It is the owner... not the breed...

As the end of 2013 rolls around and the new year begins, I want to remind people again that it is not the breed that kills, but the owners... Our county still has an incredible amount of Pitties that die each week at the shelter... Litters bred without any forethought as to where the puppies will end up at, nor a pregnant momma...  Male dogs are left intact because of some mistaken belief a male with testicles is somehow a better, "tough" dog...  Instead, the males end up earlier with testicular cancer and aggression that is misdirected and not channeled... Children are bitten needlessly and there is no logical reason for we humans to keep breeding dogs and having puppies that either have no home to go to or are killed because of a glut of them on the market... 

It is the owner that allows the dogs to stay intact and breed... Not the dogs themselves... 

This week TLC adopted the second (pregnant) momma Pitty we saved in 2013... It was NOT an easy adoption despite having trainers come in and work with her... It was not the breed, it was the original owner that allowed Snow to have no canine manners or training early in life... It was the owner that kept her intact, allowed her to come into heat and become impregnated... I am positive Snow did not sign onto 'Match.com' and go out looking for a mate... All of the conscious choices made along the way were made by humans and Snow (and her 7 puppies) almost paid the price by her life...

We have another Boxer/Pitty in the rescue - her name is "Momma" and I adopted her in May of this year... After her 9 puppies were all adopted, she and I began an intense course of training and work to insure she had a job and was a viable member of the TLC team...  Shortly afterwards I had her certified for therapy and then the CGC (Canine Good Citizen program done by the AKC)... Momma has a job - her job is to be a good ambassador of these two breeds, and as a rescued dog, show to the general public just how great these big, powerful dogs can be if the owner shows due diligence and trains them properly... 

Momma comes with me to the shop and at night, she comes home with me... In fact, she sleeps in my bed!... Momma has been trained to get along well with my other dogs (3 pound Chihuahuas), but even so, I am always on vigilance to insure she doesn't hurt the little ones and each day, I re-enforce the training I have put into her... It is not a 'lick and whistle' kind of commitment - it is an every day commitment that is organic, changing and evolving as the need arises... 

One of Momma's jobs is to show young children that Pitties can be nice, calm and responsive dogs instead of something to be afraid of... Once someone has asked our permission to pet Momma (the proper way to do it for any dog you do not know), she willing sits and allows herself to be petted over and over again by strangers... 

Momma weighs 65 pounds and if she wanted to, she could easily hurt one of the little dogs we rescue through sheer weight alone... While I would not leave her and another Pitty alone, I can leave her walk around the back of the rescue shop with any of the dogs once they have been properly introduced...   And although she looks small in these photos, there is a TREMENDOUS amount of power in those jaws and in the body once she starts moving... 

We could have let her die along with her daughter and those 9 puppies in her belly when we found her in a shelter, but we chose not to... When we took Momma on as a rescue, we knew we were getting into a TON of commitment... One that began with her and continued onto how ever many puppies she produced... While we had nothing to do with her being intact or getting pregnant, it was our responsibility as humane citizens to see our responsibility through until her natural death - not one because of her breed or that a shelter had filled up, running out of space... 

While Momma's story has a happy ending, few Pitty stories end well... If they arrive in a shelter, they usually go out paws facing the sky in a rendering company's steel drums...

Am I looking for shame and guilt here?  You bet I am... Even if you yourself are not breeding Pittys, or allowing them to stay intact and get pregnant, any time you have a neighbor with one that has not been spayed and neutered, you are harming the dog indirectly... Should circumstances change tomorrow, that dog may be homeless and with little chance of living a long, natural life... If we as human beings don't speak up and make the effort to get these dogs spayed or neutered, we ourselves might as well be the ones pulling the trigger (or in this case, injecting the needle)... 

Remember, it is not the breed, but the owners causing this huge overpopulation of unwanted pets in our nation's shelters!