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Introduction

Pull up a chair and spend some time with one of the most amazing, yet controversial, breeds to ever wag a tail. A breed of satin and steel, Pit Bulls are a mixture of softness and strength, an uncanny canine combination of fun, foolishness, and serious business, all wrapped up in love. If you ignore any of these ingredients you’re cheating yourself, and your dog, of the best relationship possible. My aim with this book has been to include the same mixture. Parts of it will be fun, a few parts perhaps even foolish, and much of it serious — always with the aim of strengthening and lengthening the bond between you and dog, and ensuring the Pit Bull earns back its good name.

But this book, like the breed, also comes with a caveat. As much as I hate to admit it, the breed has earned its controversial status. The Pit Bull has another side, one that too many dog lovers (and books) deny, ignore, or excuse. To do so isn’t fair to Pit Bull owners, other dogs, and the breed itself. Understanding this breed — both the good and the bad — is the best way to protect it. The irrefutable fact is that more Pit Bulls have killed more people and other dogs than any other type of dog has done. Owning any dog is a big responsibility, but because Pit Bulls aren’t like any other dog, owning a Pit Bull requires even more vigilance.

This is not a book meant to sit on your shelf as a collector’s item. This book should have ragged pages and chewed covers, with dog hairs as bookmarks. It should have imprints of tiny puppy teeth and full-grown paw prints marking the pages with your dog’s progress through life, and when one day it comes time to place it back on the shelf with the last chapter christened with tears, you will have no regrets. You will have known that you and your dog shared a life of fun, foolishness, and love, all made possible because of some serious stuff. But for now, just make sure you don’t get so immersed in reading that you forget to play with your dog!

About This Book

Whether this is the only dog book you’ll have on your shelf, or whether your shelves are jammed with dog books, I wrote this book to be the one book you can count on when it comes to caring for and enjoying your Pit Bull. Too many dog care books are filled with unrealistic scare tactics that would cause anyone to just give up, and others are filled with hand-me-down dog lore that has no basis in reality. I did my best to make sure you won’t find either of those in this book, but instead, evidence-based information that you can rely on when deciding whether whether this is the breed for you and, if the answer is yes, how you can best raise your dog to be the dog of your dreams.

Who should read this book? The people who think Pit Bulls should be purged from the face of the earth, as well as those who think it’s all how you raise them. Neither point of view is correct. The real Pit Bull lies somewhere in between, the victim of both people who hate him too much or love him too much to understand the total dog.

This book is a reference. The chapters are self-contained chunks of information that you can read in any order you want. If you want to read the book from beginning to end, feel free, but if you prefer to skip around and read the topics that interest you, be my guest! The Table of Contents and Index can help you find what you’re looking for.

Sidebars (text in gray boxes) and paragraphs marked with the Technical Stuff icon (see “Icons Used in This Book”) are skippable. Also, within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

Foolish Assumptions

When writing this book, I made some assumptions about you, the reader:

 You may be considering getting a Pit Bull, and you’d like to learn more about the breed.

 You already have a Pit Bull, and you want some tried-and-true advice about how to care for and manage your four-legged friend.

 You have an open mind, and you’re interested in hearing the facts about Pit Bulls so that you can be a well-informed ally to the breed.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout, the text, I use little pictures, called icons, to flag special bits of information. Here are what the icons represent:

For good, old-fashioned, helpful advice, look to this icon.

When there’s a general concept that I don’t want you to forget, I use this icon.

When presenting information that may protect you or your dog from harm, I give you this icon.

When I wade into the weeds on more technical information on Pit Bulls or caring for them, I mark that material with the Technical Stuff icon. You can skip anything marked with this icon without missing the point of the topic at hand.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product also comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the web. Check out the free Cheat Sheet for a five-minute health check you can do for your Pit Bull, as well as medical basics and emergency first aid. To access the Cheat Sheet, go to www.dummies.com and type Pit Bulls For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

If you’re interested in the history of the Pit Bull breed, its current controversies, or whether this is the breed for you, check out Part 1. Jump to Part 2 if you need advice on choosing a Pit Bull, breeder versus rescue, and what to look out for. The rest of the book gives you the scoop on caring for and training your Pit Bull friend.

