Pariah Dogs "The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of  caves, mountains, seas, are specifically addressed to man." --John Berger, "Why Look at Animals?"    On a hot summer day a few years ago, my husband brought home a slightly underweight thirty-eight-pound pit bull with a caramel-and-white coat, a flesh-colored nose, and eyes the color of honey. Carved cheekbones and a cleft in the top of her head gave her face the shape of a small but eager heart. Sean and I nearly passed her by when we drove out to our local animal shelter to look around days before. "Wait a minute," he said, pointing to the shy, trembling animal as I cooed over a flashier candidate. "What about this one?"  We did not need another dog. We had been married less than a year and we still didn't know how best to shape our independent selves to the contours of a shared life. Sean worked long hours at a local hospital and I spent weeks at a time traveling on reporting assignments. Our imperious black pug named Oscar had finally gotten to the age where we no longer worried about leaving him alone in the house for more than an hour. Not worrying was a pastime I had come to enjoy. Any new addition, not to mention one twice Oscar's size, would upend our lives for a while. So, why did it we do it? I'm still not quite sure. I can't say that this little pit bull stared at me, but she never looked away, either.  In his classic essay "Why Look at Animals?" the critic John Berger writes that the look between man and animal is a bridge between our species and theirs, one of the few that can be built between two creatures that do not share a common language. "The animal scrutinises [man] across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension," he writes. When man looks back, however, there is an added layer: Man, says Berger,  "is always looking across ignorance and fear." I came to appreciate the profound truth of Berger's words when I told those closest to me that the new dog we had decided to bring home was a pit bull. Even if they hadn't encountered a pit bull, everyone knew (or thought they knew) the pit bull's  story,  which to them was one of human bloodlust, mysterious fighting genes, and uncontrollable canine rage. So many aspects of our culture--from our metaphors (the terms "top dog" and "underdog" originated in the fighting pits), to our music, to our consumer goods, to our politics--reinforce the stereotypes. When vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin joked during her 2008 acceptance speech that the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was lipstick, the audience laughed knowingly. The great irony of the indelible mark the pit bull has left on our society is that even those who valorize the story--who proudly call themselves pit bull politicians, pit bull lawyers, pit bull reporters--in essence vilify the actual dog at the center of it.  As for my pit bull, a dog-rescuer friend shook her head. "I wouldn't do it," she said solemnly. "I don't trust those dogs. They will turn on you. And once that switch is turned on, there's no turning it off." Like the media, which regularly trumpeted the sordid details of pit bull attacks on humans, my friends framed the issue in terms of strict dichotomies:  Are pit bulls dangerous, or are they misunderstood? Are they born vicious, or is it all in how you raise them? Which is stronger: Nature or Nurture?  Like the existence of God or the ethics of capital punishment, the "truth" about pit bulls makes for lively debates. But always, underneath my friends' quailing, was a revealing division: Pit bulls weren't for people like "us." Pit bulls belonged to  them. * For the better part of two hundred years, the history of bull-and-terrier dogs was illustrious, rather than infamous. Advertisers across the United States clamored to use pit bulls in their campaigns during the 1920s, not because the dogs were believed to be menacing, but because they were thought to be so friendly and appealing to the "average Joe." They are the only dogs to have appeared on the cover of Life magazine three times, for example. The animals' widespread popularity among people of all ages, races, and classes owed much to their reputations as plucky, unfussy sidekicks and hardy all-purpose workers. More than that, however, "the dog with the patch over his eye" was seen as quintessentially American: good-natured, brave, resilient, and dependable. By World War I, pit bulls were so beloved as national symbols that we literally and figuratively wrapped them in the flag. We even called them "Yankee terriers." Haphazardly classified under almost twenty other names over the years, bull-and-terrier dogs marched onto the field at the Battle of Gettysburg and sniffed out snipers at Normandy. They peeked out of covered wagons bound for California and stumped for women's suffrage. One greeted visitors at New York City's first pizzeria in 1907, while another lived in Teddy Roosevelt's White House. They also accompanied us into the brave new world of modern technology, listening to "his master's voice" on the recently invented gramophone and riding shotgun in the first cross-country road trip by automobile. Cultural icons as diverse as Sir Walter Scott, William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Anna Pavlova, Helen Keller, Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson, Andy Devine, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks, James Thurber, Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, and Jimmy Carter proudly kept bull-and-terrier dogs as pets, and years before anyone heard of a German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin, pit bull actors ruled the silver screen. In fact, "Rinty" only appeared in 27 motion pictures, while a pit bull named Pal the Wonder Dog appeared in 224. Then, in the 1970s, like a bright light snapping off, everything went terribly wrong. The crime of dogfighting exploded in the headlines, and the well-intentioned, well-publicized crusade to stamp out a barbaric but moribund form of animal torture unwittingly made it more popular. Once reporters and misinformed activists cast the dogs as willing participants in their own abuse, pit bulls were exiled to the most turbulent margins of society, where a cycle of poverty, violence, fear, and desperation had already created a booming market for aggressive dogs. Headlines about pit bull attacks on humans multiplied. Within a few short years, America's century-old love for its former mascot gave way to the presumption that pit bulls were biologically hardwired to kill. Excerpted from Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon by Bronwen Dickey All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.