Even for an animal-control officer of Ivan Russell’s experience, the scene was unusually gruesome.

At a backyard pit bull-breeding operation in Whitehaven, Russell arrived to find the bloodied carcass of a pit bull attacked while giving birth. Three of her puppies lay dead, in her dog house, with two others alive and whimpering.

Another bloody canine — the one involved in the attack — sat quietly, tied up by police, while still more pit bulls tugged at chains or romped around. No food or water.

Scenes like the one in Whitehaven show how pit bulls — long beloved as family pets, even the cuddly symbol of a 1950s shoe company — have been swept up in a culture of cruelty and rendered a growing public-safety menace.

Thousands of pit bulls enjoy docile lives with loving owners, but in tougher neighborhoods of Memphis, they’re bred to serve as status symbols; brutalized to become weapons or blood sport for gangs. The muscular terriers are tied to logging chains, pitted against other dogs and trained to attack humans.

With owners staking out breeding stock in backyards and selling puppies on street corners, pit bull populations have exploded into a Memphis plague. For many, it’s a short, cruel life that ends in a bloody fight or at Memphis Animal Services, where nearly 2,000 are euthanized annually.

Pit bulls are a popular breed in Shelby County, and they accounted for nearly 40 percent of all dog bites reported to the city last year. And with many left to roam dangerously, pit bulls are the leading cause of complaints to animal-control officials.

In addition to the safety threats — horrifically underscored by the near-fatal mauling of a man whose hand was torn off in South Memphis last month — pit bulls increasingly are targeted by thieves lured by the $1,000 or more that a litter can fetch.

But since many pit bulls remain family pets as gentle as black Labs, the dichotomy within the breed has left shelters, lawmakers, rescuers and responsible dog owners grappling for solutions.

More than 230 cities in 32 states have banned pit bulls, which a federal study found have been responsible for more fatal maulings nationwide in recent decades than any other breed. Other cities, including Memphis, have imposed no-adoption policies for the dogs.

Tennessee lawmakers are looking at ways to put more bite in the current dog laws.

Memphis Animal Services officials want the city to consider an anti-tethering measure — a step already enacted in West Memphis — and a ban on the sale of live animals at street corners and flea markets, as well as other measures.

In the meantime, the city’s main solution is to round up stray pit bulls and kill them at rates of about 40 per week.

On the front lines

The task of corralling pit bulls and other dogs falls to Memphis Animals Services, which was down 16 employees during a hiring freeze for a couple years but is now back to a full complement of 43.

On a recent, cold February morning, four animal control trucks, lights flashing, nets whipping in the wind, sped west down Chelsea — a concrete urban safari pursuing the neighborhood strays.

The trucks rumble past scowling neighbors, past overgrown yards filled with sofas and televisions, past “R.I.P.” signs memorializing people named Tweety and Terrell.

The caravan raced on until it reached yards where stray dogs were sleeping or nosing through trash. In an instant, seven uniformed officers with big nets leapt from their trucks and charged like pole vaulters to swarm the animals.

The officers operate by a simple credo: If it’s not chained or fenced, it’s going on a truck.

“I want these dogs off the street,” said Russell. “We got 50 dogs last week, just in this neighborhood. We’re going to keep on, and it’s going to make a difference.”

A national dilemma

The pit bull problem isn’t unique hardly unique to Memphis. Of the 73 million dogs in America, as many as 4.8 million are pit bulls, experts say.

Pit bulls once filled only 10 percent of the cages at municipal animal shelters; today it’s more than half.

Memphis moved to ban the breed in 1990 after teacher Betty Lou Stidham was mauled to death by a neighbor’s two pit bulls. Because the City Council targeted pit bulls only, however, the law was deemed unconstitutional a year later by the Tennessee Court of Appeals and never took effect.

No one has died of a dog mauling in Memphis since Stidham.

In the intervening years since the Tennessee Court of appellate court’s ruling, the squat, muscular terriers have spread like cockroaches in many Memphis’ toughest neighborhoods.

“Since pit bulls moved next door to me, it’s been one thing after another,” said Hickory Hill resident Butch Harper.

“These young boys will walk down the middle of the street, not the sidewalk, the middle of the street, four abreast with pit bulls tugging at the end of a leash. They think they are so tough. The dogs don’t make you tough, but they make you tough to live with.”

Inherently vicious?

As dangerous as some seem today, pit bulls had a much more innocent past.

In England in the 1800s, the dog was initially bred for bull-baiting, a sport where the dog would bite a bull, usually on the face, then hang on as the bull slung it back and forth.

That sport was outlawed and the dogs began fighting one another in pits, thus the origin of the name. That sport, too, was outlawed in the early 1900s and slowly the breed gained acceptance as an all-American pet, propelled by several positive canine role models.

Petey, the lovable black and white dog with the ring around his eye from “The Little Rascals,” was a pit bull. So was Tige, the dog in the popular Buster Brown shoes advertisements. Stubby the pit bull was a World War I hero.

“If you look at old photographs, the dog at the center of the family portrait is a pit bull,” said Catherine Hedges, a pit bull rescuer from Chicago who runs the Web site dontbullymybreed.com.

