they found a black pit. They stole it and named it Blade. They knew the guy who sold Blade to the man in the house, so they passed the word through the streets: If Blade’s original owner wanted him back, he could come see Beo and Zeke. He did. A trade was arranged. That’s where Beo has been this evening. Now he’s back now with the goods.

Beo lets go of the choke chain and the tiger-stripe pit makes a bee line for his little brother. Zeke jumps off the washer and kneels on the ground. The dog is all over him in an instant—licking and wagging and strutting.

Zeke swats the dog on its side, pulls its ears, ruffles its fur and makes him growl. He kisses him on the snout. “What his name?” he asks his older brother.

“Shit, I don’t know, man.” Beo’s voice is husky, his dialect a mixture of Puerto Rican Spanglish and black Ebonics. “He crazy, though. He went after two cats on the way here.”

“He fat,” Zeke says. “He look good!”

“I gonna train him up. He gonna be a champ!”

“What his name?” Zeke asks again.

Beo bites on a hangnail, studies his brother for a moment. “What? You want him or somethin’?” Scuffing his toe on the ground. “You want him or not?”

“No, man,” Zeke says. “You keep him.”

Beo grabs the dog by the scruff of its neck, lifts him to eye level and growls. Then he looks over at his brother. They share a room together. Since they were little, they have always been together, side by side, best friends and worst enemies. The only thing that has ever kept them apart is St. Michaels. “If I give him to you, you gonna take good care of him?” Beo asks.

No answer.

“You won’t let him get skinny?”

No answer. With Beo, you never know the right thing to say. Usually, it’s best to say nothing.

Beo flings the dog at Zeke. It knocks him over; the two tumble as one across the wet cobblestones.

Zeke sits up, delighted. The dog licks his face. “We’ll call you Diablito,” he tells his new pit, Little Devil.

“We’ll make him a champ!” Beo proclaims. He kicks Diablito in the hindquarters, sends him sprawling. And then he laughs, “Ah ha HA!”, the way he always does when he’s around the pits: head back, eyes wide, left hand squeezing his balls.

According to the New York Times, North Philadelphia is “the 'dog fight’ capital of the East Coast.” But this story could just as easily be set in New York or Miami or Detroit or Los Angeles. Wherever there are men and boys who need something to be proud of and known for, there are people fighting pit bulls.

On the hard streets of the city (and in the mall parking lots of the suburbs), you are what you own: your moped, your boom box, your sneakers, your bling, your pit. Having a pit is not like having any other kind of dog. Pits do more than eat and shit and walk on a leash. They fight. They are perfect for places like Little Puerto Rico—small enough to keep, tough enough to survive.

“The attraction is basic. Kids need an outlet,” Officer McClain says. “You go home every day, you live somewhere shitty, your mother and father are fighting, you got your ass kicked last night. You need a pit to impress your peers, to make you feel good about yourself. With your pit on the street, you’re somebody. You’ve got an enforcer at your side.”

Pit-bull fighting has traditionally been the domain of skilled professionals— a mostly rural cult of outlaw aficionados who fight the dogs in regulation pits according to rules. They train and care for the animals as they would prizefighters. (More recently, the illegal sport has made headlines in stories involving rappers and athletes, most notably former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.)

“Pit bulls have become the new macho dog of choice in the urban centers of the country,” according to Randall Lockwood, the director of higher education for the Humane Society of the United States. More and more pits are being seen on the streets and in the neighborhoods of the nation’s cities and towns. As their numbers grow, so does the litany of horror tales. Law-enforcement officials have reported the increasing use of pit bulls as weapons in crimes ranging from street robbery to rape. “And I know of some cases,” McClain says, “where police will hesitate to raid drug-selling sites because they are guarded by an army of pit bulls.” “Nowadays,” McClain says, “you walk your pit down the street and people clear the way. It’s about power. It’s a fad. Every era has its fads. This era has pit bulls. This era is pretty twisted.”

Pit bulls trace their ancestry to the English bulldog, to a sport called bullbaiting. During the early nineteenth century, peasants would gather for an afternoon, tether a bull to a long lead, cover its horns with pitch, and poke it with sticks. Then they would let two or three bulldogs attack it.

With the passage of the English Humane Act of 1835, which outlawed bullbaiting, dog versus dog became a popular sport, especially in the coal-mining areas of Staffordshire. When the bulldog was brought to America, it was bred, successively, with the terrier, the bullmastiff, the Rottweiler, and the Rhodesian ridgeback. The result of all this selective breeding is known, variously, as the American pit bull terrier or as the American Staffordshire terrier. It is a dog that has been genetically engineered for fighting.

