Best Of 2011

Photo Courtesy of Animal Planet

This time of year everyone is coming up with their "Best Of" Lists, so not to be outdone, here at Books and Beasts we're offering our choices too.  If you follow the blog, you know that I've reviewed a lot of books and a few movies -- I'm pretty selective in what I include, so everything that I covered is there because I thought it was worth checking out -- even the books I had problems with.  However, even among the best, a few stand out.  So here are my choices for the best animal related offerings of the past year.

1.      Best Fiction -- Again, I've reviewed a lot of great novels and short story collections and all of them are worth your time.  However, there is one novel that stands out this past year among all the rest.  Possum Summer, by Jen K. Bloom is a wonderful children's book that will speak to child in the heart of every reader.  It's the kind of book I loved when I was a kid, and still do.  You can read my review of it here, but you might as well save yourself the time and just rush out and get it.  Not to be missed.

2.      Best Nonfiction -- Same caveat, all the books I've reviewed are important, useful and entertaining (in different combinations, depending on what they were).  But if I have to pick one that most affected me this year, it would be Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean.  Wonderful portrait of the dog so famous that when he died they broke into radio broadcasts around the country to announce it.  You can read my review here, but please, get this book, and pass it on to all your dog loving friends.

3.      Best Movie --  This one's easy.  (I haven't seen War Horse yet, but as soon as I do it'll show up here on the blog).  The best animal movie of the year -- and one of the best I've seen in a very long time -- is Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  Yes, it's true, I love it in part because I'm a geek, and there are scenes of Apes running wild through the city and attacking helicopters.  But this is much more intelligent, thoughtful and accurate movie than I ever expected.  The writers obviously did extensive research on chimps raised in captivity, and Caesar -- played by Andy Serkis in a performance that would be nominated for an Oscar if there was any justice in the world -- is the most realistic chimpanzee character ever captured on film.  (Sorry, Cheetah.)  Emotionally, technically, and intellectually the best movie of the year.

The Worst -- I don't usually include a section on "worst" in my blog -- I prefer to use time and space pointing out what's best, and what's important.  But one blog post I wrote this year Tears for Elephants has drawn more hits than anything else I've written.  It's about the sad fate of elephants in Hollywood, including the ones who starred in Water for Elephants.  I gave that book an enthusiastic review, because I think it's great -- but I boycotted the movie, sadly, because I think it could have been great too.  There have been a number of movies this year -- including Hangover 2, Zookeeper, and the new We Bought a Zoo, that made the unfortunate choice of using exotic, wild animals -- a practice that contributes to the abuse, over hunting, and endangerment of these creatures.  You can see my thoughts about it in earlier reviews, but it only makes my Best Movie choice even more notable.  The totally CGI apes in "Rise" are wonderful creations.

4.      Best TV Show -- I haven't reviewed this one yet in the blog, but it's too good not to include.  There are lots of great nature and animal shows on TV, but this one is the best if you're an animal lover -- especially if you're a dog lover -- absolutely if you're a Pit Bull lover. It also happens to be hands down the best reality show going: Pit Bulls and Parolees on Animal Planet. (This is the new favorite show of my canine housemate Lulubelle Dawg, who was also a big fan of Meercat Manner back in the day.) In this day and age, just the idea was audacious.  Let's take two of the most stigmatized groups we can think of, and then let's make an honest, sympathetic, non-sensationalized show about them.  If you've never seen it, the show follows Tia, the woman who runs Villalobos ranch, a rescue facility for pit bulls.  She is helped by her daughters -- who have had difficult lives in their own ways -- and by the parolees she takes on as volunteers.  I don't know of another show on television that deals with second chances, heartbreak, triumph and joy more often.  Oh yeah, and there are Pit Bulls!  What more could you want? 

Well, those are my choices for 2011.  I'd love to hear your thoughts or picks, whether you agree with me or not.  And I look forward to continuing to bring you reviews and information about the wide world of "Books and Beasts".

Readers of Birds and Beasts might also enjoy our sister blog Birdland West, which covers birds and wildlife, mostly in the Seattle Area.

Hail, Caesar!

 

 

I'll spare everyone the suspense and tell you upfront that I loved Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  But that was almost a foregone conclusion.  For months now I've been pestering friends about going to see it -- and meeting almost universal skepticism.  To which I responded with something like, "Apes running through the city, attacking helicopters.  Do you understand?  Apes.  What's not to love?"  As someone who has watched Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong at least twice a year since it came out, I was going to love this movie, even it was just a bunch of CGI scenes spliced together with no plot or substance to support it.

Fortunately for all of us, that's not the case.

The first Planet of the Apes movie came out in 1968, when I was five years old.  The final movie of the original series, Battle for the Planet of the Apes came out in 1973.  In between came Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.  There was a short lived television series in 1974(which starred Roddy McDowell and Mark Lenard, Star Trek's Sarek) and an even shorter lived animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes in 1975.    For geeks of my generation, it is impossible to overestimate how big a part these movies played in our lives.  In a time before Star Wars, when the only Star Trek was the original series in re-runs on television, and when big budget science fiction movies were almost unknown, Planet of the Apes loomed large.

