The statistics don't do them any favours and they are undoubtedly fierce looking dogs but are they all bad? Since the Bay of Plenty Times broke the story on a Welcome Bay woman being attacked by a pitbull terrier on May 21, debate has raged. Carly Gibbs reports
Gretel White is all bulging muscle and shimmering gold hair. When I meet her at her home in Papamoa, behind a glass door, her ears spring up like a Jack-in-the-box and she welcomes me aggressively.
Her short legs are spaced apart, her hazel eyes wide.
I'm told to ignore her. Don't look at her.
I go inside, eyeing her sideways as she barrels past me. We sit on beige leather couches in the lounge - she with a pink band around her throat - sizing me up - and me with my notebook at the ready.
This is the first time I've met a genuine pitbull.
There's a bit of barking and low grumbling from deep in her throat. She watches me curiously with her mouth closed.
She suddenly leaps from the couch and bounds at me. She sticks her head, the size of a rugby ball, on my lap and then moves to put both her paws, on my knee.
I'm not scared but I'm cautious.
I touch her back. It's solid and wide. Now we have met, Gretel is much friendlier and starts panting.
I ask her owner Nicole White, who has her arm wrapped around Gretel - who's now back on the couch - if this pitbull is an exception rather than the norm.
"She's the fact I have put in a lot of hard effort and time and training," she says.
White should know what she's talking about. She is a vet nurse with eight years' experience and doesn't look like what you might expect a pitbull owner to look like.
She is young and professional. Dressed in black tights, a long beige top, and a clattering of silver bracelets on her wrist, she kisses 5-year-old Gretel on the head and Gretel responds with a flick of her tongue on White's cheek.
White, 26, has owned Gretel, a rednose pitbull, since the dog was six weeks old and inherited her from her then-boyfriend, who liked the breed and had been brought up around them.
As far as White knows, Gretel is a purebred pitbull.
"My mum and dad when I first got a pitbull were like 'Oh my God, what have you done?' because of everything in the media," she explains.
White, who lives in a fenced property with a second gate around the side of the house, confesses she couldn't blame them for their reaction. "They are a dominant breed and I can tell you they are a big dog, they're solid, they have sort of a low-pain tolerancy and look at them," she says eyeing Gretel, who is standing with her broad shoulders pushed back.
Her tough image is contrasted though by a cute pink and purple butterfly motif hanging from her collar.
"I can't take her down to the flea market ... it's just the amount of people that would be like 'Oh God!'
"It's sad for people that do look after them and it does make me feel angry when people could do a better job."
Gretel is vaccinated, de-sexed, microchipped, been to puppy school and been socialised from a young age.
She goes to work with White, is best friends with her parents' dog Sugar, and their cat Smeegol.
She reportedly helped White raise two sets of ducklings and sleeps on her bed.
"She's my friend, my companion."
Is she scared one day, Gretel might turn on her?
"No ... I will always be very watchful and careful. I've just brought her up treating her with respect ... That dog is absolutely my best friend. I wouldn't advocate for them otherwise".
***
Advocating for extreme caution is someone with pitbull-like determination.
John Payne is the Tauranga City Council manager for environmental compliance.
With a pen in one hand and a disposable cup in the other, Payne starts by saying there are two pitbull camps and they're both right.
"Because the bottom line with pitbull terriers and the behaviour they're projecting, is it's a wider social issue that's causing the problem. It's not necessarily the breed."
And there it is in a nutshell.
Payne seems to back up what White says. People are the No1 problem when it comes to these dogs.
Who generally owns pitbulls?
"The same people in those social areas that cause all those other problems," Payne says unapologetically. "Unfortunately, they're attracted to that breed. If you were to take the crime statistics, noise control, truancy and overlay those on a map in any city you'll find they're very, very similar patterns.
"If you then overlay where the highest number of American pitbull terriers are and where the highest number of unregistered dogs are being found, fits the same pattern."
Payne says wiping out the breed will not solve the problem.
"At the end of the day, if you took pitbull terriers out of the equation, they would just replace them with the next available breed and there's plenty to choose from. Neapolitan mastiff or a rottweiler? Those defaults are to attack humans and we could be in a far worse position."
Payne can come up with any statistical dog question you throw at him.
Seventy-five per cent of dog bites are not reported. Of the other 25 per cent, pitbulls account for 19 per cent, yet make up just 1.5 per cent of the dog population.
There have been at least eight pitbull attacks on people or other animals that have made headlines last year and so far this year.
Tauranga City Council is the only place to collate dog bites statistics for all of New Zealand.
Payne says what dog control officers conclude about dogs such as pitbulls is that is comes down to the three Ps of aggression.
"P, P, P," says Payne as he scribbles down three Ps on a piece of A4.
The first is potential. "If you take any of your fighting, guarding, hunting dogs, they have a higher prey drive because that's what they're designed for, and they revert to aggressive behaviour quite a lot quicker than other dogs.".
