Parade Magazine is inserted into 510 Sunday newspapers throughout the US and so has a distribution of over 32 million -- hands down the highest in the country. (Does anybody know of one higher in the world?) How heartwarming, therefore, for those of us with a soft spot for pitbulls, to see a beautiful pit face on the cover this week, Sunday August 15, with the headline, "Bad Dog? Not anymore! How one of Michael Vick's notorious pitbulls became a child's best friend."
You can also see that adorable photo, of the classic pit who has one eye surrounded by black fur and one by white, on line. Unfortunately a couple of other priceless photos, such as that particular pit sporting a "therapy dog" bandana and cuddled up next to a young boy learning to read, do not seem to be on line, so US folks might want to grab their Sunday paper or borrow their neighbor's.
The full article, available both in print and on line, is by Genesis Award winner Jim Gorant, who has just released a book on the Michael Vick pitbulls, entitled "The Lost Dogs." The article is headed, "Can You Teach a Bad Dog New Tricks?"
Gorant describes the varying conditions of Vick's dogs, only one of whom was so aggressive he was deemed past rehabilitation and was put down. Some others were known as "'pancake dogs' — animals so traumatized they flattened themselves on the ground and trembled when humans approached." Others seemed to be healthy in body and spirit but just unsocialized.
The article has sweet individual stories and holds to the theme:
"In fact, rescuers argued from the start that rather than be condemned as a whole, the dogs should be individually assessed and treated—and this has turned out to be one of the great lessons of the Bad Newz dogs. Generalizations and preconceptions are as unhelpful and counterproductive for pit bulls as they are for people."
Please check it out at http://tinyurl.com/2b78rv4
The online article invites readers to join in a discussion under the heading, "Would you adopt a rehabilitated pit bull?" Please comment! Put in a good word for pits or for all rescue dogs. And please take a moment to send a very quick thank you to Parade Magazine for this wonderfully animal friendly coverage. Positive feedback will encourage similar coverage in the future. Parade Magazine takes comments at
http://www.parade.com/faq/faq.html
Select "general editorial" from the pulldown menu.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)
Please go to http://tinyurl.com/254ulkx to check out Karen Dawn's book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of The Year!"
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Date: Sun Aug 15 17:37:56 2010
