(Originally appeared in the International Game Dog Review in 1997)
This same quote simultaneously lays bare the greatest failure of Jessup's book: an inability to discuss dog fighting without descending into witless stereotyping and casual slander. Allusions to "beer guzzling low lifes", besides being unconscionably insulting to those so outrageously depicted, are equally insulting to the intellect of any reader who trusts his or her ability to judge the moral merits and demerits of any practice and/or its practitioners. Perhaps a future effort by Jessup or one of her fellow travellers will demonstrate greater intellectual maturity. Perhaps not.
Be that as it may, Jessup's goal, to put it just a tad simplistically, is to save pit bulls from three unacceptable (to her) fates: (1) abuse at the hands of dog fighters; (2) ruination at the hands of show breeders who merely want to preserve their outer form while allowing all their heart, drive and ability to turn to mush; and (3) extermination at the hands of humaniacs.
Readers of this review will immediately appreciate the importance of saving APBTs from fates (2) and (3), but will undoubtedly voice strong objections to the presuppositions behind Jessup's characterization of fate (1). It should be stressed, however, that it is important for the wider public to hear someone who decries fate (1) also decry fates (2) and (3). If only those directly or indirectly involved with matching dogs defended the APBT's physical abilities and game heart against those who would wish to destroy these traits (or eradicate the breed entirely), a suspicious, ill-informed public might decide that either show breeders or humaniacs are the least bad of three evils. Jessup does the breed some genuine good by articulating a position that could siphon off quite a bit of "mainstream" opinion that may consider fates (2) and (3) to be the only alternatives to (1). That is, the game changes when a voice like Jessup's is added to the mix, and both show breeders and humaniacs will find it harder to win the hearts and minds of the general public by default when voices like Jessup's are heard.
Particularly useful in this regard is her chapter on "common myths" (e.g. "locking" jaws, gameness as aggression and the like). Though little (actually, nothing) appears here that has not been explained many times before in other works, there are many people who need to hear it who are unwilling to hear it, let alone believe it, when it is said by someone who defends matching as well. Jessup's anti-matching stance can then become a bridge to certain people who otherwise lie quite unreached by the truth on these matters.
Another strength of the book is Jessup's willingness and ability to define and defend a broader notion of "gameness" than the one that at least appears to be in use among those who match dogs. It is uncontroversial that bulldog heart and talent have been applied to more than one task. There has probably never been a time in the history of the breed in which there haven't been many a fine bulldog engaged in catch work, whether directed towards wild or domestic stock. And the success of the APBT in modern sports like weight pulling is something to cheer, not mourn. I, for one, can only cheer Jessup's personal efforts to broaden the breed's horizons by involving great dogs in worthwhile activities, from the exuberant frivolity of frisbee to the serious and difficult work of search and rescue. And I agree with Jessup that pit bulls are singularly well suited for the noble and more subtly challenging position of professional therapy dog. (And I also agree with her that this last fact is the one that flies most directly into the face of humaniac rhetoric against the breed. That fact alone is more than enough reason to encourage training as many APBTs for therapy work as possible.)
So much for the good news. The bad news, needless to say, is Jessup's tiresomely conventional hysteria against matching. The fact that pit bulls can, should and do excel at many things does not entail that their excellence as canine warriors should be casually (let alone eagerly) tossed aside. Perhaps sensing this hole in her argument, Jessup offers up a chapter on "Dog Fighting Today" that reads like something straight out of an HSUS tract. Her unwillingness to engage even relatively well known and easily accessible rebuttals such as those by Stratton suggests to me that she doesn't want a fair debate. In other words, this is MEANT to be propoganda.
This is exceedingly unfortunate. Jessup shows that she is able to rebut opponents on the merits of the case without raving like a loonie when she presents her sober and concise (and not personally slanderous) briefs against show breeders who are indifferent to the heart of the breed and humane groups who are eager to exterminate the breed. Anyone who can argue cogently and relatively unemotionally with someone eager to EXTERMINATE one's favorite breed should surely be able to carry on a debate with "opposing camps" within the breed's fancy without foaming at the mouth. Either Jessup can't, or she simply won't. Or perhaps it would be most accurate to say that she imply can't bring herself to try.
I will speculate later on why Jessup can't discuss matching without raving like a damn fool, but now I would like to emphasize some disastrous consequences of these rhetorical flights. By way of background, I would like to say that my own interest in pit bulls and the sociopolitical problems surrounding the breed and certain elements of its fancy is, indeed, primarily a sociopolitical matter. I do not own an APBT (though I do own a "faux pit bull" - a StaffyBull/Rat Terrier Cross of whom I am extremely fond). I have, however, met several pit bulls, including a dog with fight scars who I tried unsuccessfully to save from a shelter intent on killing him. I have also read around on the breed. I consider myself an educated lay person, with apirations of becoming a better educated lay person.