Most wild and domestic dogs, according to research by the Humane Society of the United States, fight to drive away rivals for food, mates, status, or territory. First, the dogs will square off and bluff—growling, barking, baring teeth. Fighting is usually a last resort; the engagements are brief. A fight ends when one of the dogs withdraws or surrenders by
exposing its neck and belly.

Pit bulls, however, rarely bark or growl. They will attack without provocation. The gamest of them will fight for hours, until complete exhaustion or death. They wrestle with muscular front legs, lock on an opponent with sharp teeth and powerful jaws. They crush bones, puncture flesh, tear it free from the skeleton. If a dog shows his belly to a game pit, the pit will disembowel it.

A 55-pound pit bites with a force of 1,800 pounds per square inch. The average German shepherd or Doberman bites with half that force. And the pit’s jaws have become specialized over the generations, so it can lock on an object with its front incisors and chew with its back molars at the same time.

According to researchers, pits have been genetically equipped with a higher tolerance for pain than most animals. Pit bulls can climb trees or hang from a tire by their teeth for hours. In Holland, a forty-pound pit recently pulled a two-ton trailer 100 meters along a straightaway.

Defenders of the breed speak of a highly misunderstood dog. Like gun enthusiasts, they fault the human element—the pit-bull owners who misuse their dogs. They extol the virtues of the pit bull—innate intelligence, loyalty, and fine character. In an eloquent paean to the pit bull that appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Vickie Hearne, a writing instructor at Yale University, rhapsodized over “the seriousness of mind of this breed,” its purity of heart, its “awareness of all the shifting gestalts of the spiritual and emotional life around” it. The article—entitled, “Lo, Hear the Gentle Pit Bull!”—portrays the pit as a complex, highly refined dog that is capable of acting with “moral clarity,” the result of “qualities that have to do with real love, love with teeth.”

Only in the latter part of the twentieth century did the pit bull become maligned. In the early 1900s, the pit was portrayed as the canine embodiment of American virtues—a dog of independence, ingenuity, tenacity, cooperation, and good humor. Petey from The Little Rascals was a pit bull. A famous 1914 painting by Wallace Robinson depicts an English bulldog, a Russian wolfhound, a German dachshund, and an American pit bull terrier. Each dog wears the military uniform of its country. The American pit bull is at the center of the lineup, the hero of the piece, which is entitled I’m Neutral but Not Afraid of Any of Them.

Nine in the evening. Beo and Zeke are in the living room of their family’s row house. Beo is pounding a screwdriver repetitively into a piece of cardboard. Bang, bang, bang. Zeke is smoking a Newport cigarette. Diablito is asleep at his feet.

“Hey, Zeke.”

“What?”

“Who ax you?” Beo laughs his maniacal laugh, “Ah ha HA!”

“Fuck you!”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up!”

“I’m gonna bust yo ass,” Beo says, and then he smiles, huge and toothy. They both crack up.

“Hey, pussy,” Zeke challenges, “who put the soda in their Cheerios with milk?”

“Ah ha HA! I only did that so you wouldn’t want none.”

And so it goes, another night of non sequiturs. Beo and Zeke don’t go to school. They’ve never been to a movie. They don’t know what a magazine is; they’ve never heard of Rolling Stone—or the Rolling Stones, either.

When they have money, they go to the “Indian store,” the only business in a several block radius, a liquor store and general market owned by a Pakistani. They have never seen an answering machine, have never used a computer or played a video tape. Their television gets only three channels. The only time they’ve ever been out of this part of the city was when they had to go to court or to jail or to St. Michaels. Most of what they know comes from rap songs, TV, and life on the streets. Neither one of the boys reads very well, but between them they know every hiding place, every abandoned house, every path through every alley in the neighborhood.

When they are engaged in illegal activities, they set up lookouts like a team of well-trained guerillas, covering all lines of approach. If someone says scatter, they’re gone like smoke in the wind.

The origins of the Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia go back to 1943, when a number of workers—who had come to the mainland on labor contracts with the Campbell Soup Company in Camden, New Jersey—took up residence in Philadelphia. By the late 1940s, as economic conditions on their home island worsened, many others followed, hoping to find high-paying jobs in the area’s factories. By the early 1950s, there were direct air flights from San Juan to Philadelphia, making it an attractive alternative to New York City, which already had a thriving Puerto Rican community of its own.

