A pit bull terrier named Banza outside the Maryland State House in 2018. Photo / Marvin Joseph, The Washington Post
Prince George’s County Council chairman Edward Burroughs vowed he wouldn’t get another dog again after the death of his German shepherd and chow mix, Sheba.
They were together through some of his high school years, when he was the youngest member on the school board council, until last summer, when Burroughs, 33, had to say goodbye to the 15-year-old family dog as she was ailing.
“I grew up with her,” Burroughs said. “I can cry thinking about her.”
Burroughs’ grief began to wane at the beginning of this year, and he started visiting county shelters to adopt another dog.
He noticed in these visits that he couldn’t consider a large number of dogs in the shelters because they fell under the county’s ban against pit terrier breeds, which includes pit bulls.
Those restrictions led him to the “very handsome” Scooby, which the shelter classified as a Plott hound. A trip to the family vet after Scooby’s adoption revealed that he was actually a pit terrier.
The confusion spurred Burroughs to learn more about the county law. His quest led to a lifting of the ban last week that was fuelled by a stigma attached to pit bulls, which were perceived as a violent, deadly breed after a spate of attacks around the country by the dogs.
County representatives in the early 2000s said pit bulls were the “breed of choice” for those involved with gang activity, dogfighting, gambling, and drug dealing.
However, with multiple variations of pit bull breeds falling under the ban, thousands of animals erroneously perceived as banned were being put down after they lingered inside county shelters with no one able to adopt them.
“I think it does no one any good to euthanise adoptable dogs based on unscientific, shifting, kind of visual determinations of what a possible breed is,” Burroughs said. “That’s why most places have repealed [similar laws].”
Beginning in January, Prince George’s County will no longer be one of the largest municipalities in the United States with a breed ordinance. Instead, it will join neighbouring areas such as Montgomery County, DC and Anne Arundel County in abandoning breed-specific policies.
More data and research on pit bull breeds are available now, and societal attitudes toward the dogs continue to change, said Caitrin Conroy, executive director of the Prince George’s Pet Unity Project, an organisation that advocated against the breed ordinance.
“Pit bulls have gone from being the villain of movies to this creature that’s beloved by folks of all types,” Conroy said.
In the 1990s, pit bulls became the face of unsafe, unpredictable dogs associated with crime and horrific attacks.
In 1996, one attack caught the attention of lawmakers in Prince George’s: Two pit bulls jumped the chain-link fence of a home in Temple Hills to bite an 11-year-old boy on his hip and Achilles tendon, causing him years of trauma.
“This may not be the right bill, but it is time for the county to do something about vicious dogs,” said then-council chairman Stephen Del Giudice at a hearing shortly before the ban became law.
“It is not just a matter of responsible owners, but irresponsible ones, and we have to get at them somehow.”
There have been efforts over the years to repeal the ban as county leaders reviewed the law’s efficacy and how much it cost the county to enforce, which Burroughs put at around US$3 million annually.
Despite the ban, the county has become home to between 20,000 and 30,000 pit bulls and pit bull mixes, Burroughs said.
“From a policy perspective and budgetary perspective, it didn’t make any sense,” he said.
At any given time, about 50% of dogs in county shelters are pit bulls or a mix of the breed, according to David Fisher, chief and administrator of Animal Control and Services in Prince George’s.
Walking through a shelter placement room filled with loud barks, heartbreaking whines and sad eyes peeking behind kennel bars, Fisher pointed out a variety of heights, head shapes and even snouts as reasons a dog might be considered to have pit bull blood.
However, truly determining a dog’s breed would require genetic testing, which is what Conroy, the Pet Unity Project director, had to do with her dog, Poptart, when she moved from DC to Prince George’s in 2020.
“To live here, my husband and I were faced with the option of sacrificing our life savings and down payment on our home or giving up our little fat furry mashed potato family member - neither one of which was acceptable to us,” she said.
“It was kind of shocking that Prince George’s County was willing to toss out a nurse and a veteran small business owner for some arbitrary reason because of what our dog looked like.”
A genetic test revealed that Poptart, 12, is actually a bulldog, not a pit bull.
Conroy hopes dogs that end up in the shelter can also have a home in the county.
In 2023, more than 1100 adoptable pit-bull-type dogs were euthanized, Conroy said. That number dropped to 742 in 2024 because of Fisher’s efforts allowing adoptions and rescues outside the county.
“We are just paying for these great adoptable dogs to be housed, to be fed, to be walked, to take the emotional toll on our staff and volunteers who love them and bond with them and treat them kindly, only to then have us have to pay for them to be killed because we can’t get them adopted,” Conroy said.
Besides lifting the ban, the new county law that Burroughs sponsored expands Prince George’s leash requirements and ushers in a pilot programme for fostering and adopting the dogs that previously fell under the ban.
Not everyone is celebrating the new law.
Lutricia Lewis-Quarles, 75, of Suitland, still holds the pain of losing her shar-pei, ReddZ, who was attacked by two pit bulls, leaving her with severe injuries that contributed to her death in 2023. Lewis-Quarles keeps a picture of ReddZ “like a shrine” in her family room.
For a time when ReddZ was alive, Lewis-Quarles said, she would walk around her neighbourhood with an iron pole to keep roaming pit bulls at bay.
She still has inklings of that fear today when she sees pit bulls in her neighbourhood, growling at neighbours and making them unwilling to leave their homes, she said.
Lewis-Quarles, a part-time healthcare worker, said lifting the ban is a disappointment. She fantasises about taking a stroll around her home without fear, she said.
Burroughs’s assertion that the ban was ineffective has only left her with more questions.
“If you are paying somebody US$3m a year, and we did not enforce the pit bull ban because we have 20,000 pit bulls, why were you paying these people in the first place, or why were you paying anybody if you say we were not enforcing it?” Lewis-Quarles said.
Burroughs and advocates for the new law say it addresses the concerns of residents like Lewis-Quarles by exacting higher penalties for dangerous animal infractions and increasing accountability for pet owners.
“Now animal control can get involved in that situation instead of you having to complain constantly and go through a commission and have some hearings and have this be a month-long process,” Conroy said. “They can come out and get involved right away now.”
Burroughs and Conroy both say they understand that more educational outreach and time are needed for people like Lewis-Quarles to come around. But they’re revelling in the thought of more people having cuddly companions in Prince George’s.
For Burroughs, his Scooby is now “a hit” with family members who were once intimidated by his size. Those same family members now go out of their way to spend time with Scooby.
“He’s very friendly, affectionate and obedient,” Burroughs said. “To think he would’ve been killed for no reason made no sense to me whatsoever.”
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.