Don't Ban Petey!

What to do?

by Gerard Spicer

What to do? That was exactly the question that perplexed my wife Alex and myself. In the back of my mind I wondered if anything we did would even make a difference. Would I just be wasting my time and energy? However, I would only have to take one look at my pit bull pal Petey and I knew that any attempt on our parts would only reinforce how much we truly loved him. I also wondered if the city council members had already made up their minds on the issue. Again, I had to ask my self if I was wasting my time when the issue may have already been settled.

There are a lot of people out there who have no knowledge of pit bulls except for what is gained from the negative sensationalism of the press. A councilmember of the nearby community of Federal Heights recently stated that pit bulls are no different then tigers and they should be considered “exotic pets.” Many people associate pit bulls only with gangs, drug dealers, the hip-hop culture, and dog-fighters. My wife and I are white, middle class, college educated, and pit bull owners (for the second time). Pit bulls are pets for all class of society, from the poorest of the poor, to the wealthiest of people. A breed should not be discriminated against just because it has been embraced by a sub culture that intimidates us. Pit bulls are wonderful dogs that are simply misunderstood and more then deserve a second change to restore their once ironclad sold reputation.

We weighted the options and started to line out a plan to do our little part towards preserving the breed. The first thing we did was to educate our selves on the BSL issue. Next we further educated ourselves on pit bulls. We could not possibly successfully defend pit bulls against BSL unless we had a very deep and detailed knowledge of the issue. At some point early in the process I joined an email group in my area that was forming to counter any proposed BSL. This was a great move that kept us up to date on the latest details and provide a common web community for us to exchange ideas. We next decided to promote a positive image of the pit bull in our community. The question was how we were going to do this?

 

When BSL came to our community we decided to do something about it. This is our story.