Posts tagged "PitBull"

Name: Ginger

Location: Chicago

Age: 2.5 years

Dog Breed: American Pit Bull Terrier

Favorite Toy: Green nylon bone.

Favorite Treat: Bacon Beggin Strips.

Likes: Walks in the park, playing tug, hide-and-seek and snuggling.

Dislikes: Baths.

Weird Quirks: Runs in circles full speed in the yard -- not chasing anything.

Fun Fact: Was the only female out of 12 puppies in her litter.

Congratulations to our submitter, Exotic Hound. If you'd like to submit your pet, upload your favorite pet photos to our Flickr pool!

More Cute Pets

When animal control isn't available, police officers in Prescott Valley, Ariz. sometimes respond to calls about animals, but rarely do they nab one dog and arrive at the station with two in their squad car. Yet that's exactly what happened when Sgt. Brandon Bonney arrived to impound pit-bull mix Dutchess and hand her over to animal control.

When Sgt. Bonney arrived to pick up the dog, the woman caring for Dutchess said the dog wasn't pregnant. However, she was proved wrong when he arrived at the station to find not one dog in his backseat, but two. Shortly thereafter, animal control officials arrived and Dutchess gave birth to two more puppies in their vehicle on the way to take her to the Yavapai Humane Society shelter.

Yavapai Humane Society spokeswoman KayAnne Riley tells Paw Nation that Dutchess and her pups were "immediately transferred to one of our long time foster caretakers named Sue. At Sue's house, Dutchess had six more puppies." That's nine puppies over a three day period of time, six of which survived.

All over the country, shelters provide not only a safe haven for homeless animals but also offer critical veterinary care, rehabilitation and most importantly, love. In Paw Nation's newest column, Rescue Tales, we will share with you the stories of these amazing organizations and some of the fortunate pets who have gone on to find permanent, happy homes.

---

Best Friends Animal Society- Kanab, Utah
Best Friends is a Utah-based animal sanctuary home to about 1,700 animals. The no-kill organization specializes in special-needs animals and unique cases, providing shelter even to horses and waterfowl. The 3,700-acre ranch houses the animals but also works to rehabilitate them and find them permanent homes, with the lifetime promise that those animals can always come back to Best Friends if necessary.

Cupid -- A Shelter Dog For 3 Years Before Being Adopted
Nearly 50 percent of the dogs that come to Best Friends are pit bulls and mixes, which adoption manager Kristi Litrell thinks is due to the stigma that pits have. Often, the circumstances that bring them to shelters make it even harder to predict how a pit bull will do in a home. But then there are people like George and Victoria Bjornson -- who are extremely gifted when it comes to working with rescue pits -- who say the breed has "gotten a bad rap."

One of George and Victoria's five rescues is Cupid, an 8-year-old male pit bull who lived at Best Friends for three years before the couple adopted him. Others had fostered him and liked him, though he didn't get adopted because he was strongly dog-aggressive. But when George and Victoria had Cupid for a sleepover, George says, "What I saw was a dog that hadn't been socialized well and I thought I could work with him."

The integration of Cupid into the family was so successful that they've recently adopted Lila -- a pit bull who was seized in July during the largest dog fighting raid in which 500 dogs were rescued. The small, 4-year-old Lila had once fought in the ring, and also had shotgun pellets under her left eye and in her chest, but today, she has a new home and a new best friend in Cupid.

The Bjornsons are careful in the way they introduce a new member to their pit bull family. First, they spend a week alone bonding with the new dog, and then they introduce the dogs one by one. They watch for the dogs' energy level and body language. "Within 10 minutes, they are out playing in the backyard," Victoria says. "Most times, the last dog becomes the buddy of the new one." Just like Cupid and Lila. More than just attentive supervision, the Bjornsons' key to a peaceful pack is compassion and patience: "We don't set a timetable or expectations for them. We give them the space, time and love they need to adjust."

Westminster-winning Sadie's got nothing on Prince. The three-legged pit-bull mix won "Best in Show" at a shelter dog talent competition at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The two-year-old wowed the crowd at the New York City event by catching three baseballs thrown by his handler/pitcher.

Prince's major league talent won over the judges, who included singer-songwriter Roberta Flack, actress Bernadette Peters, ballroom dance champion and So You Think You Can Dance choreographer Melanie LaPatin, and Assistant Director of ASPCA Humane Law Enforcement Joseph Pentangelo.

