Why is it that redemption seems to be something only made for humans? A human can tear someone apart, maim and scar them both physically and mentally. A human can murder and abuse even the most innocent individuals within our societies, the youngest or most vulnerable of us, and their punishment is incarceration, with the chance of them being freed and let out onto our streets again when the system deems them rehabilitated.

A murderer or rapist can commit their crimes, go to prison and then be released when they claim they have seen the error of their ways or have found religion, yet if an animal makes a simple mistake, if it lashes out unintentionally in a bout of fear or pain and causes an injury, they all but forfeit their life.

How is it that we see our societies today as so advanced and civilised and yet so many find themselves baying for the blood of whatever innocent animal has stumbled into their path. We see it every day, in the papers, on the TV, someone is injured or loses their life to an animal which is simply displaying behaviours that time and evolution have provided it with. It is often a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and many who survive such attacks admit that the animal was just doing what it does naturally and they harbor no ill will towards it. Yet you can almost guarantee that not long after the incident there will be a backlash, people claiming that now all the animals within that species are dangerous and should be eradicated.

I’m in no way claiming that the loss of life or the injuries these people and those around them sustain are anything less that terrible, but when looked at in a grander scale, the actions and subsequent injuries inflicted by these animals are little compared to the horrors that those within the human race commit on a daily basis.

You cannot change nature, an animal will react to a stimuli in the way that evolution has equipped it to. In a highly stressful situation, an animal will react on instinct, much in the same way you or I flinch or automatically pull back from something that has harmed us, i.e. a burn or a bite. When an animal bites or attacked it is very often being driven by instinct. When a human does something unspeakable they are very rarely acting on instinct. It takes more than instinct to continually abuse another person or an animal, to fight a dog, to rape someone, to murder in cold blood.

Some of the most horrific things I have seen in this life, were caused by man, not by animals, and yet he can still be forgiven for all he has done. How is that fair? How can people still blame the animals when it is man that has driven them to act the way they do? How are people still so blind? How can they turn a blind eye to the wrongs that are committed every day when animals are killed for things that we have done? For our sins?

How civilised can we say our societies are when we spend our time using animals and blaming them for everything that we do wrong? We cannot call ourselves civilised until we have all learnt to take responsibility for our own actions and open our eyes to what we, as a species, are doing to this planet and every organism that resides on it with us.

I’m aware that I haven’t posted in a while, have had a lot of things going on in my home life and I only recently got back from South Africa but anyway, those are stories for another time.

I met a bloke in town today with a Staffie, the dog was gorgeous, a sweet little old thing that just wiggled at everyone and everything that went past her. She had some wounds on her muzzle that she acquired when she attacked by a feral cat that she had been trying to run up and say hello to. Seeing the way that people reacted to her made me realise just how much people rely on first impressions and how ingrained these impressions can become. I got some of the dirtiest looks ever when I took my 2 year old neice over to see the dog, she loves animal and had been shouting about how she wanted to go and see the ‘doggie’ as soon as she saw her. The Staffie loved it just as much as she did and promptly decided that my neice obviously needed a slobber bath which Keira was more than happy to recieve.

Despite the fact that she is a member of my family and has listened to my ramblings and rants about Bull Terriers, my sister-in-law is still unsure about the breeds but even she fell in love with this dog and was more than happy to come and say hello to her. We got talking to the owner and he told us about the abuse that he has recieved over the years that he has had her, but he also told us about the support he has recieved from other Bully lovers and the peoples whos minds have been changed by him and his canine companion.

There are a lot of people out there that think that people that like or own Bull Terrier breeds are only a minority but they are wrong, there are so many of us and you will find within our ‘community’ that there is a huge amount of support, whether it be fostering, re-homing or simply talking and being there for each other. We are all brought together by our love for these dog. They are beautiful animals, loving, caring, doting, determined, loyal, devoted, they are a symbol of loyalty and strength and you will often find that these traits are also shown by the people that love and care for them.