“They were known as the nanny breed because of how well they do with children.”

But an emerging pop culture in the late 1980s overtook that image.

Hollywood portrayed them in movies as bad dogs. They were seen fighting each other in rap videos. Soon, anyone whose ego was measured by his dog’s ferocity had a pit bull on the end of a chain.

“The biggest problem is pop culture that glorifies dog fighting and pit bulls,” said John Goodwin of the Humane Society of the United States.

“Rap videos show scenes of dogs fighting or lunging and it permeates the whole culture. We find the dogs mostly with young black males but they are certainly with the white and Hispanic population too.”

The dogs were already known for their powerful jaws, strong body and high threshold for pain. But these genetic attributes have been exaggerated through extreme workouts.

Owners began leashing their dogs to exercise treadmills to enhance endurance, They secured them in backyards with huge, heavy logging chains that, over time, gave their muscular necks even greater power.

Alan Beck, director for the Center for the Human Animal Bond at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Purdue University, believes pits bulls are indeed different, agreeing with politicians who call them “inherently dangerous.”

“Pointers point, herding dogs herd and pit bulls bite,” he said at a recent conference of shelter managers in Nashville that debated the pit bull issue.

Beck said the raw numbers show that pit bulls are statistically responsible for more human deaths than any other breed and that banning them will help curb dog attacks.

But not all experts agree.

“It’s easy to blame the breed,’’ said Karen Delise, author of “Fatal Dog Attacks.” a book on fatal dog attacks. “That lets man off the hook. We don’t have to arrest and prosecute people and jail them for what they do. We’ll just kill the dog and that will fix it. But it doesn’t. And it won’t.”

Uses and abuses

Some of the dogs are trained to attack humans, others to fight in a bloody , high-stakes sport in back alleys and vacant lots.

“A man called me and asked me if my puppies were tough,” said Gerald Slowey, who owns American pit bull terriers that he shows in United Kennel Club competition.
“I told him they were just puppies. He told me to take a puppy and chop off its paw. If it whimpered, kill the whole litter, that they weren’t any good. Can you believe that? That’s what they are doing to these dogs out there.”

Pit bull puppies, like vegetables grown in backyard gardens, are a commodity sold through an untaxed, underground economy. But that’s not to say the process is hidden.

Backyards across Memphis are filled with pit bulls, chained for life just out of reach of one another, with one purpose — to breed.

These breeders typically peddle their puppies on street corners. Among the most popular spots, the busy intersection of Yale and Austin Peay in Raleigh, which can become a pit bull flea market on a sunny Saturday.

Puppies crawl around the lot and tumble out of baskets while their owners round them up and show them off.

A litter of 10 puppies can bring in $1,000 or more. It’s easy cash with very few expenses. No business license, no income tax, just the cost of some dog food.

Professional breeders, the ones who show American Pit Bull Terriers in United Kennel Club show rings, say the dogs being sold on the streets are like knock-off purses, poorly bred with large heads that aren’t in proportion to their bodies and some with temperaments that are nothing like the pit-bull standard, which is a loyal confident dog that is never human aggressive and rarely dog aggressive.

Never ending fight

Those dogs present a particular challenge to Russell and his fellow animal-control officers.

A 39-year-old father, Russell used to work in the euthanasia room at the city shelter on Tchulahoma but grew tired of killing dogs and took a pay cut to go out on street patrols.

After six years on the street, Russell is fit and athletic even though he doesn’t work out.

The job is exercise enough.

A pit bull owner himself, Russell's office is a truck from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., patrolling the streets, responding to complaints about neglected, abused and abandoned dogs.

For the dogs, Russell wears a pair of fingerless gloves and carries a catch pole and net. For their owners, a can of Mace and a two-way radio to call for back-up or the police.

On this cold February day, Russell’s first complaint was loose pit bulls that regularly get out of a neighbor’s yard. The Frayser home with broken down cars in the front was monitored with three security cameras.

“First thing you do is radio in the address and the street so someone knows where you are,” Russell said. “So many of these new officers will get to chasing a dog and forget to look up and read the street sign. You can’t get help if you don’t know where they are.”

Initially, an unidentified woman in a nightgown and full-length fur coat refused to give up the animals. She relented when police were called and was cited for allowing the dogs to run loose, failure to have rabies tags, and neglect.

A woman had complained the dogs chased her to her car. She said people are scared to pick up limbs in their yard, afraid the dogs will bite them.

Most of all, they fear the dogs’ owners. They don’t want the neighbors to know they called the shelter.

Don’t use my name. Don’t give my address.

A dangerous underworld

“It’s a culture of guns, crimes, gangs, anything that law-abiding citizens are against,” Russell said.

“People who own these pit bulls are different. These are their money-makers. You take their dog, you’re messing with their livelihood. People on that side of the law don’t have anything to lose coming after us.”

As he speaks, an incident from last year is fresh on his mind.

Russell was called to the Warren Apartments, tucked in a dead end on Clementine off Elvis Presley — he calls it “Compton” — to pick up two pit bulls left in an abandoned apartment.

