Okay. Going in, today I’m speaking up for Pit Bull dogs everywhere who have been labelled as dangerous creatures given to indiscriminate biting of persons close to them. Granted, I’m basing my comments on the behaviour of just one Pit Bull, named Peppa, this one belonging to my wife Annette’s son, Alex, from her previous marriage. Peppa spends a lot of time with us and is yet to bite anyone either in our family or visiting our home. I concede she has growled at some folks, including me, for invading her space, but Peppa is generally a total joy, smart as a whip, and has developed an impressive familiarity with many English words – come, stay, lie down, no more, upstairs – and is also very adept at reading your disposition from your facial expressions. Merely from my brief interactions with her when I feed her minor scraps with something I’m eating, she has learned to read my facial expressions very accurately so that, for instance, after two or three morsels I give her, when I say to Peppa “no more”, showing her my empty hands, she will immediately walk away and flop down somewhere far from me – case closed.