I am also, meanwhile, a political libertarian. More specifically, I belong to that camp within libertarian thought that opposes moralistically-motivated prohibitions, not because we think everyone should be allowed to do whatever they wish with impunity, but because we are convinced that blanket prohibitions tend to fail miserably at best and backfire disastrously at worst. The paradigm case is the prohibition of alcohol earlier this century. If the objective was to rid the country of alcohol and alcoholism, the effort was more than just a failure, as consumption and addiction in fact rose during prohibition and fell after repeal. Moreover, the rot gut rum laced with wood alcohol was just the sort of thing that monopolistic black marketeers foist on their helpless markets under prohibionary regimes. After repeal, people went back to beer brewed by reputable breweries.
The prohibition on matching dogs has all the earmarks of a classic prohibitionary disaster. First, there is an activity that pains the sensitive soul of some spiritual descendant of Carrie Nation and her fellow hatchet swingers. Then, the politicians and the body politic allow themselves to be shamed into accepting exaggerations of the putative evil as gospel. Then someone promises to eradicate the "evil" simply by passing some laws and funding some enforcement agencies.
And then? Well, reputable, honest people find it difficult to impossible to stay involved in the prohibited activity. They either get out entirely, or go underground, where their potentially positive influence is severely diminished. But, market demand is not the sort of thing that one can so easily wish away. So rogue providers appear, peddling inferior, sometimes dangerous products. In the face of the futility of their mission, the law enforcers become increasingly brutal and senseless in their actions. These disastrous developments confirm the faith of the most witless advocates of prohibition, as they blame it all on the original "evil" product. But more sensible people begin to wonder whether the worst of the current scene is not, in fact, a product of the prohibition itself.
It is pretty easy to fill in the blanks in this general schema with particulars of the current felony prohibitions against matching. Groups like the HSUS are the Carrie Nations of today, and they, like the temperance groups before them, undoubtedly consist of a mix of true-believing moral busybodies and cynical exploiters pursuing some greater agenda (and aspirations towards power, influence and maybe even a little wealth). Politicians, the media and the public have allowed these groups to control the terms of debate so tightly that their crazed exaggerations of the putative "evils" of matching are accepted as gospel, and to question these "truths" is treated even by otherwise reasonable people as heretical. Free speech may be guaranteed, but becomes politically and socially awkward.
Meanwhile, the best of dog men find themselves in the position of having to quit or go underground. The public then pretty much never hears from these best informed people. On the other hand, at least two groups of questionable operators have become more involved. On the one hand, sick (and naive) individuals who hear that "pit bulls are trained by siccing them on helpless puppies" take this nonsense as truth, and dabble in training by siccing their sort-of-a-pit-bull on the neighbors new puppy. On the other hand, people whose primary area of expertise consists of knowing who to bribe, who to evade and who to beat the crap out of have become involved in an at least quasi-organized way. This is true of some inner city gang bangers, whose "organizational" skills are often underestimated, but whose witlessness about dogs in general and pit bulls in particular knows no bounds.
Finally, faced with the crisis of a situation getting obviously worse under laws that were supposed to make things better, law enforcement has by now long since embraced its role in the cycle of increasing violence and depravity. A law man who seizes, warehouses and then kills dogs in the name of "humane treatment of animals" ought to see nothing but a sick joke of a man when he looks into the mirror. Instead, having bought into the system (if only for reasons of job security), he sees a noble fighter struggling valiantly against all pervasive evil.
Diane Jessup, it turns out, is an animal control officer. Perhaps, then, she is simply looking for some job security herself when she adopts all the positions and all the rhetoric of the prohibitionist forces, even though many of these same forces are people who want to exterminate her favorite breed. Perhaps it is a necessary psychological defense mechanism to consider all matchers "beer guzzling low lifes" if one makes ones money threatening to wreck the hell out of such people's lives by seizing not only their dogs, but often other property as well. Perhaps her inability to see that pit bulls can do all the things she likes even if some of them continue to be matched by competent and ethical dog men is due to a prior inability to see that competent and ethical dog men exist, and are more threatened by the laws she enforces than are the sleazy, crafty and brutal gang bangers whose dirty work she documents.
In the free market of ideas, positions like Jessup's can and should be heard. She will, in the end, steal more "market share' from the humaniacs and show breeders than she will from either dog men or from those who, like me, find the current prohibitionary regime a humanitarian nightmare (albeit a perfectably predictable one). It is unfortunate, however, that she can't engage in a discussion of the merits and demerits of dog matching without rolling her eyes and hissing. A lucid discussion of why a genuine fan of pit bull heart and talent might nonetheless disdain this particular activity could have been useful. The prohibitionist tirade she offers instead, however, is quite a bit worse than just useless.