A Nose for Justice

 

A Nose For Justice by Rita Mae Brown

One of the recurring themes here at Books and Beasts is an examination of Point of View in fiction -- especially as that relates to the representation of non-human characters and consciousness.  Rita Mae Brown's new mystery, A Nose For Justice, highlights that question in a very interesting way.

Rita Mae Brown is an author who has gone through a number of phases in her writing career.  She first became famous in the early 1970's when her debut novel Rubyfruit Jungle became a cult classic.  It was a coming of age novel featuring Lesbian themes -- one of the first Lesbian novels to cross over into mainstream culture.  She went on to write a series of novels that can loosely be described as "Southern comic" (although never light) featuring strong women protagonists and powerful female relationships, even when the explicit Lesbian themes were absent.  These novels include  Southern Discomfort, Six of One, Bingo, and the civil war adventure story High Hearts.  

But in 1990 Brown began a new phase in her career, when she began co-authoring books with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown. (With 18 novels in the last 20 years, Sneaky Pie has to be one of the most prolific non-human authors around.)  The "Mrs. Murphy" series, as it is known, includes human, feline and canine characters in an often busy mix.

(I've always wondered about the prominence of felines in mysteries.    I'm a dog person, and while I've known many individual cats that I liked, I must admit that I don't "get" cats.  Having a cat around the house seems  like a never ending first date.  I have no idea what they want and I have the sinking feeling that I'm constantly disappointing them.  Dogs seem to be more natural sleuths and more prone to pay close attention to what humans are doing.  I'm not convinced that cats would expend much energy on the fate of a strange human.)

A Nose for Justice, begins a new series -- starring 34 year old ex-Wall Street broker Mags Rogers and her octogenarian great Aunt Jeeps -- and this time, dogs are on center stage.  When Mags arrives at her Aunt's Nevada ranch, she brings her wirehaired dachshund Baxter with her.  Baxter is definitely the "city dog", urbane and civilized.   Jeeps shares the ranch with her German Shepherd mix King -- who looks on the "fuzzy sausage" Baxter as a dubious intruder.  The first meeting of the dogs and their jockeying for position will be familiar to anyone who spends much time around canines.  

This novel falls easily into the category of "cozy mystery".  Like Sneaky Pie's books about Postmistress Mary Minor "Harry" Harristeen, the classic cozy has a small town or village setting, an amateur sleuth (usually, but not always,  a woman), and often a low-key love interest for the heroine that may stretch out over dozens of books without generating a whole lot of heat.  They are all (or mostly) descendents of Agatha Christie's Jane Marple books.   Despite their grizzly subject matter, cozies are usually light reading, entertaining and not overly demanding.  The introduction of animals into the cozy setting just seems like a natural extension.

At first glance, A Nose for Justice doesn't seem to stray far from the cozy form.  It does have a situation that is a little more complex than most -- the pipe bombing of a local water station, which could be corporate espionage or eco-terrorism,  a series of local murder which seem to be connected somehow to the bombing, and human remains found on Jeep's ranch, which turn out to be the body of a Russian military officer from the late 1800's.  These are the elements of an interesting puzzle.  Throw in some unresolved family history for the main characters, a hesitant mutual attraction between Mags and a local deputy, and Jeep's ambitious plans for the ranch and the community, and you have the makings of a better than average cozy.  Brown clearly knows what she's doing.  She's mastered the formula and hits all the right notes along the way. She even manages to inject political and social issues into the story without slowing it down much.  

 In the best cozies -- and this is true even of a lot of mysteries that don't fall into this category -- what we ultimately remember is the characters.  Years ago I read all of Earle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels, and for the life of me, I can't remember any of the plots.  What I do remember, vividly, is how much fun it was to hang out with Perry, Della Street and Paul Drake, enjoying their funny banter and watching Perry run circles around the District Attorney.  You always knew it was going to turn out well.  The same thing is true of all of my favorite mystery series.  John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books:  what I remember are the philosophical conversations between Travis and Meyer, and the struggles Travis went through to apply his own peculiar brand of ethics to a changing world.  Virginia Lanier's bloodhound books: I remember Jo Beth Siddon and her friends, sipping sweet tea on the porch, searching for missing people or bodies in the Okefenokee swamp, and most of all the wonderful bloodhounds.  The list could go on and on.  Series mysteries are very much a character driven genre.  If we enjoy the characters and want to hang out with them, we keep coming back to the series.

