Activists speak up for abused pit bulls

Johannesburg - A brown-and-white pit bull sits on the pavement outside the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court.

The young dog, named Bartholomew, looks extremely cheerful, but is missing a leg.

It was purposefully removed as part of a gang initiation, says his owner, Kathy Ogston. Bartholomew is one of two three-legged pit bulls she owns. Inside the court, a man accused of animal cruelty for keeping 11 pit bulls chained and in bad living conditions appears to be hiding. It has been two hours since his case was postponed to October, but he has not come out of the court.

He knows that a mob of animal rights activists wait outside with their dogs and posters.

“These dogs can’t talk,” says Estelle Smith of Under Dogs SA, an organisation that rescues abused and abandoned pit bulls.

Activists are saying they want harsher sentences for people found guilty of animal rights abuses.

“We are sick and tired of it being a fine,” says boerboel enthusiast Linsey Rautenbach, “If it was a human child…” her voice trails off.

Rautenbach believes it’s the cross-breeding of boerboels and pit bulls that creates “super pits” that take the most aggressive characteristics from each breed. “You get a superbreed with a bad temperament,” she says.

Rautenbach describes the dogs as having the strength and size of a boerboel with the tenacity of a pit bull.

When these dogs become vicious, they are then abandoned by their owners.

CJ Hartle of animal rescue organisation Barking Mad says she receives hundreds of e-mails every day, reporting dogs that have been injured or abandoned. Smith says she rescued 37 pit bulls in a two-week period.

As for reports of pit bulls that are vicious, the activists say theirs is learnt behaviour from bad treatment. “It’s the way you bring them up,” says Smith. Ogston strokes Bartholomew. “If pit bulls could buy you flowers they would,” she says.

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The Star