And for me, at least, the two that loomed the largest were the last two (possibly because I was a little older when they came out).  I've never been overly fond of the first movie, with Charlton Heston, or the second, with it's weird underground mutant bomb worshiping cults.  But starting with the third movie, when the Chimpanzees Cornelius and Mira return to earth in the 1970's, I began to get really interested.  "Conquest" tells of the revolt of the enslaved apes -- all of whom are Mira's descendants, we must assume -- and "Battle" picks up about ten years later with Apes in control and Caesar trying desperately to find some way for them to co-exist with humans.

You can't re-watch the movies now without seeing the heavy-handed racial allegory everywhere. The various directors were determined to make their relevant political statements at the time, and the result is that the old moves feel dated in a way that has nothing to do with their basic ideas.  Only "Battle", which is mainly a full out action melodrama, escapes this overt politicizing.

Even as a kid, I knew enough about apes (I read about Jane Goodall, and Diane Fossey, and Washoe and others in National Geographic, for instance) to know that the portrayal of the different ape species was all wrong.  Gorillas were the heavies, the military complex.  In the real world, of course, gorillas are peaceful vegetarians who's aggression is mostly bluff and bluster.  Orangutans, bearing almost no resemblance to their real ancestors, were the administrative class -- Church and State, which didn't seem to be very separated in the first movie's world.  And the Chimpanzees were the counter culture -- scientists, hippies, war protestors -- naturally, in the late nineteen sixties in the United States, they were the heroes.

The reality of course is that chimpanzees are Machiavellian political animals who scheme and deceive and go to war almost as well as humans -- capable of the full range of goodness and badness that we are.  In any multi-ape society they would most likely be on top -- the gorillas would be the hippies.  But of course, the old Planet of the Apes movies weren't really about apes at all.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes", directed by Rupert Wyatt and written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, is a whole different species.  Being a creature of its time, it has its axes grind as well, but it does so for the most part subtly, letting the characters and the story carry the message.  And it is (oh frabjous day) that rarest of mass media beasties -- The Well Written and Scientifically Plausible Science Fiction Movie.

And in this movie, the apes really do take top billing.  (Despite the heavy hitters in the "human" cast -- James Franco, Frieda Pinto, and John Lithgow) it is Andy Serkis -- behind the motion capture and CGI -- as Caesar (along with the other apes) that carries the film.  A couple of chimps in the movie show the battered old faces you see in sanctuaries and Nature documentaries -- the Orangutan Maurice is cool (he has a background in the circus, and like Caesar, he knows how to sign) and the one gorilla in the film -- perhaps a little too Kong-like despite his normal size -- is very impressive.  Some of the films more moving scenes -- and important points -- are carried in the non-verbal interaction of the apes.  Serkis, who was grossly cheated out of Oscar recognition for his role as Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings", again deserves the highest accolades for this performance.  (In an interview with NPR he explained how much the technology of motion capture has advanced since he played Gollum.) 

Director Wyatt and the rest of the team behind "Rise" deserve the loud praise for their decision not to use any actual apes in the film.  They recognized that the issue of apes in entertainment is a serious ethical problem, and they made the humane choice.  The film doesn't suffer from it at all.  This is a fact that other filmmakers should take note of.  (I wish the makers of Water for Elephants, Zookeeper and "The Hangover" had made similar kinds of choices.)

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is not a perfect film.  I'm not overly fond of the "there are some things science is not meant to delve into" trope.  (Interestingly, it is Frieda Pinto who gets to voice those sentiments in "Rise" -- perhaps so her Indian beauty and exotic accent can lend them portent).  I would like to see a serious movie that tackles the question of Uplift -- to borrow David Brin's term -- in all it's implications, without resorting to disaster/horror movie form.  I'm also not fond of end-of-the-world stories.  I would rather see stories about how we might grapple with and even solve our problems -- about the possibilities of the future -- than about how we will inevitably destroy ourselves.   In this case, though, those are minor quibbles about a very good film.

 It seems that I seldom see movies any more -- no matter how much fun they may be while I'm watching them -- that can stand the weight of serious thought.  "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is a movie both to enjoy in the moment, and to ponder afterwards.  That is a pleasure too rare to take for granted.

(Attentive viewers, who are familiar with the original movies, will see that the filmmakers have subtly set the table for the sequel.  If it rises to the same high standards as this film, I can't wait.)

On the question of animals in entertainment, interested readers might like to check out my previous postings Tears for Elephants and A Sad Digression. 

Readers of Birds and Beasts might also enjoy our sister blog Birdland West, which covers birds and wildlife, mostly in the Seattle Area.

The Rise and Fall of the Animal Planet

Fear of the Animal Planet:  The Hidden History of Animal Resistance, by Jason Hribal

 

On May 5, 1922, in the small town of Sedro-Wooley, Washington, an elephant named Tusko escaped from the Al G. Barnes Circus ("famed throughout the country" according to promotional posters) and went on a rampage through town.  At least that's the way the papers described it. 