The second P is personality. "We're all different, so are they. You can get an American pitbull with an absolutely gorgeous personality and you can also get one with a nasty personality. Just like different brothers and sisters."
The third P is placement. "Their present environment accounts for 90 per cent of their behaviour."
Payne challenges the fact there could be purebred pitbulls in New Zealand, because they are banned from being imported. He says some people have been known to try to avoid the legislation by registering their pitbulls as labradors so they don't have the "menacing" title and don't have to be muzzled. It skews the statistics.
"There's no difference between crossbred and purebred in terms of stability, if anything a cross-bred has probably got a fresh blood in the gene pool but the American Pitbull Terrier Club will argue all the attacks are my cross-breeds."
***
Next best thing to interviewing a pitbull itself is talking to Mark Vette.
The Aucklander is a renowned animal behaviourist and trainer for film and television.
He told
Bay of Plenty Times Weekend
the problem stems back to a dog's origin.
Vette says dogs are derived from the wolf and, over the years, have been genetically modified by artificial selection.
"Man has intentionally selected certain attributes to create dogs with spunk and a lot of so-called 'gameness' in terriers and the pitbull," he says.
Vette, who owns Animals on Q in Auckland, says all dogs are predators by nature but the wolves have a social valve which restricts aggression, so they don't continue to fight and kill. This inhibition to further aggression helps to maintain a hierarchy between wolves or dogs that facilitates relative harmony and stabilises the pack.
"But," says Vette. "In comes man and decides he's going to fight dogs to win. When we started to do that, we started to lose that inhibition to fight even when other dogs submit. Now, it doesn't matter what the other dogs do, their nature is to fight potentially to death. That's why pitbulls can be particularly dangerous with other dogs."
Vette says pitbulls need to be socialised between one and four months old. Dogs kept for fighting are normally isolated.
Those that have been socialised with other animals and people can be "lovely," he says.
"Owners are landed with a breed that has been genetically modified for a long time. We've selected dogs mainly for their docility and maybe protectiveness but the last thing we need to do is select for fighting dogs. In a pitbull fighting situation they don't let go."
***
If you want to see a pitbull that blows all stereotypes out of the water, you only have to meet Todd Hardistry and his pitbull staffi-cross, Cassie.
I was surprised by this dog.
When I arrived at Hardistry's parents house in Bethlehem, this little caramel-coloured dynamo did not bark. Instead she approached me with her tail wagging and a gooey ball in her mouth.
From that point on, Cassie let us talk in the lounge while she played with a small orange ball. She was more interested in that than anything else. And as Todd threw the ball a few times out the lounge sliding door, she would run back in with it, panting, tail wagging.
"She'll have eight other dogs chasing her and she's not interested, it's just ball, ball, ball," Todd says.
"It's always, play, play, play, she doesn't even bark she just does that little sooky whine you heard at the door. She has scars on her face from where Blaze [the cat] beat her up."
Hardistry scoops curvy Cassie off the floor and leans back in his armchair with her, rubbing her tummy.
"You're just a big baby aren't you," he coos into her panting face. Cassie does not resist Hardistry's cuddle.
The 20-year-old has owned this pitbull, who is almost 2, from the time she was six weeks old.
"I think it's how you bring them up. You have to teach them what to do, they don't know. I just completely and utterly blame the owners, really. It's not the dog's fault."
***
Judging a dog means meeting it first, says saving lives ambassador and national training manager for the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Sara Elliott-Warren.
Elliott-Warren says every dog should be treated as an individual.
She believes dog behaviour is partly hereditary, partly upbringing. She says aggression is about 40 per cent inherited, and that is mostly from the mother.
"This does mean that aggressive bitches are more likely to breed aggressive puppies - ideally they wouldn't be bred. If we can actively offer de-sexing to every female dog owner, with a problem dog we can eventually make a difference.
"There are a huge number of gorgeous pitbull, staffi and mastiff type cross breeds ... The shame of it is that these are breeds that idiots like to own to display their prowess."
The SPCA nationally has rejected calls for extended bans on dangerous dog breeds but has renewed a campaign for a national dog licensing system, placing responsibility for stopping attacks on dog owners.
Barry Gillingwater of DSS Animal Management says if the Government is serious about stopping these sorts of injuries, dogs with aggressive tendencies should be banned.
The argument of nature versus nurture is a divisive issue and may never be resolved. There is evidence anyone who spends time around pitbulls should take care.
***
Public debate has raged in the past fortnight following several serious pitbull attacks, including a
Bay of Plenty Times
exclusive on an American pitbull terrier that tore the scalp off a woman and inflicted puncture wounds and bruising all over her body, in an attack lasting 20 minutes.
Kawerau woman Liz Smith, 52, was visiting her sister at her home in Welcome Bay, Tauranga, when the dog attack happened.
Her sister, Philippa Bayley, 54, yesterday in Tauranga District Court last week over the incident.
A fortnight ago, a pitbull had a boiling substance poured on its back in Whangarei, in an apparent unprovoked backlash against the breed.
