March 13–20, 1997

hit and run

Save The Pit Bull

In February, three men and three teens were charged with multiple counts of cruelty to animals after police discovered 13 malnourished dogs — mostly pit bulls, with a few rottweilers and a German shepherd — in an abandoned North Philadelphia home.

When the men face a judge Wednesday morning at the 35th Police District, Broad and Champlost Streets, members of the Independence American Pit Bull Terrier Club Rescue will be there.

Most of the dogs, perhaps all, probably were stolen, they say, for resale, breeding or fighting. And there are a lot more pit bulls out there, suffering through similarly inhumane conditions, awaiting equally uncertain fates.

"Pit bulls are a very misunderstood breed," says club president Jackie Wakefield, a veterinary technologist who owns seven American pit bull terriers (the best known of the breeds in the "pit bull" category). They are "incredibly intelligent" and affectionate dogs, she says, who actually make lousy watchdogs because they like people so much.

"But they're not for everyone," warns club member Gia Farra. "They require more work, more care, more guidance toward positive things to do with their energy. And they do have a lot of energy."

But thanks to widespread and often hysterical coverage of pit bull attacks, and breed-specific laws enacted around the country (including, recently, in Pennsylvania), "the wrong element took an interest in the breed," Wakefield says. The dogs have become both status symbols and four-legged prize fighters for owners interested only in the dogs' strength and "gameness," which Wakefield describes as "heart" — an overpowering desire to please their owners.

"It all depends on how they're bred and how they're raised," says Farra. But in Philadelphia, Camden, Chester and other cities across the country, amateur breeders are mating the most aggressive dogs they can find (or steal), then selling the puppies to owners who abuse them to make them mean. Club members, who find new homes for rescued dogs still capable of making good pets, have seen pit bulls that were starved, severely beaten and, in one case, set ablaze.

The dogs found last month in North Philly had been chained to walls throughout the unheated home; some were bleeding from fresh wounds. All are now in the care of the Pennsylvania SPCA, which will keep them until the real owners claim them, or — worst-case scenario — the suspects are acquitted and the judge says they can reclaim the dogs.

The SPCA must "err on the side of caution" when owners come forward to claim the dogs, says club treasurer Kathy Genuardi. Proof of ownership — like veterinary records and photographs — will be required. (Call the SPCA at 426-6300 for more information.)

Those that aren't claimed may have to be euthanized — a preferable fate, says Genuardi, to falling again into the wrong hands.

"But with what some of these dogs have been through," she says, "death isn't the worst thing that can happen to them."

— Frank Lewis