BAD RAP is the website/blog of Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pitbulls.
Over the summer, one of the site’s bloggers wrote about an article in Bark magazine about Michael Vick’s pitbulls by Susan McCarthy. The blogger particularly cited a line in the article that reads, “Although dogs don’t tell stories, they have stories, and the stories help us understand.”
The blogger notes that telling the stories of mistreated dogs is “all the better to help us shape a new understanding and reality for pit bulls and other beings plagued by abuse and misunderstanding.”
For me, hearing sad stories about dogs is almost more unbearable than hearing terrible stories of mistreatment of humans. But as with just about anything else, it is through the telling of stories that change can come about.
Pitbull stories are of special interest because my dog, Daphne, is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a breed often confused with the pitbull. Daphne, pictured below, is the sweetest, most loving dog in the world, as I’m sure most responsibly owned pitbulls are, but her breed is subject to some of the same misunderstanding — and even breed-specific regulation — that pitbulls are. We travel with Daphne in our RV, and a few RV parks prohibit her.
If Daphne could tell her story, part of it would be, “I’m not a pitbull, but if I were, it would be OK.”