Unfortunately, the influx of the Puerto Ricans coincided with the end of the great days of manufacturing in Philadelphia. As was the case in the rest of the industrialized Northeast, factories were shutting down or moving out. During the 1970s, the number of manufacturing jobs in Philadelphia declined by 40 percent. The population of the city declined by 13 percent. The number of Puerto Ricans increased by 76 percent.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Puerto Ricans had the lowest levels of education and income and the highest rates of teen pregnancy, infant mortality, and criminal arrests in the city. According to a report by Temple University’s Institute for Public Policy Studies, there was little hope for relief. “Puerto Ricans have a hard time in Philadelphia. . . . As serious as [their] needs may be, they are only one group among many poor people living in a city with limited means to help them.”

Despite their disadvantages, when you spend time with Beo and Zeke, it doesn’t seem that they mind being semiliterate and truly needy. They wear name brands like Adidas and Lees. They have fancy BMX bikes. They have regular employment in the shadow economy—their shifts on the corner selling cocaine. And now they have a new pit bull, Diablito. It doesn’t seem to matter that they have no future. This is life as they know it. It’s the only one they have.

The living room is dark and warm. Heating is included in the rent, which is good, considering that their last house burned down after one of the little cousins got too close to a space heater and caught her dress on fire. There is a water-stained hole in the ceiling, beneath some bathtub pipes, and you can hear the leak—drip, drip, drip—mixing with sounds of laughter and shouting and the heavy bass of rap songs that filter through the shaded front windows. As the evening wears on, the rest of the Garcia brood lands in the living room with Beo and Zeke. Mami and Popi remain upstairs. You hear them occasionally, like Charlie Brown’s parents in Peanuts, but they rarely make an appearance.

Sister Angelina is sixteen. Her baby is thirteen months old, named Nikki after a character on a daytime soap. Nikki’s eyes are bandaged because Angelina accidentally used the lice shampoo instead of the baby shampoo.

Renata is fifteen. She’s just come back from the store with a bottle of soda called Malta. She says that if you’re pregnant, you can drink a Malta and take two of these pills called Cortal and you won’t be pregnant anymore. Her boyfriend is named Angel. Beo and Zeke refer to him as their brother-in-law. He brings presents all the time; he is allowed to sleep in Renata’s room. He deals coke for the Blue Tape Gang up the street. In Little Puerto Rico, gangs are identified by the color of the tape that is used to seal the little glassine envelopes of cocaine—blue, red, black. The gangs control their own corners. White people drive into the neighborhood, catch a runner on a corner to score. The coke is mostly powder, with a few small rocks, a bad burn.

Both Beo and Zeke work for Angel. On the corner where they stand, there are a few scraggly trees with white crosses spray-painted on the trunks, places where kids Beo’s age and older have been shot to death in the gang wars.

Ten year old Maria is busying herself at the coffee table in the living room, using a butcher knife to cut apart an imitation pearl necklace she found somewhere in the neighborhood. Seven year old Elena is playing roughly with a little kitten, throwing it up and down like a ball. Elena says the kitten has already used up three of its lives. One time Popi threw it out of the third-floor window. It didn’t land on its feet, it didn’t move. But then, after a while, it got itself back up and climbed the front steps into the house.

Another time, the baby sat on it. It seemed dead, so Angel soccer-kicked it into a wall. But two hours later it came back to life and walked shakily to its bowl and took a drink of water. Elena can’t remember the third time but she knows it happened. The kitten is cross-eyed. It has no name.

Beo watches idly as Elena plays with the kitten. All of a sudden, he snatches the kitten by the scruff of its neck and starts teasing Diablito with it. He bounces the terrified, cross-eyed kitten on the dog’s nose, throws it at him, picks it up before the dog can pounce. The kitten shrieks.

Elena shrieks at Beo. Zeke shrieks at Elena. Maria shrieks at Beo. Angelina shrieks at Maria. Then Renata hollers that she’s gonna punch somebody out if they don’t shut up. She sounds serious. A scuffle ensues, the volume maxed, everyone shrieking and screaming and laughing and scowling and swatting, literally bouncing off the walls . And then a bellow from above—Popi! The stairs shake. Boom, boom, BOOM!

Juan Garcia is the father of the four youngest children, including Beo and Zeke. He came here from Puerto Rico in the late 1950s. He says he works for a Jew, landscaping rich people’s houses on the Main Line—when there is work. Popi hates the dogs. Last week he called the SPCA. They came and took away three pits. By the time his feet hit the living room floor, Beo and Zeke have vanished.

“Tell ’em, Zeke, tell about Tough Boy,” prompts Beo.