Tusko had thrown his trainer and stormed from the animal tent half an hour before show time, while he and other Barnes elephants were being cleaned. His leg irons had been removed in the process. Rumors at the time suggested that the inspiration for his escape was either a severe beating or an aromatic heap of fermented moonshiner’s mash that the hungry Tusko had infiltrated. “At once,” the Courier-Times reported, “two other elephants were mounted and a score of keepers and attendants went after the big brute.”  (J. Kingston Pierce, Historylink.org essay number 5270)

Tusko was pursued by circus folk on other elephants and by townspeople "tipping back bottles of ripe 'moon' to heighten the excitement.  Differing accounts suggest that Tusko's escape was set off by either an unusually severe beating or a "heap of fermented moonshiner's mash" that Tusko got into.  Or both.  Either way, he raised quite a ruckus, scared many of the town folks and became one of the most colorful pieces of folklore the small town of Sedro-Wooley can lay claim to.

Beneath the folksy retellings and funny anecdotes, however, the story also offers us a glimpse into what the life of an elephant with a traveling circus -- of which there were hundreds in the early part of the twentieth century -- must have been like.  And what we glimpse is not pretty. (You can see my previous posting on elephants in entertainment "Tears For Elephants" here.)

There are many stories like Tusko's (he escaped several times in his career, until it was finally deemed too risky to keep him in the circus, and he was sold to a zoo).  And they aren't just historical.  Try Googling "tiger escape zoo" and you'll be surprised by how often this happens.

In his ambitious new book Fear of the Animal Planet, historian Jason Hribal has collected a lot of these stories -- ranging from recent events like the escape of Tatiana the tiger at the San Francisco Zoo in 2007 to historical accounts of the life and death of the famous elephant Jumbo, who lived in a zoo in England before being acquired by P.T. Barnum.  What the stories have in common is they all concern escapes and attacks -- "fighting back" in Hribal's view.  His book is subtitled "The Hidden History of Animal Resistance" and if it did nothing more than collect these stories it would be an incredibly persuasive book.  The details of these animals' lives, outbreaks, and deaths have a power that is hard to ignore.  (Tatiana was supposedly being taunted by several young men at the zoo who threw things at her, and despite being loose in a zoo full of people for twenty minutes or more, she seemed to go after only those specific targets, ignoring everyone else.)

Unfortunately, that's not all that's in Fear of the Animal Planet, and I'm sorry to have to say that the book as a whole is deeply flawed.  I wanted to love it and I am in sympathy with its basic idea.  But the presentation is marred by dogmatism, philosophical sloppiness, lack of documentation and a persistent tendency to attribute thoughts and feelings to other creatures as if they were facts in situations where it is simply impossible to know what they were actually thinking.  And above all, I think the whole project is crippled by an unnecessary anti-scientific bias that robs it of its richest vein of support and credibility.

Hribal asserts -- you can't really say he argues, because the book doesn't present an argument in any sustained sense -- that these behaviors can be seen as acts of conscious resistance, and that they are comparable to the kinds of resistance that humans mount against oppressive and abusive circumstances.  I, personally, think that's a defensible position, but defending it effectively would take either a lot more or a little less than Hribal does in this book.

Fear of the Animal Planet doesn't present an argument -- it takes its own position as axiomatic -- because ultimately it is neither history nor philosophy -- it's a political polemic.  And as such, it becomes two dimensional and ineffective.  Those who already agree with Hribal don't need the book, and those who don't will be so turned off by his flat rhetoric that they won't respond to the book's most effective element:  the stories themselves. 

To start with, there is almost no documentation or attribution of sources.  There is a brief paragraph at the end of the prologue that spells out, in a general way, the materials that were consulted.  But this purports to be a work of history and the lack of detailed documentation and citing of sources is a serious flaw. When one is dealing with little known events and burdened by a controversial thesis, it's best not to give critics another reason to not take you seriously.

Let me look at just one passage that I think represents fairly well my problems with the book.  This is from the story of Jumbo, a world famous elephant who eventually became the star attraction of P.T. Barnum's circus.  Hribal does a very good job of recounting Jumbo's life and showing us how he became the best known captive animal in the world. 

Modern biologists call this developmental period: musth (Hindi word for madness).  And they define it as a phase of glandular secretion, higher testosterone-levels, and heighten sexual arousal.  In other words, this is a case of over-active and uncontrollable hormones; otherwise known as "heat".  One would have hoped the fields of natural science would have moved beyond the 17th century and biological determinism.  But to no avail.  Non-physiological factors -- such as captivity, poor labor conditions, brutal training methods, or the grind of the entertainment industry -- do not matter.  Intellectual maturity and independence of mind are not considered.  Rebellious attitudes and vengeful emotions do not exist.  Freedom, or the desire for autonomy, is something an elephant could never imagine.  Agency is a non-concept.

