3.0. About The Author
My wife and I have been rescuing, sheltering, rehabilitating and placing stray or unwanted animals for approximately thirty years: however, we are not animal activists and/or animal lovers. We are merely persons who will help any creature that finds itself in need through no fault of its own.
Most of the animals we have dealt with have been dogs and cats, but we have also assisted many kinds of birds, squirrels and opossums.
The list of dog breeds we have dealt with include the following which are the ones I can remember. :o) American Eskimo, American Staffordshire Terrier, Australian Cattle Dog, Beagle, Boston Terrier, Boxer, Bull Mastiff, Chinese Shar-Pei, Chow, Doberman Pinscher, Golden Retriever, Great Dane, Irish Setter, Labrador Retriever, Maltese, Pointer, Pug, Rat Terrier, Rottweiler, Scottish Terrier, Shih Tzu, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Yorkshire Terrier and many “Mutts” that I cannot attribute to any particular breed. I consider all dogs mutts since I don’t believe there are any animals that are “purebred” in the true sense of the word. However, some may have “purer” blood than others. When I talk about breed, I am referring to dogs that have the same common characteristics as the dogs with “breed standards”.
Note that the breeds of the dogs that we have dealt with are based on the features of the particular dog and the features of the particular breed as detailed by the so-called “experts”. So if it looks like a Chihuahua but it is actually a Great Dane, we call it a Chihuahua and really don’t care what breed it is or isn’t. We are only interested in helping because they are in need.
We have always tried to learn as much as we can about the animals we are dealing with so that we have some idea of their personalities, traits, health issues, etc. In the past it was difficult, but since the advent of the Internet, it has become much easier to do this.
In the beginning, I did the research on “Pit Bulls” to try to answer questions that arose in my mind regarding so-called “Pit Bulls” because frequent references to dogs currently called “Pit Bulls” did not correspond with my understanding of what a “Pit Bull” was.
I am seventy-two years old, and many things have changed in my lifetime: however, it would seem that a “Pit Bull” from fifty years ago should, for the most part, look and act like a “Pit Bull” of today. However, that was not what I was seeing or hearing and I could not understand it.
This document will attempt to present my conclusions, and why I came to these conclusions.
I walk four miles every day because my body can no longer take the pounding it got when I was running.
One day a lady stopped me and said there was a loose “Pit Bull” ahead. When I came upon the dog, I did not think it looked like the “Pit Bulls” I had known before. She was laying on the grass and just looked at my Beagle-mix dog named “Dog” and I as we walked by.
I have been mistaken for White, Mexican, Spaniard, Portuguese and Arab, and the fact that some people thought I was one of those races does not make it so. Neither does a dog that resembles someone’s idea of a “Pit Bull” make it a “Pit Bull”.
For about a month after Hurricane Ike hit Houston in 2008, this dog wondered in the neighborhood. She had a collar but no tags. We assumed she had been in someone’s back yard, and the fence was blown down by the hurricane: she got out and got lost. She was very skinny.
One day a little girl who would sometimes stop us to play with Dog stopped us and told us she had a new dog. I asked what kind of dog, and she showed me the dog. It was the “Pit Bull” I had previously been “warned” about and that had been a stray in the neighborhood since Hurricane Ike hit. I asked what they were going to do with her, and she said that her mother had called the City “shelter”, and they were going to pick the dog up. I asked to talk with her mother and explained to her mother that the City would probably put the dog down as soon as they got it to the pound because some people thought it looked like a “Pit Bull”. I asked if I could take her and try to find her a good home. The lady agreed and when I got home, I got in my vehicle, returned and picked up the dog that we later named “Baby”.
The following Sunday, Baby got all of her vaccinations. The week after that we took her to get spayed, but found out she was pregnant. We would not agree to an abortion and returned home with her.
On November 20, 2008, Baby had ten puppies in our master bedroom closet.
Several days later, one of the puppies died. We don’t know why because all of the puppies had been checked out by a Veterinarian and were pronounced healthy.
Prior to taking the puppies for their first shots, we decided to try to find good homes for all of the puppies, but we concluded that in order to have control over their future living conditions we would have to offer them to the recipients at no cost so long as they could provide good homes.
When we took the puppies to get their first shots, we had them in two laundry baskets and were asked by several persons if we were selling the puppies. We told them we weren’t.
One man offered us $2,000.00 for one of the puppies that we later named “Spot”. I thought this was crazy, but I told him that we were not selling. Since then I learned that people do pay huge amounts of money for dogs when they could get one off of the street or go to a pound or shelter and get very good dogs for little or no money, and save a life. Most of the dogs we have dealt with over the years have come off of the streets, and we have no complaints about any of them.
On our way home from getting the puppies’ shots, we stopped by the home of a man who said that Baby had been in his back yard for two weeks before we rescued her. We stopped to show him the puppies, and when he saw the puppy we named “Two” because he had two different color eyes, he went and got his dog named “Half-Pint”. Half-pint had two different color eyes and was white with brown patches like Two: when we saw Half-Pint we knew who the father was. This was the man who told me the dogs were American Staffordshire Terriers and not “Pit Bulls”, which I never thought they were.
A neighbor wanted two of the puppies. We agreed to give him two females, but they were only six weeks old, i.e., too young. He kept asking for them, and eventually, I agreed to let him take the two if he agreed that if they started crying for their mom, he would call me and bring them back no matter the time of the day or night. He agreed, and he took the girls that he named “Sugar” and “Spice”.
A couple of weeks later, he returned the girls so that they could play with their brothers and sisters. Spice was playing, but Sugar was not. We took Sugar to the Vet, and found out she had Parvovirus. Eventually, all of the puppies had Parvovirus, but all survived.
