Pit Bull Notes from Seattle

I continued to photograph families for the Pit Bull Project exhibit. These photo shoots gave me insight about pit bulls and family life because I asked a lot questions–first days together, daily routine, issues.

Meet the Hyman family. Emma, the cutie on the left, came to Anne when she was a year old. She’d just had a litter of puppies, was malnourished, and wasn’t well socialized with dogs or people. The Hymans smoothly made Emma just one of the family–they’d had her a few years when I took this photo in 2002.

Mrs. Hyman grew up with German Shephards, and they had beautiful oil paintings of her family’s dogs. This was the first family I met that talked about setting their dogs up to succeed. The dogs were never left together unsupervised–not because they had reason to believe something would happen but they wanted to make sure nothing could happen. They used the phrase *setting them up to succeed*, and it’s stuck with me.

This is the Hilliard family. Remember Blackie?  Blackie was picked up as a stray by Animal Control and released to Anne. A year later, the Hilliards adopted Blackie and very soon after they adopted Mocha, the puppy you see here. 

Blackie was an escape artist that repeatedly got loose and showed up at Ideal Pet Stop, which was just down the street from their home.

We joked that he missed Anne–having been with her for a year–but this family was my first glimpse of a family that had huge hearts but was in over their heads. They’d never owned a dog before and now they had two adolescent pit bulls.

I kept asking: How’s Blackie getting loose? What if he gets hit by a car? What if someone thinks he killed their cat?

Mocha grew more dog aggressive as she matured, and after many fights between the two dogs, the family eventually had to put them both to sleep.

These photo shoots taught me a lot about what makes a good home for a pit bull–and made me think hard about a rescue organization’s responsibility in re-homing dogs.

He came to Anne the usual way. Like me, someone heard about this woman doing pit bull rescue out of a pet store and looked up Ideal Pet Stop’s phone number. 

He was a big pit bull, 80 lbs or so, that a lady found curled up on her front porch one morning. It was the typical scenario: No tags, no microchip, no one looking for him. The lady was a little scared of him but thought he seemed friendly. She’d been keeping him in her garage and couldn’t keep him as a pet. She asked friends and family, and no one would take him. She thought Animal Control would put him to sleep. She didn’t want to give him to just anyone because she’d heard about people using them for dog fighting. And she needed him to go somewhere else asap because her cats were getting really stressed out.

I was at the store the day Anne took a look at him. She said she wasn’t crazy about him but agreed to try and find him a home. She also agreed that since he had no where to go that she’d make room for him at her house. The lady was relieved, bought some catnip, and left feeling like a good citizen.

We named him Shadow because of his Phantom of the Opera masking. 

I spent the weekend at the store taking Shadow for walks and observing him. I wondered where he’d come from, what he’d seen, who he’d been with. He didn’t gush with affection for people and although he made good eye contact–like he’s doing in this photo I took of him–there was no warmth in his eyes. They were vacant. 

After being with Anne for two weeks, he hadn’t warmed up to her or anyone else. No wiggle butt tail wagging. She just didn’t trust him.

Then one evening, in Anne’s backyard, Shadow was out for a potty break with two of her dogs. Up to this point, he’d ignored other dogs entirely. Fast as lightning, quiet as night, Shadow went after her dogs with fury. A terrible dog fight broke out, all three dogs were injured, and Anne was bitten.

Anne had Shadow euthanized the next day.

He was the first dog I knew that was euthanized for not being rock solid. And over the years I’ve thought about Shadow because of the hundreds of pit bulls I’ve crossed paths with, he’s the only pit bull I’ve ever met that had an eery silence about him. He’s one of the very few I can’t piece a story together for, and I hold on to that to remember that knowing why isn’t always the most important thing.

I wanted to help Anne do more public education. The pet store was a terrific hub for rescue but we wanted a way to start changing the public’s perception of the breed. 

I was inspired by my friend, Robin–remember she joined me on the midnight mission for Fagen and Rodeo?

Robin is a terrific photographer who photographed Rose Hill, a woman in her 20s fighting breast cancer. She then organized a wonderful fundraising photo exhibit at the Rose Bud Cafe in Capital Hill. Her photos raised awareness about breast cancer in the lesbian community–her photos made a difference.