There's so much wrong with this paragraph that it's almost impossible to know where to start.  In general, it sets up a straw-man labeled "science" and whacks away at it without ever once addressing real scientists, real studies or real points-of-view.  The recognition of the effects of adolescence is not "biological determinism" -- we recognize all those factors, for instance, in human adolescents -- we even take them into account in explaining their behavior -- and yet we still hold them culpable and responsible for their actions.  We recognize both the physiological effects of puberty and "intellectual maturity" (not usually a condition of adolescence), "independence of mind" "the desire for autonomy" and agency.  In fact, understanding the effects of biology on behavior is no more determinism than recognizing environmental effects of "poor labor conditions" "brutal training methods" and so on.  Apparently social sciences are okay, but biology is too totalitarian.

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin

The fact is that the image of science that Hribal sets up throughout this book is just wrong.  It might be true that a hundred years ago (or as he says in the 17th century) the view he is attacking was the prevailing view among scientists -- although as far back as Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, to name just two, there were prominent scientists who were interested in the thought and emotions of animals.  Darwin wrote a whole book about it. It certainly isn't true today.  The study of animal cognition and animal emotions has exploded in the last couple of decades, and scientists now openly debate questions of intention, thought, desire, and agency when discussing non-humans.  Just off the top of my head I could suggest half a dozen (or more) scientists and philosophers -- Mark Bekoff, Jane Goodall, Roger Fouts, Temple Grandin, Irene Pepperberg, Daniel Dennett, Frans de Waal -- who's work bears directly on these questions.  Not all of them would agree with Hribal, for sure, but all of them hold a much more nuanced and receptive view of non-human intelligence than Hribal allows for anywhere in his book.  And all of their work -- and much more from this rich vein of scientific inquiry -- could have been used to bolster and support Hribal's thesis.  But he never even tries.

Let me go on a little bit with the story of Jumbo from the book:

But Jumbo was no scientist, and he certainly did not see himself as a machine.  Resistance was his new thought.  He flew into terrible rages.  He tried repeatedly to escape.  He hurled himself against the enclosure.... [Italics added by me]

The problem with this passage -- and it's common of the technique throughout the book -- is more subtle, but also more dangerous.  I have written a lot about point-of-view in fiction -- and how traditional points of view can and cannot accommodate non-human consciousness.  I think anyone who has read anything I've written in this blog knows I believe in animal agency and consciousness.  But Hribal is not writing fiction here, he's writing history -- a serious historian simply does not attribute thoughts and feelings to a subject where no decisive documentation exists.  To say that Jumbo's actions strongly imply those kinds of feelings is fair.  To just insert them into the story as facts is intellectual dishonesty.  Speculation (or mind reading) should be clearly distinguished form historical fact.   

Consider it in another context.  A historian writing about George Washington would be scrupulous not to attribute thoughts or feelings to the man where they couldn't be supported.  And would likely be even more careful when writing, for instance, about someone from another culture whose ideas and preconceptions were likely to be very different.  But Hribal, writing not just about another culture, but about other species, feels free to gives us their thoughts and feelings in declaratory sentences with no qualifications and no objective support.  Not just as a writer -- but as a lover of animals -- I find that very disturbing.

Hribal draws no distinction between the responses to captivity of a highly social herbivorous creature like an elephant and a mostly solitary predator like a tiger.  He attributes exactly the same motives, thoughts and reasons in each case.  He doesn't seem to be interested in how their unique biological and evolutionary history shaped their different kinds of perceptions and responses.  (This, I guess, is "biological determinism".)  A tiger's view of the world would be as different from an elephant's as an elephant's would from a human's.  This is similar to a historian writing about incidents in widely divergent societies and times as if everyone involved shared the ideas and perceptions of the dominant culture. When we do it to humans, we call it imperialism.  It is, ironically, the very failure Hribal  attributes to science -- not trying to understand different species and animals as individuals, but simply projecting our own values, responses and feelings on them.   

I don't usually write negative reviews. I prefer to focus on books that are worth praising.  But Fear of the Animal Planet is too important a book to ignore.  When I first received it from the publisher, I was excited.  I was hoping for a book that would really engage in an intelligent, thoughtful way with the complex questions it raises.  

Sadly -- despite the importance of the stories it collects -- this is not that book.

Tears For Elephants

(My review of Water For Elephants -- the book -- can be seen here.)

A few years ago the animal advocacy group I volunteer for was organizing pickets of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, which comes annually to Everett Washington.  They don't come to Seattle anymore.  Some people attribute this to protests, although the circus claims that its only because the Event Center in Everett is a more economical venue.  I was very conflicted when I first heard about the protests.  I remember my father taking me to the circus as a kid and being totally captivated by the magic of the big show.  (I've always had a weakness for spectacle).  But I know that Ringling Brothers has a long history of being cited for problems with its animal handling, and that the very issue of keeping elephants in captivity -- much less training them to do circus acts -- is problematic. 

