Great article and Miles' first vet appointment

So, Miles has had lots of firsts in the past couple of weeks. Last Thursday was his first veterinary appointment.

We take all of our animals to Plymouth Animal Hospital, for a couple of reasons:

1. I am positive that they are the only vet in the northeast, possibly the country that will tolerate Ella, and
2. They're simply awesome. They take GREAT care of animals, and they tolerate my neuroses when it comes to the health of my animals.

No, I am not writing a blog post about Miles' first vet appointment. That would be boring.

What I am going to talk about is the fact that when they created Miles' file, I asked them to not put that he had pitbull in him. The reason for this is that if they put that Miles has pit bull in him, then there will be a whole host of landlords who will not rent to us. Our renter's insurance premiums would also likely go up, should we ever decide to own a home, and that's just ridiculous to me, as Miles is not a vicious dog, nor will he ever be if we have anything to say about it.

I try to be very open about the fact that Miles has pit bull in him. He LOOKS like a pit bull, but as we have gone over in the past, lots of people can't even identify them. Truth be told, the other day I found out that in fact his mom was a purebred lab, and the dad was the mix of pit, boxer and chow. So, he's actually much less pit than we thought he would be. REGARDLESS, that shouldn't even matter.

The reason for this today is that the subject of pit bulls came up at Easter dinner, and one of my family members said that pitbulls are bred to be killers.

It was at that precise moment that I pointed out that in fact Miles has quite a bit of pit bull in him, and they looked at me and said that it didn't matter because he is a mix. That actually totally invalidates their argument, because if pit bulls are trained to be killers, and my dog has pit bull in him, then it stands to reason that one day he is going to kill something or someone. Right. This is to say nothing of the fact that there is a big difference between breeding and training. Can you train a dog to be a killer? Yes. In fact, one can train ANY dog to be a killer. Just abuse it and make it fight all the time, and it WILL kill something eventually. Are dogs bred to be killers? Not likely.

Anywho, the other reason that this is coming up now (again) is because I came across an article today that I found to articulate my feelings better than anything I have read to date on the subject of pit bulls. It's by a woman named Gail Fisher, who happens to be a friend of my organization also. We are having a major fundraiser in about three weeks and she's going to be the speaker. She's the owner of All Dogs Gym and Inn in Manchester, and not only does she train dogs, she trains people to train and groom dogs.

So, really - does this dog look like a killer to you? :) (please also keep in mind that he's afraid of cats, which has in turn, I'm pretty sure, made him afraid of anything smaller than he is.)