As the superintendent opened the door to the apartment, two teenage boys pushed by, grabbed the dogs and ran.

Russell picked up a bag of dog food and returned to his truck.

The boys came back.

One threw a brick at the truck, the other pointed a handgun at Russell. He slid down in the seat, threw the truck in reverse, and hit the gas to escape.

A 13-year-old boy was later arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

“This job is not worth my life,” Russell said. “I have a child. They just don’t care.”

These kind of incidents prompt suggestions that the city’s animal control officers be armed. Not Russell.

“It will just put one more gun in the mix and we don’t need that. All I need is my net.”

A blood sport

Even after six years on the street, Russell has not witnessed one of the notorious heralded fights between pit bulls.

That’s intended. They are like rolling dice games, closely secreted, impromptu battles that are a felony in all 50 states.

“People think it’s just happening out here on the street. But it’s underground,’’ Russell said. “They know it’s a crime and they’re going to lose a lot of money if this thing gets busted up.”

But everywhere he goes, Russell sees the evidence. Dead pit bulls are found in fields and alleys. Survivors are found with gaping wounds. They’ve been found shot, beaten, electrocuted, even set on fire.

“It’s like the dog is an extension of how tough the owner is and it makes the owner look bad if the dog loses or won’t fight,” said Catherine Hedges, who spent years rescuing pit bulls in Chicago.

“The level of cruelty inflicted on these dogs is beyond anything I’ve ever dealt with.”

Tucked beneath the visor in Russell’s truck are two photographs that embody the paradox of the breed. One is Tigger, Russell’s brindle pit bull wagging his tail.

The other, a gruesome shot of a stray pit bull lying on its side, covered in burns. Someone poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. It died before Russell could get it back to the shelter.

The last stop for many

Located in Whitehaven, the Memphis shelter is the facility that has borne most of the impact of the pit-bull population explosion.

In two years, close to more than 4,000 pit bulls have been taken — 85 percent of them destroyed. The shelter doesn’t want the gentle ones back out in that life on a chain and some are so vicious that no one can get near the cage without the dog lunging.

“There’s never been a breed that’s more apt to fall into the wrong hands,” said Phil Snyder, administrator of Memphis Animal Services.

“They are the No. 1 problem for us at the shelter. It’s the most frustrating issue. There’s just no answer.”

The shelter puts down an average of 25 dogs a day, a quarter of them are pit bulls.

On one recent day, the task belonged to Beth Garrison and Tracy Dunlap.

Garrison, a quiet and patient woman, used to stop and talk to the dogs every morning. She’d poke her finger in the cage and stroke the gentle ones. She’d coo at the scared ones.

But not the pit bulls. Not anymore. It’s too hard knowing that no matter what, they will die.

There are three guarantees for the thousands of pit bulls that pour into the Memphis shelter. A daily meal. A warm place to sleep. And, when their owners don’t claim them within three days, a lethal injection.

“We can’t take the chance with pit bulls,” said shelter administrator Snyder. “This breed isn’t afforded the same opportunity as other dogs where we look at temperament and health. These dogs end up being tied outside their whole lives, neglected, fought and tortured. Plus there’s the liability of whether the dog isn’t vicious to humans or other animals.”

No reprieve

One by one, the pits take their final walk — past the other dogs — to a small pink room in the corner. They are fed in the afternoons and put to sleep in the morning, so they die hungry.

A small brown pit bull never barks, never whines, never wags.

“About 35 pounds,” Dunlap tells Garrison as he lifts the dog onto a stainless steel table. He’s lifted enough dogs to know their weight by feel.

Garrison draws 4 cc’s of the blue liquid Fatal Plus into a syringe.

She waves a handheld scanner across the dog’s body checking one last time for a microchip, an implanted identification device that would provide a last minute reprieve.

Nope. There rarely is.

Dunlap holds the dog close against his chest.

“We’re going to make it all better.”

Garrison gently slides the needle into a vein in the dog’s leg. She pushes slowly. Within 5 seconds the dog falls over.

“It hits the brain first,” Dunlap said. “So they don’t feel any pain. It’s just like an instant.”

Garrison puts a stethoscope to the dog’s chest and listens.

She shakes her head. Still beating.

Dunlap tugs the paper identification tag off the dog and throws it in the trash. Garrett tosses in the cage card, the last record the dog existed.

Garrison listens again. She nods. Dunlap places the limp body into the trash cart.

They unlock another cage and repeat the process.

Again and again.

Garrison gives them the best thing she can, a gentle hand, a kind word. She makes sure the needle doesn’t sting, that they don’t die scared.

But it still hurts when they lick her face.

The cycle continues

But even as pit bulls are euthanized, new dogs are born on the meaner streets of Memphis.

At the Whitehaven breeding operation where the pit bull was attacked and killed while giving birth, Russell cites owner Herbert Sykes for his dogs not having rabies tags. Sykes soaked a cotton ball with witch hazel and dabbed it on the wounds of the bloody dog that had slipped her chain and attacked the other dog.

He carried the dead dog’s surviving puppies into the house
.
The two pit bulls came into the world the way many of them leave it, in a bloody fight.

— Cindy Wolff: 529-2378