I decided that I wanted to investigate for myself.

The first person I talked to was the PR director for our organization.  She once worked for PETA and was now involved in coordinating the circus protests.  She gave me a lot of background information on Ringling Brothers, including an undercover video taken of training in the circus (which I've never been able to watch more than a couple of minutes of).  But I was still conflicted -- there was still a little kid in me who didn't want to give up the dream of the circus (and who loves having the chance to see elephants in person, whether it be in circuses or zoos).  So I contacted the local PR people for Ringling Brothers and managed to wrangle a press pass to talk to people inside the show.  I went up on the first night that they were open, and  was treated very well.  Ringling Brothers goes to great lengths to make local press feel comfortable.  (A large part of the press section of their website is devoted to issues about animal welfare, litigation and stressing their role in elephant conservation).  I was given a trainer to show me around, take me backstage and see the elephants waiting for the show.  They seemed to be at ease even with all the excitement around them.  The trainer talked about her love for the animals -- which seemed genuine -- and how she had given up a previous career to train for this one -- "run away and join the circus" she joked.  She reminded me P.T. Barnum (known as a reliable source)  said the two pillars on which the circus rests are clowns and elephants, and that following that mandate the  company had established the world famous Clown College as well as a Center for Elephant Conservation -- a 200 acre facility in Florida devoted to "conservation, breeding and understanding".  (You can see Ringling Brothers' description of the facility here.)  She told me that she had never seen animals mistreated, and that his particular unit of the circus, which she had been with for a long time, had never had an animal death since she had been working there.    It was a very impressive presentation.

And it was mostly untrue.

It turns out that this very same unit had a big cat die on their previous stop, under what the papers described as "suspicious" circumstances.  And that this unit, and Ringling Brothers as a whole, had an unusually high rate of animal attrition as well as a checkered record with Federal inspectors.  They were also involved in court cases and litigation, which they usually managed to keep tied up in the court for many years.

So much for the magic of the Circus.

I thought about that experience though, when I heard that they were going to make a movie out of Sarah Gruen's book Water For Elephants.  I love the book -- which deals openly with the subject of animal abuse -- and was excited about the idea of it being a movie.  But I was also disturbed.  As a rule, I'm really uncomfortable with the use of exotic wild animals in entertainment.  It promotes their being kept in captivity and creates a whole constellation of problems.  A few years ago I refused to see the movie Speed Racer (which the Geek in me really wanted to see) because of reports from the Humane Society that the chimpanzee used in the film had been struck and beaten on the set.  Using Great Apes in entertainment is a practice that I oppose, so even the directors' choice to use a real chimpanzee was upsetting.

What I hoped, when I first heard about Water for Elephants, was that they would do something really innovative, like creating CGI elephants (and other animals) instead of using real ones.  With today's technology it could be done convincingly and could be used to add to the dark and romantic atmosphere of the story. That's not what they decided to do.

Once again, I was prepared to put my misgivings aside.  I have a great respect for Sara Gruen and I know that she is passionately devoted to animals and their welfare.  (There's a wonderful picture of her on her website playing with Thai, the elephant "star" of the movie.)  When the movie came out I looked up the reviews from the American Humane Society, which monitors the use of animals in films and television.  They gave the film a rating of "Outstanding" and certified it as "No animals were harmed".  So I told myself I should just stop worrying and enjoy the movie.

Now, reports are surfacing about the company that trained Thai, the elephant in the movie.  KTLA in Los Angeles -- as well as other sources around the country -- are reporting on undercover video released by Animal Defenders International.  (You can see the KTLA report here.)  The organization which trained Thai is called "Have Trunk Will Travel", and according to its website it is a privately funded organization that uses the proceeds from giving elephant shows, rides and providing elephants for movies to "care for elephants and provide for their future".   The video shows elephants -- including baby elephants and including Thai -- being hit with a "bull hook", a long, sharp pointed "tool" which is used on elephants (and which, ironically, is shown disapprovingly in Gruen's book) as well as with electrical shocks.  

The bottom line is that there simply is no way for these animals to be kept, humanely, in captivity.  And there is no way they learned such unnatural behaviors as standing on their heads without questionable training techniques.  The public needs to know this.  We need to know when we support these activities, when we go see movies that use exotic wild animal like elephants or Great Apes, we are supporting a tradition that is rooted in cruelty and suffering.  

The Humane Society does a great job of monitoring the treatment of animals on movie sets.  But perhaps it needs to go much further.  Perhaps they need to monitor and certify trainers, and refuse to give their designation to movies that don't used certified trainers.  Perhaps, they need to simply accept that some animals cannot be humanely used for entertainment, and that giving a "No Animals Were Harmed" designation to any film which uses these animals is unacceptable.  With today's technology, it is doubly unnecessary. 

I, for one, will not go see movies, or live performances, with elephants or Great Apes in them again.  No matter how much I want to believe in the "magic", the reality is too sad.

I'm done.

