Born to Bark

Born to Bark by Stanley Coren

"For Christmas the woman who would become my wife bought me a dog -- a little terrier. The next year her Christmas present to me was a shotgun.  Most of the people in my family believe that those two gifts were not unrelated."

Stanley Coren is the author of a lot of books about dogs, including How Dogs Think, How to Speak Dog, Why We Love the Dogs We Do and The Intelligence of Dogs.  He is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, and often appears on tv shows (Oprah, Dateline, Good Morning America to name a few).  He is known as an expert on dogs and their behaviors.  But what the public didn't really know, until now, is that Coren had a very special teacher.

The teacher's name was Flint.  And Flint was a Cairn Terrier.  Born to Bark is the story of Coren's friendship with Flint, and of all that he learned. 

"If you could read the genetic code of a terrier it would say, "bark-eat-bark-dig-bark-chase-bark-grab-bark-hunt-bark-kill it (if it is little furry and moves quickly)-bark-growl-bark-tug-bark-shred-bark-ignore sounds from two-footed creatures-bark-bark ...."

Coren takes us back to his earliest memories -- the dogs of his childhood and what he learned from them -- to show us how he was prepared for Flint.  But as those of us who are true dog lovers know, though you may have many dogs in your life, and though you love them all, there is usually one dog (if you are very fortunate, two) who stand apart -- soul mates is a silly phrase, but I don't know any other way to describe it.  And for Stanley Coren Flint was the dog.

But Born to Bark is also more than just a memoir.  It is also chock full of Stanley Coren's observations about dogs -- their behavior, their history, and their special value to humans.

"In a way, I had blundered inadvertently into what today is known as pet-assisted therapy.  In North America the number of pet assisted therapy programs was under twenty in 1980, but by the year 2000 more than one thousand such programs were in operation.  We probably owe the origin of using dogs as part of psychotherapy to Sigmund Freud (funny how often that name comes up when a psychologist is writing or talking), who often had one of his dogs with him during therapy sessions.  He first noticed that the presence of the dog seemed to be beneficial for patients ... He thought that this might be due to the fact that patients often worry about whether what they are saying might seem unacceptable ... However, nothing the patients ever say will shock the therapist's furry companion ...."

This is the common theme running through all the dog memoirs I've been reading lately.  The power of the human/canine bond to heal (and the healing can run both ways).  There is something about this story that never gets old.  I have my own version of it. Whether it is the simple love that animals provide, the discipline involved in training, or the requirements of focusing on another creature outside of yourself, this involvement often lifts people out of their selves in way that other relationships can't do.  (But its possible we have an unfair sample here -- the memoirs are almost universally about the times when this process works, because it's the successful "rescues" who go on to write books.)

The virtue of Coren's book, and the reason that it makes a good cap to the other dog memoirs I've reviewed, is that Coren is a trained psychologist, a specialist in canine behavior, and a professional communicator, so his self-consciousness about what is going on and how it works allows him to frame the story of his relationship with Flint in a broader context.

I would recommend Coren's earlier books to anyone interested in canine behavior and intelligence.  But I would recommend Born to Bark to anyone.

 ###

Readers interested in books about dogs might also like to check out my earlier reviews:  "Goodbye Alpha Dog", "Two Dogs in Search of a Master", "A Nose for Justice", "Whatever Happened to America's Dog?" and "Scent of the Missing".

You can also enjoy my recent article "Crazy Flickers" over at 10,000 Birds.  They have a great site, well worth checking out even if I wasn't included.  

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.

Where the Birds Is

The Art of Bird Finding by Pete Dunne

 

"Whether you know it or not," writes Pete Dunne in his new book, The Art of Bird Finding, "you are a bird-finding machine.  Under the shell of your modern veneer, stripped down to raw sensory receptors, Mr. and Mrs. Homo Sapiens are genetically to pick up the clues that say:  LOOK!  LOOK!  BIRD HERE."

That's a comforting thought on frustrating days when I can barely make out any of the tiny songbirds flitting about my yard.  Much less identify the birds I can hear but never quite locate at the park.  Most of us think of ourselves as bird-watchers, although more often the goal seems to be bird identification.  But whatever we're looking for (pun intended) the first step is seeing the birds in the first place.  And Dunne's wonderfully succinct new guide is devoted to helping us do just that.

As a birder, I probably rely too much on my camera.  I'm not fond of binoculars -- mostly because I've never learned to use them effectively, and Dunne has some helpful hints here -- but I found that his discussion of the pros and cons of binoculars applied equally well to how I use the camera. 

Think of the advantages that are diminished or nullified when you bring your binoculars up to your eyes.  Right off the bat, your view of the world is reduced by about ninety-five percent.  Good binoculars offer a field of view of about eight degrees of arc.  Your eyes, with birder-enhanced peripheral vision, give you between 100 and 180 degrees of arc.  You bring binoculars to your eyes, you've just thrown away your greatest bird-finding advantage -- your ability to perceive the whole world in front of you.

I know I've found this to be true of my camera.  In fact, I've found that even though my distance vision is diminished without glasses, standing on my deck bare-eyed I am able to watch the entire yard, watch for the slightest motion or movement.  For me, it is these moments of stillness and receptivity that are among the most rewarding parts of birding. 

Pete Dunne is one of the most prolific and talented bird writers around -- his books include Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion, The Feather Quest, and the wonderful collection of essay/stories about raptors The Wind Masters.  The Art of Birding shows all his usual strengths.  For almost anyone, at any level, this book is a valuable trip back to the very beginnings of bird watching, a refresher course on what and where to look, and a guide to shifting our perspective. 

