radio thing

So after thinking for a while on what should be the subject of my talk/speech/whatever this, I came to the idea of dogs. Probably partly influenced by the fact that I saw many dogs in and around town today and I kinda miss my own dog. In any case, as speaking about dogs as a species would probably be a big subject I’ll limit it to my dog, and her particular breed which is a Staffordshire bull terrier or Staffie. I’ll also probably talk about how Staffie’s have had a lot of bad press recently, mostly undeserved.

                Now I’ll admit that getting Maisie is what changed my mind about the breed. I had the same opinion that they were fighting dogs and were all fairly vicious and scary. This changed however when we visited Birmingham Dog pound looking for a rescue dog. When we set off we didn’t have a breed in mind, we were just looking for some scrappy little mongrel with leg on each corner and a wagging tail, but as soon as we walked through the doors our concept of our future pet became very fluid. The dog pound is huge and honestly what I can most liken it to is a prison. There are three floors and on each floor are many blocks of “cells” so that all in all there are about 300 dogs there… and out of these 300 about 250 of them are Staffie’s. I distinctly remember walking down aisle after aisle of these little cages and thinking “oh a Staffie… oh a Staffie… oh a Staffie…” and so on. Before we got one I remember I thought that Staffordshire bull terriers did indeed look scary, they are immensely powerful dogs with crazy amounts of muscle. The bite strength of a Staffie is 235 pounds of force per square inch, that’s about half as strong as a lion, and when you consider that Maisie is about a foot and a half tall it’s pretty damn impressive. It’s also fairly intimidating, especially when they throw you their delightfully ugly grin which exposes both their numerous and fairly large teeth, and the power-packs of muscle in their cheeks; now, I only see it as endearing. But yes, back to the dog pound. We’d gone through two floors of dogs and the sheer number of animals desperate to be loved is almost completely overwhelming. I noticed that my dad had wandered off so I went looking for him and found him kneeling on the floor on the third floor, in front of literally the last cage in the pound. Inside was a little brindle Staffie, who was so thin that her head looked half comically, half tragically too big for her body. The striking thing however was that she was silent. In a dog pound full of dogs barking their heads off, where they have to have radios on at full volume on each floor so that the dogs aren’t driven insane by the sound of each other, she was completely silent. Of course, as soon as my mum saw her it was inevitable that she was coming home with us and there’s the story of how we got Maisie. As soon as you have one all criticisms that you have of the breed go out of the window, they’re the most loving, loyal and just generally happy type of dog I’ve come across.

                However, other people’s opinions are harder to change, especially other dog owners. I have had people cross over the road so they wouldn’t have to walk their dog past Maisie, a friend of the family has even had someone threaten to stab their Staffie if it does anything to their dog. As this is the case I’m going to take this opportunity to get my soap box out and preach for the smallest of moments. I honestly believe that no dog is inherently vicious, unless it has rabies or something. It is all to do with what the owners make the dogs do. With the case of Staffordshire bull terriers, they’re made to fight by morons who think watching two dogs fight to the death is entertaining. The dogs are not to blame. The dogs are wonderful pets, which desperately need homes. Out of the 250+ Staffies in the dog pound, over half will have had to be put down because there simply isn’t room for them. And I guarantee that most of the empty cells will have been filled up with more Staffordshire bull terriers.