If you are interested in learning more about the horrendous history of exotic animals in entertainment, a good book to star with is Visions of Caliban, by Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall.  This book is about chimpanzees, not elephants, but the sections on the use of apes in movies is must reading.  It reveals the heartbreaking fate of many animals, including the orangutan who "starred" with Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose.  Animal lovers should definitely read it.

Whatever Happened to America's Dog?

Part I

At the time of this writing, many Americans believe that there is a breed of dog that is irredeemably, magically viscous.  This is not the only reason the current era is going to go down in history as one of the most remarkably hysterical and superstitious of all time, but it is a bigger reason than current speculation allows for.  The dog in question is said to be good at guarding dope dens, to suffer from something called Jekyll-Hyde syndrome, to be an indiscriminate killer of tires, weeds, kittens, and people, to exert two thousand or sometimes twenty thousand pounds of pressure per square inch with its double-or-triple-jointed jaws ... these dogs are popularly called "pit bulls".  They don't exist ....

--Vicki Hearne

Bandit, Dossier of a Dangerous Dog 

 

Highly Recommended

The last few decades have been hard for the Pit Bull in America. 

The breed that was once called  "America's Dog" has fallen on bad times.  There was a time when they were our heroes.  On posters from the First World War the French were depicted as a poodle, the English as a bull dog -- and America as a pit bull.  Not high-brow like the poodle or aristocratic like the bull dog – a scrappy, hard-muscled little working class dog with a huge heart, who never backed down from a fight.  (Very cool recreations of this period art can be seen and purchased at Wonderbull.com  http://www.cafepress.com/wonderbull/1865168) That’s how we saw ourselves, and the pit bull was our well-loved symbol.  It represented our heart, as the Bald Eagle was chosen by the founding fathers to represent the spirit of our loftiest ideals.

You know we almost wiped out the Bald Eagle too?

The most decorated war dog in U.S. history was called Sgt. Stubby.  He was variously described as being part pit bull, part Boston Terrier, or "Old Boston Bulldog" which at the time was another name for the Pit Bull Terrier.  If you look at his photos though, he's clearly the type of dog that would be labeled a pit bull in any shelter in America.  Sgt. Stubby -- he was officially promoted to the rank of Sergeant during the war -- he was wounded in battle, gassed (after which he learned to warn his fellow troops of the presence of poison gas), located wounded soldiers after battles, and learned to warn soldiers of incoming artillery shells.  He served from 1917 through the end of the war, and was awarded the "wound stripe" worn by soldiers in WWI to indicate they had been wounded, and a number of medals for his heroism, including a Humane Society medal presented by General John Pershing.  He met three Presidents.

When I was a kid they were still showing the re-runs of The Little Rascals on television.  The kids on that show had a beloved dog, Pete, who was a white faced pit bull with black over one eye.  Pete was never depicted as being anything but sweet and funny and loyal.

The Sioux medicine man, John Lame Deer (Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions) once wrote, "When a people begin destroying their own symbols, they're in a bad way."

Sometime in the last decades of the twentieth century the United States of American decided to turn on one of its symbols.  There's an old saying that "Every dog has his day", and sadly, that seems to be true.  When I was a kid it the seventies the monsters du jour were Doberman Pinschers.  They even made horror movies about them.  Then for a while in the seventies and eighties it was Rottweiler’s.  Way back in the 1940’s the official monster dog was the Bloodhound.  They were so feared and reviled that the writer James Thurber wrote essays to defend them.  The stories from back then sound a lot like the stories written about pit bulls today.  The more things change ....

Poet, philosopher and animal trainer Vicki Hearne chronicled her part in the "pit bull wars" in an amazing book called "Bandit, Dossier of a Dangerous Dog" .  It is the story of how she became involved with a Dog named Bandit, who was in trouble because his owner could not control him, because he had bitten someone who came onto his property, and because he was labeled a "pit bull".

Bandit was said to be a pit bull, but he is not.  He was said to be uncontrollably aggressive, but he is not, because random aggression requires pretty advanced intellectual capacities, the ability to live by abstract concepts and so on, and Bandit is not that bright.  He was said to suffer from the Jekyll-Hyde syndrome, but you have be human to suffer from the Jekyll-Hyde syndrome, and you have to be able to misread Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bandit can't read.  He was said to be diseased, but he is not.  He was said to be Untrainable because five years old, but he is not.  Untrainable, that is; he was at one point five years old ....

Vicki Hearne, who died in 2001 of lung cancer, is one of the most intellectually challenging and fascinating figures in the whole field of animal literature.  A poet, a philosopher and an animal trainer, she is interested in not just the concrete details of Bandit's case, but in the wider significance of the "pit bull wars" for our society -- in topics like the meaning of a dog bite (dogs being highly social animals, like primates, almost all their actions are meant to be communicative -- a dog that bites is not just being "vicious", he's trying to tell you something), the reason why we tell stories about 'monsters', and the connections between the demonization of certain dog breeds and racism.  