And because the genre is so main character focused, it gravitates naturally toward the first person -- or its near relative, the third person limited.  (Thinking back on my favorite series it's often hard to remember whether they are in first or third person -- if the main characters is distinctive enough, I tend to remember it in a personal voice.)   Third person limited allows the author to switch viewpoints if she likes, to have different scenes and chapters from the POV of different characters, and thus expand the scope of the story a little.  The strength of this technique is that it can create suspense by showing the reader dangers the main character isn't aware of yet.  The pitfall, in the mystery form, is that the more characters whose POV we enter, the harder it is to keep information from the reader and sustain the mystery.  Brown makes good use of multiple points of view here, and avoids the worst offenses of mystery and thriller writers.  (Such as putting us into the mind of the villain and "cleverly" concealing his guilt at the same time.)  And up to that point, there's nothing unusual about the POV in A Nose for Justice.  But the dogs have other ideas.

King and Baxter are a constant presence through the novel.  Whenever Mags and Jeep are onstage the dogs are usually there too.  And their thoughts are interjected into the story as commentary.  For instance, from early in the books 

Mags opened the front door, which was never locked, and threw in the biggest bag, then set down the other. "Aunt Jeep!"

"In the kitchen," answered a resonant, deep alto voice.

"Who goes there," King growled as he hurtled himself out of the kitchen to draw up short in front of Mags, whom he knew -- although not well -- from her infrequent visits.

But what was this low-to-the-ground lowlife with a trimmed Vandyke?

Faced with the shepherd mix, Baxter stood his ground, saying nothing.

Jeep strode out of the kitchen, her slight limp apparent but in no way impeding her progress.  "King, he's your new best friend."

"That?" The much bigger dog was incredulous.  With a handsome black face with brown points and a regal bearing, he had no patience for what he thought of as inferior breeds.  "I've seen snakes higher off the ground than that."

Baxter curled back his upper lip.  "And I can strike just as fast, you ill-bred lout."

Up until this point, the chapter has been in a pretty standard third person limited, following Mags as she arrives at the ranch, giving us a few hints of back story --  with just a couple of interjected comments from Baxter.  Now however, as King confronts the interlopers, we are in full omniscient mode, not only sharing the thoughts of both dogs, but backing off for a brief description of King (which shows no traces of Mags as a POV) and comments about his opinions that none of the humans would know.

The idea of control of POV, and the dogma of third person limited, has become so ingrained in writing circles in the United States, that the reaction to fiction that breaks those strictures is almost knee-jerk.  If you want to hear fundamentalism at its finest, take any story which strays from those guides -- which includes, say multiple POV's in one scene, to almost any writing group or creative writing class, and watch the pack attack. Several generations of perspective writers have been taught POV as if it were an end into itself, and not simply a technique available to a writer to achieve other ends. This kind of thing is often called "sloppiness" by critique groups and writing teachers (who presumably never read Tolstoy or Melville) . And indeed, in the hands of beginning writers, who don't know what they are doing, or why, it often is just that.  Sloppy and confusing.   I have to admit that I was thrown myself by the early changes in perspective, but a careful reading even of the first page should have alerted me.  The presence of the dogs, and the decision to include their thoughts into the story, destabilizes the third person limited POV and sends it careening toward omniscience.  In fact, the above scene continues from that point with the POV now divided between Mags, Jeeps and the dogs.  It takes some getting used to.

It's also interesting that Brown doesn't make any attempt to make the dogs sound like dogs (whatever that might mean).  Except for a few jokes about bones and such, the dogs pretty much talk as humans would -- and pretty well educated humans at that.  They clearly understand the speech of the people around them and often comment on even the most abstract topics.  For instance, when Mags and Jeep are discussing the problems of water supply and population in Nevada:

"This is a fight worth fighting.  It's a fight not just for the physical space we know as Nevada, it's a fight for the soul of Nevada."

