Pitbulls and Immigrants

Learning to love like Sissy

I’m sitting here on a hot, sunny Saturday morning, surrounded by boxes of Kleenex and Dayquil, eagerly awaiting my next spritz of Chloraseptic. My right hand is aching from the surgery I had two weeks ago, and the sweetest, most loving, most loyal dog is sitting here with me, shifting every few minutes to grab a fading beam of sunlight. When I am under the weather, she will not leave my side.

Sissy was named after my mom because of her strong, vibrant personality. My mom’s real name, of course, was Caroline Mary, but few people knew that. Everyone called Mom “Sissy”—the nickname her toddler brother gave her when he struggled with the three syllables she’d been christened with.

“Why couldn’t you name the pretty dog after me?” Mom jokingly asked before she left this earth forever. Ruby has always been a natural beauty, shy, anxious, and reserved—but Sissy exhibits all of my mom’s best traits: spunk, bravery, tenacity, love, kindness, loyalty, empathy.

And sweet Sissy is beautiful inside and out.

Ruby, aka “The pretty dog.”

Sisters in the sun.

When I first adopted Ruby, and she struggled to acclimate to the world, my vet suggested I get a second dog to teach Ruby how to be a dog. A co-worker, hearing my story, said to me, “I have the perfect dog for you.”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Sissy teaching Ruby how to bark at everything that moves.

Sissy’s backstory is a hard one. She was found by an Indianapolis Power and Light worker in a ditch in the middle of a brutal winter, nearly frozen to death. Had he not been elevated in a cherry picker, restoring frozen lines, he would not have seen her. She’d been hit by a car and left for dead.

Sweet baby recovering after all her surgeries.

Baby’s first day in her new home.

“She was barely alive when they brought her to my wife’s emergency clinic,” my co-worker explained. “They were close to euthanizing her, but my wife discovered that she was food motivated. A dog who’s motivated by food has a will to live, so they decided to rehab her instead.” Sweet Sissy—who was then known as Bumblebee—had two broken hips, a broken leg, and numerous internal injuries. The vets were going to amputate her front right leg, but she learned to use it as a crutch, so they let her keep it instead. Today, when she sits—or more accurately, squats—for a treat, it dangles in front of her, virtually unusable. Sissy was dragged by that car long enough that she lost most of the fur on her back to road rash. It’s the one place on her body she doesn’t like to be touched. Otherwise, she wants to be touched as much and for as long as possible.

Snuggler or Space Invader? You decide.

I’ve had many dogs throughout my lifetime, but there is something special about this one. She is expressive and intuitive, and she doesn’t know a stranger. What she does know is that she needs to be gentle with her Grandpa Bob, but she can jump on and lick cousin Sherri with every ounce of exuberance in her little broken body. She barks like a crazy dog when someone new comes to visit, but it’s only because she wants to be acknowledged and petted. She’s an attention whore, this girl, and she lets you know that she’d like you to fawn over her and only her.

“I saved you a seat, Bobby.”

The very best of friends.

She pulls like a sled dog when she’s on a leash, and we’ve paid for—and subsequently failed—training her on at least four different occasions. But that’s not Sissy’s fault. She’s just so excited about life, she can’t wait to get to her destination. Sissy may not know where she’s going on a walk, but she wants to get there first. And she wants to meet everyone along the way. And smell every blade of grass. And chase every ball. And examine every stick.

But Sissy is also a pitbull—a pocket pittie. The kind of dog, we’ve learned, that is used as a bait dog for fighting. The mere thought of that makes me want to cry in anguish. Sissy is a lover, not a fighter. She would never even think of hurting a flea unless she was conditioned to hurt a flea.

But people are frightened of her. They often cross the road when they see her coming. She is strong and exuberant, and her bark is intense—even while her tail is wagging. And pitbulls get a bad rap. There are apartment complexes and communities that do not allow her breed. If she’d been born in the UK, she’d have to be muzzled in public.

She looks like a dog you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. But you’d want to meet her. Anywhere. I promise.

We are acutely aware of how she is perceived.

Just as we are acutely aware of how members of the LGBTQ+ community are perceived.

“Hey, I like yoga.”

Which, by a pervasive thread of empathy, makes me acutely aware of how members of our country’s immigrant community are now perceived.

There are people in this world who would rather see Sissy dead than walking down a street.

Are they the same people who would look the other way as immigrants are torn from their homes by men in masks and thrown into unmarked vehicles to be taken to unknown locations?

Possibly.

Probably.

You see, that’s the problem with saying things like: All pitbulls should be banned, and all immigrants should be deported. Lumping everyone together into a big, broad group of Bad enables and encourages us to close our eyes to the Good.

World’s sweetest baby face.

Yes, some pitbulls have attacked. Yes, some immigrants have broken laws.

But that does not include all. It doesn’t include the majority. Pitbulls are not inherently bad. Neither are brown-skinned people. But when we demonize and de-humanize people who look and talk differently than we do, we create an environment of fear and trepidation and distrust. We teach our children to judge and discriminate. And the cycle continues.

I’m embarrassed and enraged by our country right now. How in the world can we buy into the belief that separating people from their families and imprisoning them in other countries is the solution? That those who are innocent of crimes and guilty only of being differently skinned are just collateral damage in a mad man’s pursuit of creating a Christian Nationalist United States?

When will we collectively stop othering people and begin embracing them instead?

We can keep Sissy safe by keeping her away from those who might wish her harm.

But what about the humans who were born in another country and came to the United States for a better life? How do we keep them safe from a government who wants to dismantle and destroy them?

The problem in this country is not pitbulls. It’s not members of the LGBTQ+ community who just want to be themselves. It’s not foreign-born humans looking for a better life.

It’s fear. It’s hatred. It’s dehumanizing rhetoric. It’s twisted religion. It’s the most un-Christian Christianity. It’s the belief in a superior race, a superior gender. It’s the dark underbelly of this country exposing itself for all to see, empowered and emboldened by a megalomaniacal “leader” who has proven, time and time again, to be the very worst kind of human imaginable.

In an environment of cruel and punishing humans—devoid of kindness and empathy—what beauty we could bring to this existence by choosing to live and love like Sissy instead.

The end.