Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Bike v. Dog

Yesterday I was riding in the pouring rain when I heard an odd noise, looked back to see a very excited looking pit-bull closing in on me, OH SHIT!

He wasn't a real tall dog but he looked pretty damn muscular, his face had more of an "I wanna play" look than an "I wanna kill" but if he gets caught up in my spokes I'm still going down really hard so I didn't want to find out how he likes to play. Instead I stomped on them petals for all I was worth and we raced, it was tense for about a block and then I started pulling away, he tried to keep up but stumbled at one point and knew he lost so he peeled off and I kept going, didn't want to give him any ideas of trying again.

-A quick word about Pit Bulls-

I'm not a dog person, I'm generally not a huge fan of pets, love animals just prefer them wild. But I think pit-bulls get a bad wrap quite often and I don't want to contribute to that. Suppose I could have told this story without mentioning the breed at all but I'll be honest and say that because of the stigma with pits it makes the story more impressive. Like I said, I don't think the dog meant me harm, I think he just wanted to play and I didn't want to play at 20 mph. I'm saying this because the only two dogs I'm in regular contact with are both pits, one is pretty much the chillest dog ever. He's probably 60 lbs and the only thing I don't like about him is that he started licking a lot, and that annoys me. He is also quite aggressive toward other dogs which I've been told is a legitimate issue with the breed, but I'm not a dog so I don't care. (I've also been told pits aren't a true breed, but breeds are totally arbitrary anyway, they're all the same species so whatever) The same friends also have another pit that they estimate around 100 lbs, mostly muscle. This one was basically a rescue dog and so it does have some bad behaviors that they are still trying to break him of, I blame him for teaching the other dog to lick all the time. But his biggest problem is really just that he doesn't know his strength and craves attention. He spent much of his first years in a crate so this is understandable. The dog itself though is just happy and stupid, he just wants to play and be friends with everyone, and lick. It's hard to fault a creature for that. Anyway all I'm saying is that yes, Pits are very strong dogs and can be taught to be very dangerous, but they have to be taught to be mean and they aren't mean by default. So don't hate on 'em, at least not any more than other dogs.... I'm not realizing that I'm being hypocritical because their are breeds I generally detest, chihuahuas and pugs come to mind, although I don't hate pugs, I hate people who own pugs and whoever spent time to breed a creature into existence based on their person view of "cute" at the expense of the dog being able to breath. Plus they're fucking ugly but thats just preference. Chihuahuas are just annoying and highly temperamental. Thats probably enough about dogs.

1 comment:

rob said...

My stepdog, Ivory is part Pit Bull and Jack Russell terrier. She's all play when she chases bikers. But they don't know that. Plus, she'd beat anyone's ass in a race with a bike.