WHY THIS BOOK ISN’T SUGAR-COATED

I’m a lifelong lover of dogs, but also a lover of science. I’ve been trained in the biological bases of animal behavior, including the science of behavioral genetics. Dogs are the greatest experiment ever performed in behavioral genetics, representing thousands of years of selection for behavior — selection that makes Pointers point, Retrievers retrieve, Greyhounds chase, and Beagles sniff. So, it always seemed strange to me that Pit Bull advocates claimed that their breed was exempt from any genetically influenced behaviors.

Some years ago, when writing my Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds, I included some cautionary statements about Pit Bull–type breeds under their breed descriptions. I did this with several other breeds that had bad bite, or even fatality, records. The book then went out for review. I was, to put it mildly, attacked by Pit Bull advocates, quick to tell me that Pit Bulls were nanny dogs, all the statistics were rigged, they were far sweeter than any other breed, and so on. The intensity of their response convinced me that my viewpoint was wrong.

So, when I saw two tiny dumped Pit Bull puppies on the road one day, I snatched them up and brought them home to raise like one (or two) of our own. Our friends told us it wasn’t a good idea, that Tuggy and Scooty could harm our other dogs. I scoffed at them, parroting what I’d heard: that Pit Bulls used to be nanny dogs, and it was “all how you raised them.” We raised them like we had raised all our other dogs over the past 40 years — 30 or so dogs in all — with never a serious incident. We shook our heads at how Pit Bulls were misunderstood and the unfairness of how the breed was discriminated against. Tuggy and Scooty were shining examples that it was, indeed, all how you raised them. They became best buddies with one of my other dogs, Luna, and I trusted them implicitly.

One day they all had big new chew bones. Luna decided she should growl possessively at Scooty. And that was all it took. With no warning, not a bark or a growl, not a sign of anger, Scooty jumped on Luna, grabbed her around the neck, and proceeded to choke the life out of her. Tuggy joined in, silently grabbing a back leg and pulling as hard as he could. My mother and I desperately tried to get them off of Luna and pry open their jaws. Luna’s tongue turned blue, she lost consciousness, and let loose her bowels. At that point I knew we had lost her.

You know the worst nightmare you’ve ever had? The one where something horrible is happening to someone you love, but you’re moving in slow-motion, as if you have 50-pound weights on your hands and feet, and you can’t speak or yell because you have no breath? That’s how I felt when I saw Luna getting killed in front of me. You may think you could react well in such a situation and save your dog’s life, but you can’t.

I tried to pry Scooty’s jaws off Luna, but all that got me was my hand bitten clean through (it would later require a $26,000 surgery to repair). Scooty took off running around the house dragging Luna’s lifeless body like a leopard with a dead antelope in a macabre game of keep-away. I tried to think of any weapon I could use, anything that looked like a break stick, but I had nothing because I trusted my Pit Bulls. I trusted what people had told me, and as I result, I was totally unprepared. In desperation, I overturned a marble table and Scooty finally let go.

I learned a very hard lesson that day: Pit Bull behavior is not, in fact, about how you raise them. I had been duped by people who, in their quest to defend their favorite breed, had given me wrong information and caused me to be overconfident. Had I been better prepared with the facts, chances are, this tragedy could have been prevented. I never would have given the dogs bones together. I never would have trusted them to the extent I had. And I never would have been so unprepared to break them up.

I tell you all this to explain why you won’t just get the standard, sugar-coated, “nanny dog,” “It’s all how you raise them” mantras in this book. I won’t do that to you, to your family (human, canine, and feline alike), or to your Pit Bulls. I refuse to set them, or you, up for failure. I want you to have a great life with your Pit Bull, but to do that you need to fully understand the best, and the worst, this breed has to offer. Because when they are good (and most of them are, most of the time), they are great, but when they’re bad, they can be deadly. If you have a Pit Bull, your job is to understand and accept both sides of the breed, and prepare accordingly.