Prince lost his leg after being hit by a car, but Gail Buchwald, Senior Vice President of the ASPCA Adoption Center, said Prince's disability doesn't hold him back. "The talent show demonstrates the resilience of these wonderful dogs," Buchwald also said, "but the real prize will be finding their two-legged soul mates and homes to call their own." Yes, Prince and the other competition contestants are up for adoption. Visit ASPCA.org to learn more about adding him to your team!

The "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan is mourning the death of his cherished pit bull, Daddy, who passed away on Feb. 19 at the age of 16. He died peacefully surrounded by the family that loved him: Millan, his wife Ilusion and their young sons, Andre and Calvin.

Daddy was a familiar face on Millan's show, "The Dog Whisperer" on the National Geographic Channel, where his calm-submissive presence set an example for troubled canines and their owners seeking help. Daddy, the gentlest of pit bulls, was "one of the most loyal, trusting, well-balanced, and influential pit bull ambassadors the world has ever known," states a memorial on Millan's Web site.

Speaking with Paw Nation last year, Millan explained that Daddy wasn't as active as he had once been. "You can see the age crawling in," Millan told Paw Nation. "It's the body -- especially his back legs -- so he gets acupuncture twice a week; he swims every day; walks every day; and eats great meals for his digestion." Anticipating the inevitable, Millan last year added a new pit bull puppy to his pack, Junior, to train with Daddy and become his protege.

But as much as one prepares for the death of a beloved pet, it is never easy. Especially when there exists a special relationship, as Millan admits he had with Daddy. "[Daddy] saw me get married, how I changed when I became a dad, my children growing up, and the ups and downs along the way," Millan said in an interview last year. He is more than a member of my family -- he is a member of my life."

Rest in peace, Daddy.

In July, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Attorney's office, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Humane Society of Missouri and other agencies worked together to pull off the largest dog fighting raid in U.S. history. To fully do the job of investigating and persecuting dog fighting into extinction, many, many more such large-scale stings will need to happen. But as a revealing Time article points out, to do so would mean overcoming a host of obstacles that most police organizations are not yet equipped to handle.

"Busting a breeder means taking custody of the dogs, yet no police department or sheriff's office has the resources to kennel, treat and attempt to rehabilitate dozens, let alone hundreds, of abused animals," writes David von Drehle in the Time article.

After the Missouri raid, authorities suddenly had about 470 (some estimated more than 500) dogs on their hands -- vicious dogs that required immediate rehousing, followed by weeks of long-term rehabilitation. The dogs were seized not just in Missouri, but also in Illinois, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Humane Society of Missouri, which was helped in the months of planning leading up to the raid by countless animal-rights groups.

The Humane Society of Missouri lined up an abandoned warehouse, outfitted with triage areas and hundreds of wire cages, located in an undisclosed location in St. Louis. Why undisclosed?

As a spokesperson for the Humane Society of Missouri says in this video, "It is a secret facility because dog fighters are very dangerous people, and we have some serious concerns for the safety of our staff and the volunteers that are here, and also for the dogs. Many of these dogs are worth thousands of dollars."

Ultimately, a U.S. District Court will determine the fate of each dog: whether to be adopted out to an individual; to be sent to a rehabilitation facility; or perhaps, one imagines, to be euthanized. Which brings up yet another important question: Can a rescued attack dog ever be fully accepted into a home, a neighborhood or a society without it having to endure a lifelong stigma?

We sure hope so.

In the newest issue of Cesar's Way magazine -- on newsstands Dec. 1 -- famed "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan pens a touching article about finding the right pit-bull puppy to follow in the large, calm paw prints left by Millan's beloved pit bull, Daddy. "Daddy is 15, which means he's getting old," writes Millan in the article. "I've known for a while that I would have to adopt another pit bull."

Millan describes how he took Daddy to the home of a friend whose female pit bull had a litter of two-month-old pups. One puppy caught Millan's attention right away. The pup was adorable -- all gray with a bit of white on his chest -- and his "calm energy" impressed Millan. But how would Daddy respond to the gray puppy?

"You wouldn't believe how well it went!" writes Millan. "The puppy immediately lowered his head, surrendering to the older dog and allowing him to smell him all over."

With Daddy's stamp of approval, the gray pup joined Millan's pack and was anointed -- what else? -- Junior. "Since he was already settling into his role as Daddy's protege, we decided to call him Junior," Millan explains in the article.

Junior has already made his television appearance on the current season of National Geographic's "The Dog Whisperer," appearing in an episode dedicating to raising a good puppy. Check Junior out in this video.