“Tough Boy—he tough,” Zeke says proudly.

“Tell about that time with the bike.”

It’s nearly midnight. Beo and Zeke and Diablito have fled to their basement hangout down the street. There are seven boys in attendance, ranging in age from thirteen to sixteen: Sam, Emilio, Macho, Louie, and Li’l Man. All of them have pit bulls. The basement is downstairs from where Louie lives. The kids crash here all the time.

It’s decorated with old mattresses and sofas, posters of professional wrestlers, a boom box that Zeke stole out of a car the other night. As the hours pass, boys come and go from the basement. Each time there’s a knock at the door, everyone freezes. Every boy in the room has done something illegal today—stolen something, received stolen property,
bought or sold drugs, fought their stolen pit bulls, gotten into a fight, snatched a purse. As Beo likes to say, “You ain’t broke no laws ’til you get caught.”

“Check it out,” Zeke says, happy for once to have center stage. “I was riding my bike in the alley, and Beo had Tough Boy. And Beo say, 'Sic him!’ you know, so Tough Boy runs me down and grabs my back tire, flips me right off the bike. Then he just held the bike straight up in the air, you know, by the rim.”

“Ah ha HA!” Beo laughs. “He strong. Zeke was teasing me, you know. He was tellin’ me how Tough Boy was a mutt and shit. But really he was jealous of him.”

“I was not jealous of him!”

“Yes, you was. You used to talk a lot of shit.”

“I hated that motherfucker!” Zeke says. “I hated him.”

“Only ’cause he kilt that pit of yours. Tell ’em how Tough Boy kilt that pit of yours.”

“Terminator?”

“That motherfucker.”

“Check it out,” says Zeke, “I had this pit, right? He a champ. Name Terminator. He eat up one of Beo’s dogs, a tiger stripe named Buzzsaw. After the fight, Beo had to carry his shit home. His ears was hanging off and shit.”

“Das right,” says Beo, taking up the story himself. “So after that, I went and I traded this boy dog I had—he was all white, name Cocaine. I went to this guy I know and say, gimme a real killer. So I gave him Cocaine—plus I gave him a gram of Blue Tape—Cocaine plus cocaine! And that’s how I got Tough Boy. I come back with him and tell Zeke that Tough Boy gonna kill his dog. And Zeke say, 'No, man. No way.’

“We went to the third floor of this old house and they rumbled. Tough Boy and Terminator. Tough Boy shook him all up. He hit him on the neck. He crunched him on the leg. He bit his fuckin’ ear off. Terminator be hollering and screaming, bleeding and pissing and shitting, trying to run away. Ah ha HA!” Beo laughed. “That lousy ass motherfuckin’ mutt almost jumped out the window!”

“He did jump out the window!”

“’Cause he a little pussy like you, motherfucker!” Beo says.

“I got a champ now,” Zeke says. He raises his chin. “Diablito gonna tear your ass up! He gonna tear your shit right up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, mothafucka.”

“Let’s bang ’em!” calls Macho.

“Let’s rumble!” says Sam.

“Let’s shake ’em up!” yells Louie.

“Ah ha HA!” laughs Beo—head back, eyes wide, left hand squeezing his balls.

The boys walk through the alley in a hard rain, across a vacant lot toward a fenced-in schoolyard. Beo has Diablito, Li’l Man has Voltron, Louie has Death Man, and Macho has Darth Vader. The dogs pull the boys through the alley, wheezing from the pressure of the choke chains around their necks. Zeke tries to take Diablito’s leash out of Beo’s hand. “Give him here,” he implores. “He’s my dog.”

“Who give him to you?” Beo sneers.

By the time they reach the schoolyard, the rain has begun to let up. They find a dark spot near a fence. The boys form a ring. In the center, it’s Diablito versus Death Man, Beo versus Louie.

The boys stand five feet apart, face to face. They keep the dogs between their knees, squeezing to hold them in place, meanwhile riling the dogs, pinching and scratching at the fur behind their ribs, hissing into their ears, “Ssssssssssic, ssssssssssic.” Shortly, the dogs catch on and nature takes its course. They growl and bare teeth, strain forward. The boys let go. The dogs charge. Beo laughs and squeezes his balls, “Ah ha HA!”

Bang! They collide. You feel the ground shake.

Death Man gets a deep neck lock.

Diablito cries and disengages. He turns tail and runs.

Zeke’s face falls. He doesn’t say a word.

Beo corrals Diablito, sets him up again between his knees, facing Death Man.

