About my dog.

This last weekend I went to Portland for a wedding.  On Sunday morning, I found myself in the airport lounge, getting ready to go to my gate when I heard a dog whimpering behind me.  I turned and noticed the gentleman next to the window had a small dog in a carrier and so I smiled and asked him about it.

He told me it was a Yorkie, about five months old and asked me if I had any pets.

I told him I did, we had a 75lb dog named Kara.  He asked me what breed she was and I told him, "Red-nosed pitbull."

He then proceeded to inform me that the blood of my children was on my hands (his words) and that he was sorry for the pain this dog would inflict when she ripped them apart.

He then told me to try Echo and Rig in Tivoli Village as his daughter in law was a manager.

Just like that.

At the gate I was telling someone about the incident and they proceeded to inform me that their buddy had a pitbull who growled at their dad and so the guy took it outside, put a bullet in its brain and gave it a "dirt nap."

I told him my friend had put down their dog recently, a lab, for trying to bite their baby.  He said he'd never heard of a lab doing it and I snapped "because it doesn't sell papers."

In the three years we've had Kara in our family, I've watched people literally pick up their kids screaming about a rabid pitbull at the park (she was asleep under the bench, snoring) and run to their car, people who have come into our home and not allowed their kids on the floor while Kara was out (yes, to be fair, she was following the kid around, but that's because they were covered in peanutbutter and probably tasted AWESOME) and have had people actually cross four lanes of busy traffic to avoid me walking her on the sidewalk.  Those who didn't cross gave me a wide berth until they heard me trying to encourage her to keep walking as I was afraid she'd lie down and I'd have to carry her.  

She's had her butt handed to her in the one incident she's had with another animal; she ran up to a Sheltie when she got out of the yard (someone forgot to lock the gate) and the dog latched to her lip.  She responded by crying and trying to get away, eventually nipping the dog on the lower back and then giving up.

She has hurt one of my kids once; Gabriel and Julia were running in a circle around our house in Chicago around our stairs through our kitchen.  Kara got excited and started pacing around and as Gabriel ran by, she wagged her tail too hard and it hit him, knocking him into the door and giving him a bump.  She hid behind the couch for two hours.

Oh and she killed three baby bunnies on Mother's day.  They were bunny mcnuggets and I'm sure it was really fun.

This is my dog.  Her name is Kara and she's a pitbull.

We don't know how old she is, possibly around 10 or 11 right now.

We got her from a shelter in August of 2011.

I brought her home two weeks after I first saw her.

After we met her, Mike was sold.  I wasn't.  I'd heard everything about pitbulls being evil and how dangerous and unpredictable they were.  Killers.  Murderers who would maul my children and me for no reason.

I have a lot of things I believe strongly in.  Vaccines, circumcision and common core.  I believe the way I do because I didn't take the hype, I didn't read only the nut-cases on the internet and I spent a lot of time doing my research from unbiased sources, as much as one can.  I read medical reports, talk to experts and take agendas into account.  I took the same approach with the possibility of bringing this dog into my home.

I started with the views from dog behaviorists and researching the origins of the breed.

Pitbulls were bred NOT to be fighting dogs but to protect the family farms.  Their obedience, intelligence, stamina and desire to please doubles as their downfall.  They also have rather large litters, making them a cheap and quick dog to breed.

They're loyal.

They have a sense of doggy humor.

They are very pliable; Kara had spent years living only in apartments and probably at a puppy mill before that so her major pastime is sleeping and passing gas.

I read the news articles, finding the difference in wording; "Pitbull mauling" vs "dog bite fatality" when it was any other breed of dog.

Then I pulled up the list of every dog bite fatality in the previous ten years and began to read.

For argument's sake, yes; at least half the fatalities were labeled with a "pitbull" somewhere.  Then I began to read further than that.

Then I started making notes and keeping count.

While half of the dogs were labeled "pitbull," only two were verified by trained animal professionals as an actual pitbull.  Otherwise, the sources were law enforcement officers, medical officers and eyewitnesses.  A friend of mine had a pitbull who looked just like a black lab and another had a black lab who looked just like a pitbull.