"Do you think people have souls?" Baxter asked King.

"Sure.  Most of them forget it though."

"I think so too," Baxter stiffened his legs ....

And earlier, in one of the few extended scenes that Baxter and King share alone, Baxter explains to King about living in the city, the absence of dirt, having to stay on leash in the parks, not being able to see the stars.  Baxter not only knows that Mags rents a vacation home each summer, but he knows that it's in the Hamptons.  This is canine sensibility translated entirely into the language of people.  These are talking dogs who just don't happen to talk to people.  And still, they are charming, funny, and often poignant.

There are many reason why first person and third person limited viewpoints became so prominent in Western literature in the twentieth century.  The breakdown of belief in an omniscient deity, followed by the challenge to old Newtonian ideas of an ordered, objective universe, called into question the whole idea of some objective, outside POV from which everything could be seen.  Fueled by psychoanalysis, and later by social movements that encouraged the voices of those who had never been able to tell their stories before, the plumbing of the individual psyche and of personal experience became the goal of literature.  (Rubyfruit Jungle, for instance, falls squarely into this trend.) Not only were the ambitions of the great nineteenth century novelist like Tolstoy and Dickens gone, but serious questions were raised about whether it was possible for anyone to legitimately write about any experience but their own -- could men write authentic female characters, could white writers fairly represent people of color, could a straight man write about gays or lesbians?  The political issues behind these questions are legitimate, but the effect on literature is traumatic. Fiction shrinks from the scope of Cervantes or Tolstoy or Dickens to a form that is hard to separate from memoir.   Write what you know, students are told.  To which Gore Vidal replies (with more than a hint of patrician arrogance), "Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all."

Rita Mae brown has always been a political activist, and her feminist and social concerns draw her to questions of community.  This is obvious in her earlier novels, and just as obvious in her mysteries.  In one sense, the cozy form is all about community.  A small town or village, where everyone knows everyone, is disrupted by murder, which puts the whole social fabric in danger.  The murder is solved, and community restored, not through the efforts of professionals, but through one of our own.  It is mainly this sense of community which sets the cozy apart from other mystery forms, like the loner private eye or the police procedural. 

Fans of the cozy mystery -- and of Rita Mae Brown's cozies in particular -- will be very happy with A Nose for Justice (and most of them probably won't notice or care about the POV questions).  It's an entertaining mystery with the added spice of Baxter and King's Greek chorus, and charming black and white illustrations by Laura Hartman Maestro.

But for those of us interested in the form of fiction, it's also a book worth thinking about.  Because it raises interesting questions about POV, and what it means to introduce non-human characters into fiction.  Even in this lighthearted form, the inclusion of the animal voices stretches the framework of the narrative in unexpected way.

Ravens in Winter

 

 Ravens in Winter

In 1984 field biologist Bernd Heinrich posed an interesting puzzle:  Why was it that the Ravens around his retreat in Maine seemed to be sharing food, even the harshest periods of winter, with unrelated birds?  Ravens (Corvus Corax) are  more solitary creatures than their urban cousins the Crows.  Their uncharacteristically communal behavior struck Heinrich as "left-wing", and with a scientists' obsessive curiosity he set out to discover why.  Over the course of four years, spending his winter vacations in the frigid Maine woods (while his colleagues "tend to spend their sabbatical years in distant, exotic lands"), hauling carcasses up the mountain to use as bait, spending weeks in a small shack in sub-zero conditions, where he can nothing but observe all day long, and where any other movement or activity jeopardizes the experiment, he gradually gathered the observations that would help him solve his problem.  Along the way, he became interested in the remarkable birds of the corvid family -- how intelligent, truly, are crows and ravens?  Do they play?  How complex are the social relationships, despite the Raven's solitary reputation?