In a posthumous collection of her poems, Tricks of the LightHearne, when she arranged for him to give a reading at the University of Riverside.  This is how he describes her:

When I asked her what it was she worked at, she replied that she trained dogs and horses, to which I may have responded in a less than fascinated way.  But within a very few minutes she had elicited my complete absorption.  She spoke right away of her interest in the relation between psychologists' behavioristic accounts of what an animal was doing when it was learning to respond to a command or signal, and the very different kinds of stories that trainers would tell each other and themselves—about what was going on.  When she began to meditate on why it was that believing those stories helped the trainers work immeasurably better, I hesitantly mentioned that more general concerns of just that nature had been of interest to twentieth-century philosophers.

Before I could finish she was discussing particular passages of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, followed by her consideration of the history of observations on horse-training from Xenophon on through some Renaissance humanists. This was followed by all sorts of other historical accounts of such matters as the relation between humane societies and Tory politics in England, the cultural construction of breeds, together with such exemplary stories  as that of the demonization or the Doberman in the later 1930's as a Nazi dog and a host of other tales, issues,  problems, and enigmas.

This is exactly the kind of mind that is on display in "Bandit", with her incredibly broad knowledge, her poet's eye, and a philosopher's inclination to question everything.  

But what interests her most is the moral capacity of animals -- not their moral worth which other philosophers and animal rights activists stress -- but their stature a moral agents, as beings capable of choice and rich communication in their own right.  She believes that animals, in their individuality, can relate to humans emotionally and morally in ways that are much more complex than usually acknowledged. Bandit is a book that should be read, certainly, by anyone interested in the fate of pit bulls and the legal battles that have been fought over them.  And by anyone interested in broader questions of animal rights (a concept which Hearne rejects on philosophical grounds), animal training, or interspecies communication.  It also raises questions about the cycles of demonization that our culture experiences, the constant need to find or manufacture "monsters" to scare each other with.  It is a book that will fascinate, challenge and infuriate

people on all sides of the issues.

 

Part II

 

The Lost Dogs, by Jim Gorant

Highly Recommended

I remember the day that I first heard the name Michael Vick.  I'm not really a football fan, so his being the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons didn't even register with me.  But the news that he and his friends had been running a dog fighting operation -- and that 51 pit bulls had been seized in the raid -- did.  I remember reading the first reports to my best friend with tears in my eyes.  There was very little information about the animals then.  But I have been a kennel volunteer and a pit bull lover for many years and I knew -- with a certainty that made me feel sick -- what the outcome was going to be.  Pit bulls don't get second chances.  Pit bulls don't get mercy or compassion.  Around the country for years the trend had been toward greater and greater restrictions on any dog that looked like a pit bull.  Cities like Denver and Miami and Cincinnati   -- and the entire province of Ontario in Canada -- had outlawed pit bulls.  In those places, pit bulls that come into shelters never come out again.  But most conservative estimates millions of dogs die in shelters around the country every year, and of all dogs, pit bulls are judged most harshly.  The dog that was once called "America's Dog", that was once celebrated on TV and in films (the Little Rascals had a pit bull), had become a pariah and a public enemy.  So when I read about Michael Vick's dogs I started grieving.  I was sure the dogs were doomed.

"You should call someone," my friend told me.  "You should find out what's happening."

And so I did.  I called the Humane Society.  I called local shelters in the Atlanta area.  I called newspapers and everyone I knew in rescue.  There was almost no news to be had.  The dogs were still alive, but at the moment that might just because they were evidence.  The case against Vick and his friends was still pending.   

I had no hope at all.

And then a miracle happened.

Jim Gorant's book "The Lost Dogs" is, in large part, the story of that miracle.  It's an engaging story, with plenty of heroes and villains -- and in Gorant's hands even the "bad guys" become human beings, with histories and motivations that help us understand -- if certainly not sympathize with -- their actions. 

For the first time, in a high profile dog fighting case, in the United States, the justice system decided to treat the dogs not just as property or evidence, but as victims.  From around the country relief groups and volunteers and shelters stepped forward.   47 of the dogs taken from Bad Newz Kennels were saved.  Many of them would go on to become family pets, therapy dogs, and survivors.  They also became media stars, appearing in magazines and newspapers across the country, challenging the public's image of pit bulls.  The Lost Dogs documents the heroic people who worked so hard to save them, and the heroism of the dogs themselves.

Along the way, Gorant gives us fascinating details of how the case against Vick was built, the work of the forensic investigators and the prosecutors.  He delves into the history of pit bulls and of dog fighting, and shows us some of the public controversy surrounding the breed.  But most of all, he shows us the dogs, lets us get to know them, feel the pain they endured, and rejoice at their rescue.  

"The Lost Dogs" is a powerful account of these animals -- many scarred physically and mentally by their ordeal -- who turned out to be, not the worst of the worst, but dogs, brave and loyal dogs who wanted love and human companionship.  Not so lost after all.

In an interview with NPR Gorant noted that, because of the great press the Vick Dogs have received and their remarkable success, the Michael Vick case might ironically turn out to be one of the best things that has  happened to pit bulls in a long time.