To a lot of people, a dog is just a dog, if that animal is taken away there are sadly a lot of people that would just go out and buy another one. There are so many people however that have owned dogs, not only of Bull Terrier breeds, that have been taken away wrongfully, and these people fight tooth and nail to get them back. They fight for these animals freedom, for their right to a fair justice system, for their lives, and these people are backed by hundreds or thousands even, of people who also want the same thing. People that have never met or spoken to each other, that do not live in the same country or continent even, people that may not even speak the same language. If so many people can come together to support one family, to free one animal, or to help it heal and find a home where it can recieve the love that it deserves, if our voices are loud enough to be heard all around the world for one cause, then why is it that it is somehow not loud enough for governments worldwide to hear? Why have they all not heard our pleas yet and ended BSL for good?

Because impressions still stand. These impressions that are fuelled by the media and uneducated people are the reasons why BSL still exists and why governments and the law still allows these injustices to occur. With all the differences we have all made however, with all the lives we have changed, saved, we can do this. It is a hard road, it always will be and there will be losses along the way, ones that will break our hearts and tear us apart, but if we all carry on fighting, I believe we can make that difference, and that one day we will be able to look down into those large, love filled eyes without feeling that niggling fear in the back of our minds of ‘will those eyes still look like that when they come to take her/him away’, ‘how hard will I have to fight to get her/him back?’, ‘how far or fast will I have to run to keep her/him by my side’, ‘what will I do if I lose him/her?’, ‘how will explain it to my children?’, ‘how do I tell them their best friend is never coming home?’.

Until that day comes we are going to have one hell of a fight, we already are, and it breaks my heart to think of all of the people that have already paid the cost, who have already lived through those questions and who have seen the answers, who have already had their hearts broken and their families ripped apart. Every single soul that has lost the fight and been taken away by BSL will be remembered and I’m sure will be there to celebrate with us when our breeds are finally safe and we can live without the fear of losing them.

So…

I’m not entirely sure what to write here, I hate these first posts, once your started it’s fine, it’s just the getting started that is often the problem.

Well I might as well start as I mean to go on…by rambling on about random crap and opinions that no-one else really wants to listen to or actually cares about.

Well then…let’s begin.

My name is actually Niki, despite what my username on here says, well actually it’s Nikita but I can’t stand that name. I’m not entirely sure why, I’ve never really liked it. I guess part of it could be the fact that you physically can’t say my full name without sounding vaguely posh and trust me, I am far from that.

I would much rather have a name like Sitara Rose, although that doesn’t really make a lot of sense seen as technically that is another name that you cannot say without sounding posh as well, still it does seem like the better of the two options in my opinion.

“If Nothing Else, I Want To Be Remembered As The Girl Who Gave Her Life To And For Her Dogs” - I believe that that was what I wrote on my main page. To those who don’t know, which is pretty much anyone that hasn’t spoken to me for more than 5 seconds, I love dogs…well all canines really but mainly dogs, and out of all of those dog breeds, mainly Bull Terriers.

Pitbulls, Staffies, English Bully’s, I can’t help it, I love all of them. Hence the aforementioned quote, which I wrote myself by the way, just in case anyone was wondering, which I highly doubt. Anyway, my goal in life…well it’s not really a goal as such…well actually I suppose it is…Maybe I should reword that. What I am devoting my life to, is opening my own Bull Terrier rescue centre. I suppose you could class it as a goal really, it is just a goal that I will reach no matter the cost.

A lot of people have asked me why I love these dogs so much and I don’t really have a proper answer. Well I do, my first day at my work placement and I was asked to play in the field with a dog named Cadbury, so I agreed and the next thing I knew they were walking down the yard with a Pitbull that was wearing a muzzle that made him look like Hannibal Lecter. I was brought up being told that these dogs were dangerous so I naturally thought that I was going to die, but the time it took them to walk down the small path and leave me completely alone with him minus a muzzle, he had legged it across the field, found a football and lobbed it at my feet. When they came back 3/4 of an hour later, I was sprawled on the grass with him lying across me and I had fallen completely in love.

Every time I went there afterwards I made sure to work with all of the different Bull Terriers and I found that Cadbury wasn’t just a one off. These dogs weren’t the monsters that I had read about in the papers, they were beautiful, loving and compassionate animals that wanted nothing more than a kind word and a scratch behind the ear. The more time I spent with those dogs, the more I fell in love with them and their breed, and became the girl that you see today.

