While looking around on the linked MSNBC sites for Hurricane Katrina charities, I found this on the Louisiana SPCA site: Pit Bulls Get a Bad Rap

"It was once the most popular dog in America. You may remember “Our Gang” or [the] Little Rascals television show. Their beloved dog was a pit bull [Pete the pup]. Teddy Roosevelt had a pit as well as Helen Keller. The most decorated World War I dog was “Stubby,” a dutiful pit bull. Pit bulls, or “bulldogs” as they were called in the late 1800’s, were bred for their devotion to people."

Another beloved real-life dog was also a pit bull: Jack, the faithful dog from Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, portrayed on film as everything from a scruffy mutt to a sheepdog type, never as what breed he really was. (Surely when you read the books and saw Jack described as a "bulldog," you didn't think of the English breed, did you? Somehow I can't see one of them walking mile after mile after mile behind a covered wagon all the way from Wisconsin to southern Kansas and back.)

I grew up on the story of Stubby, in a well-worn beloved Whitman book called More Than Courage, true stories of dogs and horses.

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:32:00 AM

Comments: Post a Comment