The dog was found near where a pitbull attacked a family's pet huntaway dog in Whangarei. And then last weekend, a dog, believed to be a pitbull, ripped at the face of a 2-year-old girl in Kawerau.
A flurry of comments for and against pitbulls have been received on the Bay of Plenty Times Facebook page.
The
Bay of Plenty Times Weekend
has also received emails, including from overseas. Megan Varma of Scotland wrote that she has known quite a few pitbulls with "very responsible owners".
Toni Francis of Mount Maunganui has owned pitbulls and seen them snuggle up to kittens and play with children.
***
But for Papamoa man Paul Greaves, being confronted by an American pitbull is something he will never forget.
Greaves was taking his dog Chip for a walk on Papamoa Beach about three years ago, when he was confronted by a pitbull standing 20m away from him.
Chip, a griffin cross, was at his heel but not on a lead when the pitbull pounced, biting and ripping the skin under Chip's leg, causing muscle damage that required suturing.
Greaves managed to track down the owner of the dog through his registration plate and, after a third attack, the pitbull was put down.
"I was very angry because it did confirm my negative feelings towards pitbulls because it was an unprovoked attack. We were vulnerable and helpless," he says. Greaves says he did not receive an apology from the pitbull's owner.
A Western Bay vet clinic that does not want to be named to protect client confidentiality says it has treated numerous animals injured by pitbulls and other breeds.
One vet told the story of a cat having its leg ripped off by a pitbull, and another of a cocker spaniel puppy being attacked outside the vet clinic.
***
American Pitbull Association of New Zealand media spokeswoman Karen Batchelor claims pitbull terriers, tosas, filas and dogos have been "demonised and vilified" by governments around the world.
Batchelor says, contrary to "urban myths," pitbulls do not have locking jaws, do feel pain, are highly biddable, deeply loyal and excel in obedience, agility and make good search and rescue dogs. Batchelor says pitbulls were once known as the "nanny dog" until were made desirable to undesirable owners.
Part of the problem lies with "millers," she says. Batchelor says a miller is a "puppy mill" or peddler who breeds dogs every season.
"They breed anything and sell to anyone. They even sell/export dogs for meat," she claims.
"The millers will meet the market and the market is for a scary dog. They have deliberately bred for colour, size, aggression ... and sell them to the sort of owners who use the dog as a status symbol and/or weapon."
In 2006, SPCA inspector Jim Boyd, told the New Zealand Herald pitbulls are owned and bred for the purposes of fighting. The Western Bay of Plenty does not have a dog fighting culture, unlike some parts of the country.
***
At Blake Park in Mount Maunganui, two women are pushing their children on swings. A blue pushchair stands abandoned on the edge of the playground. As Jake strides past they turn their heads and stare.
With his bronze neck and shoulders bulging like an All Black, he's 48kg of pure muscle and capability.
Owner Leanne Caesar says once, just for a laugh, her daughter Amber tied Jake, an American rednose pitbull, to the back of their car and he pulled it down the driveway "fine".
As we walk over wet grass, Jake, snug in his $250 custom-made leather harness, powers forward. Caesar, dressed head-to-toe in black, hands me the lead so I can feel Jake's strength and I almost trip over my own feet. I feel like I'm being pulled by a horse.
Caesar, 31, has had Jake since he was four weeks old.
"There's nothing scary about him. He's a good boy, he was raised with horses and cows. He used to eat carrots with our miniature lopped eared rabbit Woody." Despite his chiselled face and stocky frame, Caesar claims Jake is "unique".
He loves sprinklers, doesn't mind being put in a raincoat, or dressed up as a buzzy bee or fairy by Amber. He eats only cooked meat and loves salad.
As nice as he is though, Caeser gets dirty looks when she walks Jake, who is neutered, down the street with a muzzle over his snout. She doesn't walk him in places where it is busy. She has been approached by unsavoury people wanting to buy him and even been followed home.
"Bad owners make bad dogs. I say bring in a law where you have to have a licence [to own a pitbull] and bring in a law that you have to have some training."
Kawerau woman Liz Smith, who was badly injured by a pitbull in Welcome Bay, agrees. She says owners of pitbulls should be licensed, just as those who want to own firearms are.
As we talk over the phone, she is conscious of pig dogs caged next door. She has developed a paranoia of dogs.
"Without a licence, it's like a mad man on the loose with a carving knife. They are a dangerous weapon."
Smith has been left with horrific injuries, including a damaged right eye, nightmares, and the possibility of further surgery down the track.
She wants people to be drug tested, have a certificate of dog handling, and have their criminal and mental health record checked before owning a dangerous or menacing breed.
"We can't drink and drive, we have to have fences around swimming pools. I challenge the Government to act fast. No more victims," she says.
"I believe any dog, no matter what dog, has the potential to attack."
Pictured below: Todd Hardistry and his pitbull staffi-cross, Cassie. Photo: Mark McKeown.