Home Dogs: My First Pit Bull

Elizabeth Hess

In the beginning, there was Lucy (aka Goldie. See last week’s Ballad). She moved into our house as if she had been there her whole life. I had agreed to foster the little dog for two weeks until she recovered from surgery; then she would return to the rescue group, Out of the Pits (OOTP), and be put up for adoption. But on day two, I called Cydney Cross, president of OOTP, to say Lucy had found her permanent home. We clicked, immediately. I could talk to this dog and she understood what I was saying. Cross just chuckled. I wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t know. There was something extraordinary about Lucy—and Cross saw it. My two other dogs were not thrilled about her presence, but they immediately submitted to her authority. Girls are always in charge, according to Cross. Jake, an eight year old, 110 pound Golden Retriever, liked being pushed around. He was easy. Tramp, our six year old Husky-mix had little interest in the new dog; he had a day job siting on the front step guarding the house.

Tramp was a local stray. I had spotted him a few times in the road, but didn’t stop to pick him up. I figured he would eventually wander back to his own home for dinner. Eventually, my neighbor brought him over and asked if I knew where he lived. I did not. The dog was obviously hungry, so I took him in the house and fed him. When we went back outside, the neighbor had left, rather quickly, it seemed, to insure that Tramp didn’t follow him home. At the time, I had two other dogs and did not need a wandering, young Husky. But I couldn’t just ignore him and leave him outside.

Peter, my husband, talked me into taking the dog to the local shelter where I volunteered. I had a clear position on shelters: the lucky dogs end up there instead of starving to death in the streets. But I knew there were also unlucky dogs who ended up in shelters and never made it out. (More on this later.) Bringing any animal to a shelter was and still is risky. Nevertheless, Tramp leapt into the car as if we were going for a joy ride. Was I about to ruin this sweet dog’s life? Shelters are a game of Russian roulette.

At the shelter, I signed the intake forms and put the dog in a back kennel where newbies waited to be assessed. It was the first time I realized how dark and gloomy the place was. I went to get the dog a bowl of water and when I returned, Tramp was cowering in the back corner of his cage, shaking like leaf. A minute earlier, he had been a happy-go-lucky fellow. I had to wonder if he had been through this before.

I could not leave him there, shaking with fear. Somehow I had become directly responsible for his survival and I needed some control over it. So, I opened the kennel door and put my dog back in the car. Then I ripped up his intake forms. The shelter director watched the whole episode, grinning. Take that dog home, please!
One less to worry about.

Now we were three: Lucy, Tramp and Jake.

Lucy dazzled people, unless they were afraid of her. A pretty dog and super friendly, she didn’t look like a typical pit bull, whatever that was supposed to be, but her head was large enough to make people question her genes. There is no breed called, pit bull and most writers don’t know whether to write pitbull, Pit Bull or pit bull.

There have been many famous lines of pit bulls intentionally bred for fighting. “Chinaman,” “Razor’s Edge,” “Monster G,” “E-Pert,” “Ruffian,” “Jeep,” to name only a few. But the most popular line, as I would come to find out, is “Colby.” I came to know Colby thanks to Lucy. One afternoon, we were walking along Washington Street in the West Village when an eight wheeler screeched to a halt and pulled over to the curb. The driver leapt out of the front seat and said, “If your dog had pups, I want one.” I explain that she had pups months ago, is a rescue, and is now spayed. The guy is visibly disappointed. “She’s a Colby dog,” he says. “Right?” Then he popped back into his truck and left before I could respond.

I had not been traveling in serious, pit bull circles nor had I scrolled through the endless sites on the Internet, which were waiting for me. From what I gleaned, the Colby line of pit bulls went back to the 19th century and was possibly the oldest line of the dogs in America. John Pritchard Colby, a legendary dog fancier (and famous boxing coach), born in 1875 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, liked to hop onto trains bound for Boston. There, he sat for hours watching huge ships come into port. On several occasions, or so the legend goes, Colby noticed that a few of the men disembarking had dogs with them, stocky, sturdy little creatures, prancing of the boat with excitement. They called their dogs—pit bulls—a breed unknown in America.

As a young man interested in dogs, Colby tracked them, and their Irish and English owners to local bars at the dock. The dogs were not for sale. Their owners loved them, took great care of them, and for everyone’s entertainment, set them against each other in the backrooms of bars. The crowd bet on the winner. Hence dog fighting arrived in the US.

The entrepreneurial young Colby arranged to purchase a dog from a relative of one of the sailors back in England. The pup arrived on the next boat kicking of a notorious career as one of the most famous “dog men” in the pit bull world. Colby promoted what was a legal sport until the 1970’s. He also, apparently, took great care of his dogs.

The more I learned about the Colby family and their impact on the breed, not to mention dog-fighting, the more curious I became about Lucy’s origins and her genetic relationship to this history. If she was a Colby dog, how was this meaningful in any way? Was Lucy bred for fighting? How exactly might her origins as a Colby dog impact on her personality or, I hesitate to add, her propensity towards aggressive behavior? I had to know. So, I began contacting the Colby kennel, now run by Louis B. Colby (the youngest of John’s seven children and in his late eighties), also an icon in the dog world and a breeder in his own right. Louis had been running the Newburyport kennel since his father’s demise and, as it turned out, he loved talking about pit bulls. So, he invited me for a visit.

“Can I bring my dog,” I asked Louis, demurely, hoping not to sound like a fool. “I think she’s a Colby dog.”

 “Everybody thinks they have a Colby dog,” Louis laughed. “I get photos of over a dozen dogs from people every day. You don’t have a Colby dog, but sure—bring her.” 

(Next week: Is Lucy a Colby dog? Then back to Florida…)