Dear Editor:
We invite you to become a member of the Pit Bull Terrier Association now forming at our Hudson County animal life center.
Our first five months of operation have made more poignant that which we already knew, that the magnificent animal known as the American Pit Bull Terrier or the Staffordshire Terrier, now more commonly referred to as “pit bulls” are the most victimized animals in America, and in fact, the world. Misused, abused, abandoned and severely maltreated, and unjustly maligned, this creature is the latest and a classic example of “blaming the victim.” Law enforcement, police and animal control officials, have the right and responsibility to address much of the problem and to do much to prevent the problems but they do not. Because of their great natural strength, the pit terrier is the drug dealers’ “dog of choice.” Others train the animals to fight in organized fighting and gambling rings. These activities violate existing laws, including criminal and animal abuse laws, yet officials do nothing to prevent the activity or to prosecute offenders.
Of course, the animal also is the victim of uninformed and irresponsible owners.
Here at The Assisi Center, the majority of our residents are from this breed. Our most recent injured victim was retrieved from a dumpster, having been thrown there after obviously losing a fight. Thankfully, she now is recovering nicely in our medical room. We also helped deliver a litter of eight puppies. Three didn’t make it. Mother and the other five are being fostered in the private home of one of our terrific volunteers, Althea Miller, where they are receiving personal attention and individual care.
However, hundreds of thousands more of their peers do not recover, and their passing is marked by devastating physical and emotional suffering, and none of it is of their own doing.
Meanwhile, we have been very successful in placing many of these animals in wonderful new adoptive homes. We are particularly careful when we adopt a pit bull family member and the newfound relationships are working very well, but we need to do so much more. Thus, our new association, and it is to that which we now invite you.
Our agenda is broad-based, including but not limited to a comprehensive education awareness campaign so as to bring the image and perception of this animal back to its original and true sense. This involves both a media campaign and a literal education effort, in schools and through community awareness series.
We also plan special programs and events promoting and implementing responsible pet ownership, from spay/neuter, to licensing, to socialization, to proactive healthcare. In addition concerted legal and law enforcement efforts aimed at enforcing existing laws to developing and enacting new and more effective legislation to prosecute the guilty, preclude and prevent abuses are required.
As the saying goes we cannot do this by ourselves and expect any serious results. That’s why we are reaching out to you to join us in the defense of our defenseless friends. Contact us if you want to get involved in something which will make you feel terrific and which will save, literally, the lives of otherwise savaged innocents.
On behalf of them, we thank you very much.
Tom Hart, Director
The Assisi Center
480 Johnston Ave.
Jersey City, NJ
(201) 435-0914