Pit Bulls and Shelters: A Second Look

If you’re involved with Pit Bulls or rescue work, you know that you spend a LOT of time battling misconceptions, e.g. “No, Pit Bulls don’t ’suddenly turn’ and no, their jaws don’t lock and no, dogs in rescue are not all there because they have serious behavioral problems and no, rescue dogs that do have behavioral problems are not all ruined beyond repair, let alone innately nasty.”

And, of course, if you are involved with Pit Bulls and do rescue work, i.e. if you do Pit Bull rescue, whether as a stand alone activity or within the context of all breed/all mutt rescue or whatever, you’ve no doubt had days when you feel you spend 95% of your time battling misconceptions about your rescue Pit Bulls.

It is therefore all the more unfortunate that some misconceptions about homeless Pit Bulls stem from, or are at least reinforced by, the Pit Bull rescue community itself. Here I would like to examine the following oft made claims:

1. Pit Bulls have little to no chance in animal control shelters.
2. If more shelters worked with Pit Bull rescues, the Pit Bull euthanasia statistics would be dramatically lower.

Of course, there are indeed shelters, such as the Pennsylvania SPCA that (prior to 2007) had a policy prohibiting the adoption of any pit bull or pit bull mix, where unreclaimed Pit Bulls truly did have little to no chance. And as someone who has done both volunteer and foster work with Pit Bulls for going on fifteen years, I of course deeply appreciate ANY caring and competent rescuer who includes Pit Bulls in their programs, and especially appreciate those who truly focus on this neediest of breeds.

But since I’ve also worked and/or volunteered at several Pit Bull friendly shelters, both private shelters and animal control facilities, I’ve long been acutely aware that it is perfectly possible, indeed reasonably common and ultimately absolutely necessary for local shelters to do the bulk of Pit Bull rescuing in a given area. For instance, while my wife and I have over many years pulled and/or fostered probably about fifteen to twenty Pit Bulls or obvious Pit Bull Mixes (and have adopted a half dozen more), even when I worked as dog manager at a relatively low volume limited admission shelter, we would adopt out many, many more than that in any one year. So even then I realized that if shelters don’t do most of the heavy lifting regarding finding Pit Bulls and Pit Mixes homes, private rescuers would=2 0have a nightmare on their hands trying to make up even a significant fraction of the slack.

But also consider these numbers. So far in 2008, the shelter where I am currently working has taken in 162 Pit Bulls and 56 Pit Mixes. (These numbers are not quite exact, as there will always be breed and mix misidentifications in all conceivable directions, though with several Pit savvy people on staff here, we do a pretty good job of avoiding these.) And here is the disposition of these:

Pit Bulls reclaimed: 66
Pit Mixes reclaimed: 18

This brings up one immediate point often ignored in discussions of Pit Bulls, Pit Mixes and animal control shelters, i.e. the fact that many Pits and Pit Mixes - probably more than most people assume - do indeed get reclaimed by owners and even the PSPCA under their previous regime allowed reclaims (as shelters of course legally must everywhere that the breed isn’t banned, when there are no other legal grounds to deny a reclaim).

But that’s not all. Consider adoption stats.

Pit Bulls adopted: 34
Pit Mixes adopted: 21

I don’t think I’ll live long enough to even take in 55 Pit Bull and Pit Mix fosters, let alone place them all and these are just the numbers for dogs impounded within the last seven months (Jan, 2008 – July, 2008) at our shelter and doesn’t even include Pit Bulls and Pit Mixes adopted out early in 2008 who actually arrived late in 2007.

Again, if I didn’t think private Pit Bull rescue was an important part of the whole solution, I wouldn’t have been DOING it for fifteen years. I may be a bit odd (okay, maybe more than a bit!), but I like to think I’m not off the wall stupid. But the sad fact is that there are very FEW Pit Bull friendly rescues, let alone rescues dedicated to Pit Bull rescue as a major part of their mission and those rescues who do do right by Pit Bulls can realistically only do so much. This of course makes every rescue that accepts Pit Bulls all the MORE precious and every case of a Pit Bull going to rescue all the MORE worth celebrating (and I’ve personally seen a lot of the truly greatest of the great Pit Bulls saved precisely via this route - hallelujah), but it also means that the rescue stats are absolutely minute compared to the adoption stats.

Pit Bulls rescued:  3
Pit Mixes rescued: 1

Again, this is not to knock those few dedicated souls who DO do Pit Bull rescue (of which I am proudly one), or even those rescue people who for various reasons choose to focus their efforts elsewhere. It is simply a reality check about how much we can realistically and even fairly DEPEND on rescue as a safety valve. And that’s precisely why I’m eager to see rescues do what I’ve tried to do and most Pit Bull rescuers I’ve worked w ith have tried to do, i.e. take in the best of the best of those that don’t get adopted.

There is another misconception that I’d like to address in passing that basically follows from these two prior misconceptions concerning owner reclaims and shelter adoptions. And that is the assumption that shelters have one of two choices: Be a Pit Bull/Pit Mix slaughterhouse or be totally overrun with Pit Bulls. Indeed our own current population figures (out of a total population figure that tends to range from 90 to 100 dogs)are:

Pit Bulls currently in shelter:  23
Pit Mixes currently in shelter:  6

Of course, no other breed has anywhere near 23 individuals in the shelter, now or really ever, except when there is a special circumstance like a hoarder or puppy mill bust. So there is SOME truth to the assumption that Pit Bull friendly policies mean relatively high Pit Bull populations. But what is NOT true is that if you don’t engage in mass Pit Bull slaughter, they will inevitably totally overrun the place within a few weeks or months.

Finally, in some ways the bottom line numbers for how well you are doing by Pit Bulls and Pit Mixes are the euthanasia stats, given below.

Pit Bulls euthanized:  36
Pit Mixes euthanized: 10

While no one can be happy about this many dogs dying, the fact is that less than a quarter of the Pit Bulls who have come into our animal control shelter this year have been euthanized and just over a sixth of Pit mixes have. Moreover, note that, due to a design flaw in our tracking program, these numbers include “Owner Requests for Euthanasia”, i.e. old, sick or behaviorally whacked out dogs whose owners brought them in precisely in order to be euthanized and who were therefore never really a part of the shelter population.

So the bottom line is that shelters both can and MUST do the bulk of Pit Bull rescue work in any given area. It is unrealistic and indeed unfair to expect private rescuers to operate on anywhere near the level of activity that a shelter does. Furthermore, shelters (in most areas) do not have to decide between being Pit Bull slaughterhouses or Pit Bull warehouses. Reclaims, adoptions and rescues can and should be high enough that neither the freezers nor the kennels are stuffed full of members of this breed.

Contributor JohnR has been involved both professionally and as a volunteer in animal rescue with a special emphasis on Pit Bull and Pit Mix rescue since the early 90s. He was dog manager of a private “no kill” shelter for over four years and has for the past three plus years taken the fight “to the front lines” as one of two animal adoption advocates at a high volume animal control shelter in New Jersey.