Again, a neck lock. Diablito utters a squeal so horrible and wrenching that it turns your stomach. He shakes free and runs again.

“Pussy!” everyone taunts.

Zeke looks like he’s about to cry.

Darth Vader is next, a black pit with distended teats, a new litter. She’s fast. She locks Diablito just behind the head. There is much growling and squealing. There is blood.

Next is Voltron. He is Beo’s dog, midnight black. “Ah ha HA!” It is over quickly.

Diablito is lying on his side on the fissured concrete of the basketball court. His breathing is shallow. His blood mixes with a puddle of rain water. His brown eyes, fearful and confused, search the faces of the boys and dogs that surround him.

Beo calls Zeke a pussy.

Louie calls Zeke a pussy.

Macho calls Zeke a pussy.

Li’l Man calls Zeke a pussy.

Zeke kicks Diablito. He calls the dog a pussy.

Then the boys head back to the basement.

Late afternoon the next day, Zeke’s living room. It’s raining again. It’s quiet. There is no one around. Beo is working his usual shift on the corner, selling cocaine. Zeke has taken the cushions off of the sofa and placed them on the floor against a heating vent.

“When your dog lose,” he says, “you probably get a little mad, ’cause everybody sayin’ your dog lost and your dog a pussy and you a pussy. You get a little mad, but you don’t get embarrassed. No way. ’Cause everybody be laughin’, right? But you know you’re gonna come back with revenge. Bigtime revenge. You gonna tear their shit up. You gonna shake up their dog. You gonna kill their shit. And that’s when you start bragging, too. That’s when you be havin’ a big smile on your face.”

“Diablito was a mutt. Motherfucker wouldn’t fight. Kept turnin’ his back. Shit. He was a pussy. He don’t deserve to live noways.”

Zeke closes his eyes and takes a hit off a joint. Diablito is certainly dead by now. Someone has probably called the SPCA; they will come and collect the body from the school yard. Zeke had Diablito for less than one day. Like he says, “You can’t care too much about shit, ’cause sooner or later, it be gone.”

Spending time with him out in the streets, you almost forget Zeke’s age. He seems as street smart and savvy as any grown man, drinking and snorting and smoking, fighting dogs in a schoolyard, selling drugs for money to buy dog food, committing all kinds of crimes, petty and otherwise. But here, in the warm darkness of his family’s tenement living room, it is easy to see Zeke as he really is—thirteen years old, seventy-five pounds, curled up in the corner in a stolen 76ers jacket that is way too big for him.

“When I get older,” Zeke says, his voice soft and dreamy, “I ain’t gonna hustle or nothin’. I’m gonna buy me a car, a little Mazda with one of those racing engines. I’m gonna buy me a house, some furniture. I’m gonna put the house in the city, but far, far away from my family. I don’t want those motherfuckers coming to my house."

“I’m gonna have slaves in my house. I’ll sleep late, and I’ll have lady slaves fanning me, rubbing my back. I’ll wake up, they’ll wash me up, wash my hair, hook me up. Then I’ll be ready for them to carry me to the kitchen so I can eat my breakfast. And I’ll be fuckin’ all the lady slaves, too. Some badass bitches. All of them Puerto Rican. And some black ones. And some white ones. Different ones all the time. I ain’t gonna have no company. Nobody can visit. It the king’s house. Nobody visits the king. Like, if you come over, they open the door, my slaves do, and they say, 'What you want?’ And you’ll say, 'This is Mike, King Zeke know me, I’m baldheaded. I brought some drugs to give to Zeke.’ And they’ll say, 'All right, but you gonna have to wait.’”

“If I decide to let you in, I’ll tell ’em all right. Then my slave will come back down. He’ll open the iron door, bang. He’ll open the wood door, bang. He’ll open the screen door. Come right on in. See the king. Me. I’m over here. You kneel.”

Zeke giggles, then he closes his eyes. The pot is low quality; it makes your lids heavy. Cradled in the lullaby of the dripping rain, he nods for a while, a beautiful, mocha-skinned boy with long, thick eyelashes.

Outside the window, someone walks past with a boom box. The boy stirs from his nap, stretches, and yawns. Zeke picks up the beat from the passing song, makes it into his own. He taps on the wall with his knuckles, blows a bass beat through his lips, beatboxing. Then he begins to recite. This is Zeke’s Rap.

My name is Zeke
I’m at the mike
I’ll tell you ’bout
My whole damn life
I fight the pits
I’m number one
Look a me havin’
So much fun
To the beat ya’ll
To the beat ya’ll
To the beat ya’ll