Yogi Bera once said that the secret to baseball was just to "hit it where they ain't".  The secret of birding then might be described as "look where they is".  And Pete Dunne will show us how.

(Books and Beast readers might also want to check out the latest post at Birdland West -- "A Flock of New Books for Birders" featuring the best of recent books on birdwatching, gardening and related topics.)

Writing for the Birds

 (The photos in this blog post -- except for book covers -- were taken by me, copyrighted by me, and can only be used with permission.)

I am standing at the living room window in the early morning (when I should be writing) sipping coffee and watching the yard come to life.  There is a bird feeder in the cherry tree by the deck, and every few seconds a tiny black-capped chickadee darts from a bush by the sidewalk, undulating in a quick wave, up and down like a dolphin swimming in the sea, and lands unerringly on the tiny plastic perch of the feeder.  They never seem to miss, even when the feeder is swaying in the breeze. And I never get tired of watching them, trying to imagine the very different world they inhabit, only a few feet away from me.   

  

The legendary science fiction editor John W. Campbell used to tell his writers (who included such future luminaries as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein) to write an alien character "that thinks as well as a man, but not like a man".  My little songbirds, who don't share a common ancestor with me for something like a hundred and eighty million years, are as alien in their way as anything in science fiction.  Attempting to see through their eyes (which are sensitive to a much wider range of the spectrum than mine) stretches my imagination to its limits.

 

A Foray into the World of Animals and Humans

I get some help from Jakob von Uexküll -- a German baron born in 1864 -- a biologist and physiologist, with a deep interest in animal behavior--whose work would become the foundation for the imposingly named field of "biosemiotics" -- literally, the study of the signs and symbols of life.

At first glance, none of this -- chickadees or and old German scientist --  seems to have any relevance to the art of writing (or reading) fiction, but Jakob von Uexküll introduced a concept called the umwelt (um velt) which is invaluable not only in understanding my avian neighbors, but also in the creation of vivid fictional characters.

Imagine the chickadee again. The umwelt is the bird's subjective world. "We must first blow," Uexküll writes, "in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature, to represent the world which it alone knows ... When we ... step into one of these bubbles, the familiar meadow is transformed ... Many of its colorful features disappear, others no longer belong together.  A new world comes into being."  

The chickadees, for instance, can see in the ultraviolet -- they see patterns on plants and animals which are totally invisible to me.  They can very likely see the polarization of sunlight and detect directions from it.  They may even -- we know this is true of other songbirds -- be able to perceive the magnetic field of the Earth.  And what's more, they live in a world much more three dimensional than my own.  Where movement, for me, generally takes place on the surface of the world, chickadees are free to move in any direction.  They can fly. 

To get into the soap bubble of another creature, we must look at a few important elements.  What are they capable of perceiving? What is most important in their lives? And how do they act upon the world? These elements define the creature's umwelt or "self-world", and they are the levers which allow us to step into that world.  

Chickadees eat insects, seeds, berries.  They live in trees and they are, at least in this area, pretty much protected from predators.  They are too small and fast to be worth a hawk's time, they don't spend enough time on the ground to fall victim to cats very often.  As a result, they are bold, curious, almost fearless.  I have leaned over the rail of my porch and looked down into the eyes of a chickadee looking back at me over the distance of a few feet.  I am important in their world now because I take care of the feeders, but often the activity of humans, even very close to them, barely registers at all.  We are unimportant, mostly nonthreatening, and hence invisible.  

I have watched chickadees and hummingbirds share a single tree in my yard.  To us, it looks like they share a small space, but I suspect that their umwelts barely overlap.  The hummingbirds are interested in syrupy sweet nectar, from flowers and feeders, which in turn fuels their constant hunt for insects.  Small, incredibly fast, as maneuverable as dragonflies, and fiercely territorial, they are solitary where the chickadees are social, and so aggressive that Ancient Aztec warriors took hummingbirds as their symbol, and wore their bright feathers into battle.  As focused as the hummingbirds are -- they live always on the thin line of survival, where every calorie can be the crucial difference -- I wonder if the incidental chickadees even register on their perception -- any more than songbirds downtown register on the perception of busy humans.  

From the outside -- the perspective of an omniscient narrator, perhaps -- these creatures inhabit the same world.  But within their individual soap bubbles, what exists and what doesn't, what is important and what is not, what they care about and what they don't, those worlds could be totally different.

The same is true of our fictional characters.  I am fond of the omniscient perspective, the view of the Elizabethan novelist who wanted to show us all the levels of society and how they interacted, even when they were oblivious to each other.  In modern terms, it's the perspective of the ecologist, who can see how so many living things share the environment, even when they never perceive each other.  But as writers, we also have to be able to draw close, to get inside the soap bubbles, and see the world as the individual sees it.  

Imagining ourselves into the minds and lives of other creatures -- human, alien, or animal -- is the ultimate creative act.  It can be argued that the most important contribution of fiction -- and especially of the novel -- to human culture is exactly this, that it allows us to step outside our own limited experience and see the world from other viewpoints, in other times and places.  That it broadens and deepens our sense of fellowship with other creatures.  As storytellers, as readers, and as a civilization this is something we desperately need.

So we can fly with the chickadees.

(Books and Beast readers might also want to check out the latest post at Birdland West -- "A Flock of New Books for Birders" featuring the best of recent books on birdwatching, gardening and related topics.)

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.