Don't be afraid to take home a pit bull, fans of breed say

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Contra Costa Times

By Doug Oakley

Gussie Lynn Rubin uses her pit bull to help soothe clients in her Berkeley marriage counseling practice.

Rubin was one of a handful of happy pit bull owners at the East Bay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals testifying to the gentle nature of the breed at the first anniversary of Pit Bull Hall, a pit bull adoption and education center in the SPCA building.

"She comes out on the porch to greet my clients, and then she sits down and is very quiet unless a client gets upset and starts crying or something, then she comes over and licks their face and sits next to them," Rubin said.

Pit Bull Hall is a collaboration between the SPCA and a group called Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pit Bulls, or BAD RAP. It was started in August 2005 to increase the adoptions of pit bulls and educate their owners on the breed.

There were testimonials from a Davis family with two young children who adopted a pit bull just three months ago; a mother from Los Gatos with a 6-week-old baby, who put her child right up to a pit bull's face; and a single woman from San Francisco who just adopted her second pit bull.

All the fanfare about pit bulls followed the recent trial of a San Francisco mother who was acquitted on felony child-endangerment charges for the death of her 12-year-old son who was killed by the family pit bull.

In the past year, Pit Bull Hall has socialized and placed 24 pit bulls into Bay Area homes, and has fixed 1,185 pit bulls for free. The group does not take in or adopt out aggressive dogs. Prospective owners who want to adopt go through a more-rigorous screening procedure than do owners of other dogs being adopted from the SPCA. For example, prospective owners must demonstrate they understand the breed and its challenges, complete an application, submit to a home visit, and take the dog home on a trial basis before the adoption is final.

"The problem we have with pit bulls nationwide is huge," said Donna Reynolds, director of BAD RAP. "There are too many in shelters, not enough people adopting them, and too many people breeding them. Some of these dogs wait six months in the kennel before they are adopted."

Kirsten Park, a spokeswoman for the East Bay SPCA, said pit bulls are sitting in kennels because no one will adopt them, and as a result many are being killed.

"It was really hard to adopt these animals when no one wanted them," Park said. "BAD RAP can identify the good dogs: They have the breed knowledge, and they know how to test their temperaments."

Park said many animal shelters don't accept pit bulls because they are so hard to adopt.

"In a lot of these places, pit bull kennels were full six months to a year," Park said. "We felt that was not acceptable. Our goal was to increase adoption of pit bulls and to educate the public."

In Berkeley, a move to have all pit bulls in the city spayed or neutered is on hold.

Mim Carlson, executive director of the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, said she thinks all animals should be spayed and neutered, because "there's just too many of them out there."