Monday, July 03, 2006
It's the pits to be pit mix.
Pit mixes have it tough. They aren't pittie enough for the true pit bull lovers and they are too pittie for regular clients looking for a nice mixed breed dog. So they get stuck in the middle, endlessly waiting for someone to look past their appearance and notice their personality and temperament.We try to have a couple nice pit mixes in our shelters at any one time. Too many of them turns the clients off and we get a reputation as "only having pit bulls". But too few of them means we aren't really doing our job helping adoptable dogs in the East Bay find responsible homes.
They also take forever to get adopted. The last pit mix we took in came from Martinez months and months and months ago. Buddy, a super great dog, is pit pointer mix. He was great with other dogs, loved people and was well trained. But here he sat. Waiting for someone to notice all his great qualities. Finally, after making the rounds at both of our shelters and doing a stint in our Paws to Consider program, he got adopted this past week.
And this gave us the chance to take in another pit mix. Volunteers at Oakland Animal Services told us about Spanky. So we went to check him out. He had been there since March. That fact alone tells us that he must be a good, stable dog. He didn't do great on his temperament test, but we took him anyway to give him a shot and a different audience. Hopefully he does well here and gets a home soon. Only time will tell.
It's the pits to be a pit mix.
