For the love of Pit!

I am reading a very informative little book called Inside of a Dog, What Dogs See, Smell and Know by Alexandra Horowitz, who teaches psychology at Barnard College. She is a self-proclaimed “dog person” and “lover of dogs”. She is also a scientist who studies animal behavior.
I am not even a quarter of the way through the book. For someone who usually reads travel essays and biographies, this has been a slow book, with a lot of skipped pages only to come back when I’ve obviously missed something relevant. But I digress.
Today I’ve learned something very important about dogs, and in particular the much misunderstood American Staffordshire Terrier, a/k/a the pit bull.

“Dogs of various breeds will doubtless behave differently when, say, they are presented with a nearby, running rabbit. But it would be a mistake to guarantee that a dog, bred or not, will inevitably act a certain way on seeing that rabbit. This is the same mistake that is made when we wind up calling some breeds “aggressive” and legislating against them.*” Horowitz, Alexandra. Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know, New York: Scribner, 2009, p. 52-53.

“*What is considered aggressive is culturally and generationally relative. German shepherds were on the top of the list after World Ward II; in the 1990s Rottweilers and Dobermans were scorned; The American Staffordshire terrier (also known as the pit bull is the current bête noire. Their classification has more to do with recent events and public perception than with their intrinsic nature. Recent research found that of all breeds, dachshunds were the most aggressive to both their own owners and to strangers. Perhaps this is underreported because a snarling dachshund can be picked up and stashed away in a tote bag.” (emphasis mine). ibid, fn p. 53

I’ve read these two pages several times, all-the-while remembering the sweet dogs that I’ve encountered that are feared by others but wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Mya, this is for you sweet lady pit. Hopefully society will change its perception of your breed in your lifetime.