I pitched the photo project idea to Anne, she loved it, and we referred to it as *Pit Bull Project* from the start. Renuka loaned me her Canon SLR, and Anne selected familes from her growing pool adopters.  

I set out to tell the stories of pit bulls that went from bad situations into loving homes. Here’s the first photograph I took for Pit Bull Project.
Sunny was purchased on the streets of Tacoma when she was 4 1/2 weeks old. The owner kept her one night and then dropped her off at the Humane Society because he couldn’t take care of her. The shelter released the puppy to Anne, and Sunny was adopted by Nadine, a Vet Tech who could bring her doggie to work. Sunny is about one year old in this photo.

I started spending a lot of time at Ideal Pet Stop helping Anne do everything from bathing dogs to walking dogs to hugging dogs. Here’s a photo of me at the store one weekend.

Anne juggled managing the pet store, running a dog rescue, and taking care of lots of animals. There were the dogs, cats, and birds of her very own–Anne’s first passion was birds. There were the dogs she fostered while they waited for permanent homes. 2, sometimes 3 or 4 fosters. And there were the creatures at Ideal Pet that she cared for–mice, fish, turtles, snakes.

On most days, she pulled it off. But there were days that put her over the edge, like the day I called her with another dog.

My pit bull radar had turned on. I started seeing them everywhere: in the car next to me while I was driving, at the park lounging with someone in the sun, running alongside a jogger. And I started assessing the situation as good or bad for the dog.

One day I was walking down Broadway, and I spotted a street kid with a pit bull puppy asking for spare change. I assessed this as *bad* for the dog so I chatted him up and asked him if he’d sell the puppy. I swayed him with a hundred bucks and talked him into agreeing he didn’t need the hassle of caring for a dog.

At first I thought I’d done the right thing so I proudly called Anne. She pointed out she didn’t need me buying dogs for her to find homes for because she had way more free dogs than she could realistically adopt. She didn’t point out how disrespectful I was to the kid–I realized that on my own.

I was still grasping supply-and-demand. It would take me a while longer to understand there are way more good pit bulls than there are good homes.

Despite being thoroughly annoyed with me, Anne agreed to list the dog with SPDR–even though this dog was probably not  a smidge pit bull. Turns out not every brindle dog is a pit bull (and I’m laughing at myself when I write this). She was adopted within days. Here’s the one photo I have of her with my JRT, Spatula.

Fagen was a fiesty little thing from the moment we met her. She was pushy with dogs and too big for her britches with strangers so we agreed she needed boot camp time with Anne. Fagen become one of the 5 pit bulls Anne carted to-and-from the pet store every day. They were 5 of many more that she worked tirelessly to find homes for.

Anne wasn’t the type of person who panicked but one day she called me pretty freaked out.  A kid came into the store asking for advice on what to feed puppies–he’d heard she knew a lot about pit bulls. As he was checking out the dogs at the store, he spied Fagen and declared, “That’s my dog. She was stolen from my backyard about a month ago.”

Anne calmly responded, “I don’t know if this is your dog or not. Some kid gave her to me after buying her off some guy down on Rainier.”

“She’s probably spayed, hunh?” and Anne said, “Yeah, we just had her fixed.”

Anne stopped taking Fagen to the store and very soon she was adopted by a breed savvy woman from Portland. Here’s a photo of Fagen with Mary Anne about one year later.

The two puppies were malnourished and full of worms. Anne gave me dewormer, and I fed them warm milk. I’d never seen tape worms before and when they came out of their distended bellies, I wretched.

We named the two girls Rodeo and Fagen. Again, there was jazz so we borrowed from Billie Holliday’s original name, Elenore Fagan. And Rodeo, well, I love to watch rodeos on TV. I’d root for the bull and sometimes the short, skinny cowboys.

Now that I’d taken 3 dogs from the same backyard, friends urged me to think about how dangerous it was. Was it worth getting shot? Probably not but it still felt worth the risk.

A week later, Maggie P’s partner made it clear over dinner at Jamjuree Thai: I wasn’t just putting myself at risk. I was putting them at risk.