As sad and pathetic as it is, these dogs are my life, I would do and give anything for them and I can honestly say, that the only thing that I can see for definite in my future, is them. If I don’t have them, I don’t have anything and I honestly feel as if I would lose my purpose in life. Opening my rescue centre is all I want to do with my life, it’s all that I’m working towards and I want to change peoples hearts and minds and show everyone that the picture that the media paints, and the real one, are completely different.

I know that I am going to face a lot of opposition and I don’t expect to change the world, but if I can change the mind of just one person, get them to give these dogs a chance, then that will be good enough for me. In my centre I will be taking in dogs from all the Bull Terrier breeds and from all different backgrounds, including ex-fighters, I will rehabilitate them and where possible re-home them. Those that I cannot re-home, for whatever reason, will stay with me. The best dogs, both my own and those up for adoption, will be taken out into the community to try and dispell the myths, lies and hysteria that surround these so that I can show people that they are no different than any other breed. A dog is a dog is a dog, and it is only as good as you raise it to be.

There are people out there that have every right to dislike the breed personally, but that doesn’t mean that the whole breed should be slaughtered. The acts of a few should not condem the whole. If the entire breed of dog was bad or dangerous then don’t you think they would be banned world wide? And that there wouldn’t be hundreds of Pitbull that work as therapy dogs in the States?

The laws as they stand condemn all dogs of the Pitbull ‘type’, so basically anything that looks like a Bull Terrier. Even if you dog has no Bull Terrier of any kind in it whatsoever, it can be taken and destroyed. Puppies that haven’t even opened their eyes yet are deemed as dangerous and blood thirsty monsters and are slaughtered with the rest

No matter how you look at it, it is wrong, and the sooner they scrap the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and bring in some decent canine based legislation, the better. At the end of the day, a dog is only as good as you make it, and if you want to see the true monsters in the horror stories you read in the paper, then you want to take a look at the creature holding the other end of the leash, because that is the only monster that you will see there.

When they were creating the Bull Terrier breeds they were looking for a dog that they could fight at night, but take home to be a family pet during the day. When fighting a dog you are dealing with them in high levels of pain, fear and aggression, you can not fight a dog that will potentially turn on you at that time. When breeding, dogs that even so much as growled at their handler were often beaten to death and were certainly never bred from. As a result, they ended up with a breed with an impecible temperament, one that would never turn on humans but was aggressive towards their own kin and other animals.

These dogs don’t just see humans as someone who provides food and warmth, to a Bull Terrier you are their life. They love completely and unconditionally, forgive completely regardless of what you do to them, are completely devoted to their owner and will do anything to please them. They would lay down their life in a second for their family and the ones that they love. Unfortunately, the wrong people want them for these reasons, they have taken and manipulated these traits that 100 years ago had the Bull Terrier as the poster dog for America and the most trusted family pet in England, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier even bore the name of the ‘Nanny dog’ because of it’s love, devotion and gentleness with children. The dogs have not changed in this time, they remain the same in everything they do, it is society that has changed.

They gave their all, poured their heart and soul into serving us and we have repaid them by turning our backs and condemming them all. The slaughter and the bloodshed must end, and it must end soon before it is too late and we lose an ally and friend with the purest of hearts. These dogs should not be made to suffer for the sins of man.

People need to open their eyes to see what lies before them before the loss becomes greater than just one breed. Once the Bull Terriers are gone it will be the turn of the Rottweiler, then the Doberman, the Mastiffs, the Boxer, the Bulldogs, the German Shepherd, the Spaniel, the Labrador, the working dogs, the toy breeds. This will not stop until as a species, Canis Lupus Familiaris, the dog, is all but extinct. Destroying one breed that society claims is dangerous will not protect people or reduce the number of dog attacks and bites, the only thing that will change, will be the breed of dog villainized by the media. The only way to protect the public and reduce the number of dog bites is to crack down and bring in legislation that focusses on the owners, because whilst the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 stands and BSL (Breed Specific Legislation) is still in place, all you will find is empty hearts, broken families and tears shed for the one torn from the arms of their loved ones, prosecuted and murdered for a crime that they did not commit.

Anyway, that is my rant officially over! ^_^