After I went through every single dog bite fatality I noticed there were five things each fatality had in common.

1.  The dogs were "resident dogs."  This means the dogs weren't family pets, but dogs kept chained up somewhere on the property.  They were outdoor dogs, with limited area to roam and had very little if any social interaction with people.

2.  The dogs were unaltered.  Half of the fatalities involved a dog who was either in heat or had just had puppies.

3.  The dogs were all young.  There was maybe one or two instances where a dog older than five had been involved.

4.  The victims were not members of the family and were mostly unsupervised children from nearby.

5.  There was more than one dog involved, so a pack mentality was in place.

Breed commonality was somewhere down the very very very bottom of the list, right around "geographic location."

I found one instance where an older, neutered, single family pet attacked and killed a supervised child who was a family member.

It was a Weimaraner.

The reason people making comments like the ones in the airport make me angry is that they're essentially calling me a negligent parent.  It's like telling me that having Kara is like having a loaded gun in my house sitting on the kitchen table and covered in candy.  Having Kara is ASKING for something to happen to my children.

I will tolerate a lot of things.  But I am not a bad parent and I am too intelligent to allow anything into my home that would potentially harm my children.

She should have bitten me for this one, really.

And yet, I have a pitbull.

In the three years we've had her, Kara has shown tolerance, patience and understanding.  I have taught my kids how to give Kara her space, when to pet her, when to leave her be, how to tell if she's feeling anxious or stressed.  Kara and my kids are my responsibility and I will break my back making sure neither side is set up to fail.

My kids know to ask before approaching a strange dog.  They know to leave her alone when she's sleeping, not to take something from her when she's eating and that not every dog wants to be petted.

Kara, in return, hides evidence of un-eaten food, cleans faces with her slimy tongue and supervises nursery games.  And provides a warm place for Nigel to sleep.

For Kara's sake, I put her in my bedroom when we have company, both because she makes people nervous because of stigma and because she tries to be sneaky and sit on your lap if you sit on the floor.  She thinks she's a yorkie.

I am a responsible pitbull owner.  I am a responsible parent.  The two are very much cohesive and synonymous, as is being any kind of dog owner and parent.

My children are only in danger of being licked to death.

As for myself, I love my dog.  As with my children, I am not blind to my dog's shortcomings.  She's large, would like to be headstrong if she could and is kind of clumsy.  If she wanted to, she could do some damage, but so could the golden retriever and the lab.  She doesn't have a locking jaw.  Believe me, I've pried it open before to shove pills down her throat.  It can be done.

Mostly, Kara saved me.  I love seeing stories about pitbulls scaring intruders or protecting a family; recently I saw a story of a pitbull who grabbed their kid and dragged them up a hill to safety after the kid was stung by bees and couldn't escape.

Those are all physical things.

Kara Thrace saved me because I got her at the beginning of the most difficult period of my life; Chicago.

Kara was by my side, every day, pressing herself close to me when I cried from loneliness, she was there to comfort me when I was franticly trying to figure out what to do for my distraught daughter and in those horrible two weeks where we didn't know if we were going to lose Charlotte, she never left my side.  In my darkest moments of despair, she would look at me and let me know "*I* need you. You're important to *me.*"

And I needed that more than anything else.

She makes me feel safe in my home; not because I think she'd attack someone who broke in, but because her being here gives me warning to someone trying to come in.

I've watched her allow kids to ride on her (true story, it stopped quickly but she allowed it) pull her ears and poke her eyes.  She's gentle with my kids and with the horrid fat fluffy monster who kicks her out of her bed.

Bottom line, I'm not stupid.  I'm not ignorant, I *DO* in fact read the papers (as the man in the airport incredulously asked me, to which I responded "do YOU?") and believe me, my life would be a lot less complicated without pets, especially the dog.

Yet, here she is.  And she's worth it, stigma and all.

And I love her.