Negative First Response
Hello. I'm a recent member of this community. I joined to further educate myself and enjoy personal stories of people and their dogs. I'm kind of sad to make this my first community post.
I’ve been researching breeds for a while, looking for the dogs that fit my personality and lifestyle. I posted on my RL friends only journal recently about wanting to foster/rescue/adopt a pit bull terrier in the future. What happened was like hyper-speed train-wreck. One friend told me to ‘be careful’; fair enough. Any rescue has its troubles. But then it became breed specific. Another friend, who has two American Staffordshire Terriers of her own, stepped in and pointed out that they were not being fair and presented a few facts as well as stating her own opinions. The original responder quickly became defensive and started name-calling and swearing. My secondary responder simply ended the discussion, recognizing they weren’t going to get anywhere with logic. I put a lock down, told the original responder to play nice, and apologized to my other friend because that response-attack was totally uncalled for. I was actually shocked to read the interaction between them.
Now, all this was caused by me simply mentioning I am considering adoption/rescue/having a pit bull in the future. What in heavens name am I going to have to anticipate once I actually do get one and have to deal with these sorts of situations in Real Life? I’m not a confrontational person; I tend to shut down/walk away when confronted by rude people. How do you deal with this? I can deal well with people who are asking questions and I can share information readily (I’ve been a teacher for 6 years), but when people are being confrontational, I really don’t know what to do other than walk away and hope they leave me alone.
I want to be a well-informed, responsible pet owner. I have a lot of research to do, and a lot of things to sort out before I settle down to commit to a dog of any sort. I want to be the kind of owner that can raise a pit bull to be an ambassador of the breed, and help educate younger people.
I suppose I’m just shocked at how suddenly someone I knew turned into someone I didn’t at the mention of ‘pit bull’.
I’ve been researching breeds for a while, looking for the dogs that fit my personality and lifestyle. I posted on my RL friends only journal recently about wanting to foster/rescue/adopt a pit bull terrier in the future. What happened was like hyper-speed train-wreck. One friend told me to ‘be careful’; fair enough. Any rescue has its troubles. But then it became breed specific. Another friend, who has two American Staffordshire Terriers of her own, stepped in and pointed out that they were not being fair and presented a few facts as well as stating her own opinions. The original responder quickly became defensive and started name-calling and swearing. My secondary responder simply ended the discussion, recognizing they weren’t going to get anywhere with logic. I put a lock down, told the original responder to play nice, and apologized to my other friend because that response-attack was totally uncalled for. I was actually shocked to read the interaction between them.
Now, all this was caused by me simply mentioning I am considering adoption/rescue/having a pit bull in the future. What in heavens name am I going to have to anticipate once I actually do get one and have to deal with these sorts of situations in Real Life? I’m not a confrontational person; I tend to shut down/walk away when confronted by rude people. How do you deal with this? I can deal well with people who are asking questions and I can share information readily (I’ve been a teacher for 6 years), but when people are being confrontational, I really don’t know what to do other than walk away and hope they leave me alone.
I want to be a well-informed, responsible pet owner. I have a lot of research to do, and a lot of things to sort out before I settle down to commit to a dog of any sort. I want to be the kind of owner that can raise a pit bull to be an ambassador of the breed, and help educate younger people.
I suppose I’m just shocked at how suddenly someone I knew turned into someone I didn’t at the mention of ‘pit bull’.