I hope he's right.

Related Reading

Also, pit bulls are pit bull terriers.  Even in the most bulldoggy individuals, there will be something -- a sprightliness in the stance, some suggestion of the possibilities of tap dancing and vaudeville, some impish gleam in the eye -- to suggest the terrier.  It is a subtle thing, but often obvious when you put a pit bull next to a bulldog of any variety -- you can see, faintly, the blackface, and hear the tambourines. 

--Vicki Hearne

 

The Working Pit Bull, by Diane Jessup 

 

Colby's Book of the American Pit Bull Terrier by Louis B. Colby and Diane Jessup

Recommended.  (Highly Recommended for the true 'Pit Bull Person')

If you're like me, then just leafing through these two beautifully illustrated books can bring tears to your eyes.
 

Diane Jessup has been an Animal Control Officer, a trainer, a breeder, an educator, a writer -- and is founder of Lawdogs (http://www.lawdogsusa.org/home.html) a pioneering effort to train and promote American Pit Bull Terriers as law enforcement dogs.  (The program has regrettably been shut down because of lack of funding.)  He work on behalf of pit bulls -- as well as other game animals like Gamecocks -- has been unflagging.  As she herself points out, there is a paradox in someone who has been both an animal control officer -- who has seen the horrors of abuse and animal fighting first hand -- but who has deep and abiding love for the game animals that come out of those traditions.  But she embraces that contradiction, is outspoken in the defense of what she loves, and is never afraid to offend anyone on any side of animal issues. (Dog fighters on one side and many animal rights groups on the other come under fire in her writings.)

The Working Pit  Bull (see her website also http://www.workingpitbull.com/) is first and foremost a love letter to the breed.  Filled with history, anecdotes, personal experience -- and most importantly with the amazing accomplishments of the dogs themselves -- it is a true joy to anyone who loves dogs.  Especially to anyone who is infected with difficult, often painful love for that greatest of all breeds -- The American Pit Bull Terrier.  Jessup's own dog -- Bandog Dread -- was the most titled Champion in Breed history, winning acclaim in every competition and field of endeavor in which pit bulls participate.  (His photo on the cover is pretty much worth the price of the book).  

Louis B. Colby comes from a very different background.  He is the son of John P. Colby, the most famous breeder of Pit Bulls in history (and also a dog fighter).  Louis is therefore the heir to the most celebrated lineage of Pit Bulls ever bread, going back over a hundred years and recognized around the world as the standard to which the breed aspires.  (Supposedly, the American Kennel Club, which doesn't recognize Pit Bulls, nonetheless used a Colby dog to set the standard for the American Staffordshire Terrier.  Even to this day, many dogs are dually registered, as American Staffordshires with the AKC and with as American Pit Bull Terriers with UKC and other registries which recognize the breed.)

This book, which Colby co-authored with Diane Jessup, is a history of his family's dogs, the legendary line of champions which they created.  It is, of course, impossible to avoid the subject of dog fighting in such a history, and Colby obviously takes great pride in the stories and legends of the great dogs which came from his family's line.  All the great champions are here, and their exploits are noted and honored.  There are no grim details of fighting here, no graphic descriptions -- and Colby is a little coy about whether he himself has participated in, or continues to participate in, dog fighting.  Diane Jessup points out that only a tiny percentage of pit bulls were ever used for fighting, and that the breed has been accomplished in many other fields, successful at just about task that dogs perform.  She notes her own ambivalence when asked to help write Colby's history, but in the end her love of the breed, and her acceptance that they are what they are because of where they came from, prevailed.  

Those qualms aside, Colby's Book of the American Pit Bull Terrier is a joy to read and look at.  It is filled with photos of dogs from the very beginning of the breed almost up to modern day.  Those of us who love the breed will love this book, no matter how uncomfortable we may feel about some aspects of the history.  What also comes through so clearly in this book is the Colby family's love of their dogs -- which is hard perhaps to reconcile with their other activities, but obviously real.  And if we want, we can write off the people entirely and just enjoy this book for the dogs.  They are magnificent.

 

This Is The American Pit Bull Terrier by Richard F. Stratton

Suggested.  

A somewhat different take on the American Pit Bull Terrier is offered by Richard F. Stratton in "This is the American Pit Bull Terrier"  and other books.  Stratton is clear eyed about the strengths and weaknesses of the breed -- and like others he shares a deep respect and love for them.  But he often seems to be too enamored of the mythos of pit fighting and comes very close to actually condoning it.  Still, his knowledge of the dogs, and his different take on their history (Stratton, for instance, does not believe that the American Staffordshire and the American Pit Bull are the same dog today, despite their common origins).   I personally have the original 1976 edition of "This is the American Pit Bull Terrier" which I appreciate both for its older photos and for its outspokenness in a time before pit bulls were feared and reviled.  A more difficult and perplexing writer, but a book well worth checking out for the true enthusiast.