They were concerned the neighbors I was stealing dogs from would know they were involved. I respected their fear and from that point forward, Maggie P and I only chatted about the dogs in secret.

Remember my orange tabby, Lindel? Well, he was a love with these two puppies.

The brown puppy that was chained up in Maggie P’s neighbor’s backyard the day after I took Ruu was gone soon after he appeared.

But Maggie P reported there were now more puppies on the opposite side of the yard from Ginger and the other red pit bull. She didn’t know how many but she heard lots of yelping.

I convinced my friend, Robin, to join me for an after-midnight mission. My plan was to just check things out while she kept a lookout. It was about 3 a.m., the flood lights were off, and I had two packs of hotdogs that I chucked at the adult dogs to keep them quiet.

This was another opportunity so I climbed over the chain link fence. I spied three puppies and gave Robin the wait signal. She whispered, “Is it going to bite me?”  I rolled my eyes to reassure her and handed her the first puppy, about the size of a mission-style burrito. I handed her a second puppy.

The third puppy was dead–curled up in the back of the igloo-shaped dog house. No blankets, no weather flap, an empty bowl.

I climbed back over the fence, and we rushed nervously back to the car. Robin had the two puppies tucked safely inside her black, puffy jacket.

This was the first photo I took of them.

One of my first friends in Seattle was Jason. It was 1994. I’d been accepted to UW for graduate school, and I was here apartment hunting in the U-District. We met in a bar and a few weeks later, when I pulled up in a U-Haul, there was a note from him on my apartment door, “Welcome to Seattle!”

We lost touch over the years but we crossed paths again (in a bar). Turned out he was interested in getting a dog so he came over and met Theo. Jason adopted him from Anne, who was the Pit Bull Breed Representative for Seattle Purebred Dog Rescue at the time.

This photo was taken one year later. Jason re-named him Ruupert (aka Ruu).

I called MaggieP to find out if her neighbors had even noticed the puppy was gone. I couldn’t believe what she told me. Their backyard flood lights were on, and another puppy was chained up in the exact same place. About the same age but didn’t have a brindle coat.

I was rendered powerless–deflated and embarrassed by how naive I was.

I knew the puppy I’d stolen didn’t matter to them but their bold statement told me so much more: If I wanted to make a difference for pit bulls, it couldn’t be stealing one dog at a time.

At home, I put on some music. I mostly listened to jazz back then, and when a track by Thelonious Monk played over the speakers, the puppy that had been listless stood strong and looked around the room with an interest in the world. 

So I named him Thelonious Monk. Pretty silly in retrospect but I like the fact I marked the moment of seeing a change.

Theo spent those first days cuddled up with my orange tabby, Lindel.

Anne called ahead to Rainier Valley Vet so I could take the puppy in for a health assessment, and she told me to come to the pet store to meet her afterwards.

I met Dr. Heino that day, a vet I would cross paths with many times. And I met Anne Holte, a woman that inspired me to do something for pit bulls.

Anne reminded me of a Johnny Cash song. She’d have a bag of dog food slung over her shoulder while talking to someone on the phone about a pit bull they’d found as she was sidestepping a dog she rescued while pointing out where the collars are for a customer.

This is one of the few photos I have of Anne but it’s exactly how I remember her. That’s Blackie in the foreground. It took her a year to find him a home. He was adopted by a family that lived down the street. And that rascal Blackie would escape back to the pet store every couple of weeks.

That same spring day I was taking pictures with Spatula, my JRT, watching, a kid left the house on a bike, and I saw an opportunity. I walked into their backyard through an unlocked gate, unchained the brindle puppy, and walked out.

I remember Ginger howling as the gate closed behind me. I didn’t look back and went straight to my car.

I left Spatula at MaggieP’s house and drove the puppy back to my studio apartment in Capital Hill. During the car ride home, I kept petting him to calm myself down. Did they see me? Are they following me? What the hell am I doing?

I could tell no one had ever pet him by the way he looked at me.

Here’s the picture I took when I got him home. He had dime-size sores on his legs and had trouble walking so I called Anne at Ideal Pet Stop.