23 Quotes by Bronwen Dickey

Showing little regard for the animals’ historical working roles, health, temperament, or well-being, Victorian dog breeders raced to mold dramatic new shapes for their pets. Producing dogs in the same way one might produce widgets on an assembly line held tremendous appeal in an age of massive industrialization.

It’s not how the dog is “raised” that makes the largest difference in public safety but how the dog is maintained by its owner.

Shelters that have abandoned using breed labels for dogs from unknown backgrounds, including Orange County Animal Services in Florida and Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Virginia, have seen the number of dog adoptions at their facilities rise significantly.

The thirty-six other children killed by non-pit-bull-type dogs between 1983 and 1986 were also given minimal coverage in the press. The American media seemed to be interested in dog bite deaths and public safety only when pit bulls were responsible.

Has she noticed any frightening pattern of deviance? “Oh, please,” she said, smiling. “Among trainers, pit bulls are considered cheap dates, actually. They have a reputation for being incredibly easy to train. They’ll pretty much do whatever you want. Some of us want a bit more of a challenge.

The human parallels are important here, because the legend of the urban pit bull would become a literal companion piece to America’s failed war on drugs. When a dog scare collides with a drug scare – especially one as racialized as the crack “epidemic” – the effects are multiplicative.

The focus on “bait dogs” originally functioned as a well-intended means of generating sympathy for victims of cruelty, but it now perpetuates the stereotype that all pit bulls come from fighting backgrounds, when in reality only a tiny fraction of them do.

By fending off police, pit bulls were portrayed as crack-dealing “accomplices” who abetted the rapid growth of the drug trade. To see just how closely the terms “crack cocaine” and “pit bull” were linked in the media, one need look no further than the Google Ngram Viewer, which charts word frequencies in published materials.

This dramatic increase in the speed of information and the precipitous decline in critical thinking have been disastrous.