Ravens in Winter attempts to answer these questions, or at least to look objectively at the information available.  Chapters detailing Heinrich's dogged perusal of ravens alternate with chapters that more broadly review the literature of what is known about raven's and their cousins.  

Heinrich comes to the question of Raven intelligence with an admirably scientific skepticism:

...[D]espite the overwhelming force of consensus, there is surprisingly little objective evidence that can be used to compare the ravens' intelligence vs. that of other corvid birds.  Indeed, a review of the literature convinces me that no proof of the raven's singular intelligence has yet been published.  Instead, many of the anecdotes purporting to show this are significant only if is taken for granted at the outset.

This circular nature of the definition of "intelligence" is a problem of critical importance to ethnology -- and to other disciplines as well .  In sociology debates over intelligence tests have raged for decades -- how do we measure intelligence, and is there any way to do that independent of our own cultural biases?  In computer science, it arises when systems seem to exhibit behavior which, in humans, we would consider intelligent -- a chess playing program, for instance.  Is this really intelligence, or simply a mechanical imitation of intelligence?  And if it's not "real" intelligence, what is the missing element that makes it incomplete?  

Since Descartes, who considered animals, to be mere automations, devoid of the spark of soul or consciousness he believed was the  mark human intelligence, there are many who make the same claim about animals -- that the things they do are not real thought or intelligence.

Alan Turing, in a paper way back in 1950 (Computer Machinery and Intelligence) offered a methodological test for his field, to cut through all the philosophical debate:  he proposed a game in which a subject converses, via keyboard, with an several unseen partners.    If the subject cannot reliably tell humans from machines -- then the machines can be said to have passed.  In other words, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck .... If you can't tell a difference between the behavior of a machine and the behavior we consider intelligent in humans, then for all practical purposes there is no difference.  

As powerful as the Turing test is, as a thought experiment, it seems to rest on a number of assumptions that have never really been tested.   Since our definition of intelligence is based on ourselves, it is natural to assume that something else that is intelligent will behave in similar ways.  But that isn't necessarily true.  The science fiction editor John W. Campbell used to tell his writers, "Write me a creature that things as well as a man, but not like a man."  Would a computer, the product of an very different process of development than that which created us, embodied in different mediums and related to the world in very different ways, manifest intelligence in a very different form.  In other words, could it thinks as well as us, but not like us?

And could Ravens and Crows -- the product of an entirely different evolutionary line than us (we don't share a common ancestor since well before the Age of Dinosaurs), with a different brain structure and a orientation on the world (they fly -- their natural element is three dimensional, and their sensory apparatus is very different  than our own), manifest intelligence in a way we might not immediately recognize?

Sociologists love to argue about IQ tests, and whether they can really be fair when the cultural backgrounds of the test designers and the subjects are very far apart.  With animals, the gulf is even wider.  For instance, we tend to put a lot of stock in the idea of the "mirror test" -- certain animals can recognize themselves in a mirror, which implies they have a sense of self, a subjective identity.  However, the mirror test is deeply rooted in our visual means of apprehending the world.  A number of birds -- who are also visually oriented creatures -- including Macaws, parrots and corvids  have been reported to pass the mirror test, as can many primates.  But dogs cannot.  And yet dogs can clearly recognize many individuals, humans and canine, by scent.  If the mirror reflected scent, instead of light, I suspect that all dogs would be able to recognize themselves and almost no primates would.

Ravens in Winter is a fascinating portrayal of the world of ravens, their relationships and their behavior.  But it is also a wonderful portrait of how science really works in the field.  Heinrich takes us from his initial observations, which sparked curiosity, framing a hypothesis, designing experiments (which often involved hauling large carcasses up into the mountains to attract the ravens), gathering observations and evidence, discarding hypotheses, creating new ones, more observations -- and so on until finally the data began to make sense and a valid theory emerged.  It is one of the best descriptions I have read of the scientific method in action.  

Ravens in Winter is a must read book for students of animal behavior -- and or corvids in particular.  But it is also a book for all lovers of science and nature.

Related Post at Birdland West
Dog Days, Raven Nights

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.