New class to educate youth about pit bulls

Breaking the stigma behind a type of dog. On Thursday, the Humane Society of West Michigan held a seminar, hoping to educate people about pit bulls.

Shelters are often full of pets looking for their "fur-ever" homes.

"When you walk through the shelter, we can't really just judge every dog and say everything is this or that. We just don't know one way or the other," Humane Society of West Michigan Education Coordinator Amy Heddy said.

Often, many think the dogs they're seeing are pit bulls.

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"It looks like there's a lot of pit bulls in there. There probably isn't a lot of pit bulls in there," Heddy added.

The term, pit bull isn't an official breed, but is more of an umbrella term to describe several types of bully dogs like: American Stafforshire Terriers, American Bull Terriers and Bulldogs, as well as American Pit Bull Terriers.

"We label as mixed until we can do, you know, breed-specific DNA testing on them. But when you walk through the shelter, we can't really just judge every dog and say everything is this or that," Heddy explained.

October marks National Pit Bull Awareness Month. The Humane Society of West Michigan is looking further to teach kids about dogs in its first-ever pit bull education class.

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"I think that pit bulls get a bad break, basically. So I want them to know that some of the myths that they hear, like the lockjaw and some of those things, some of the myths that they hear just aren't true. They're just out there. And they're not true," Heddy said.

"Nobody should be necessarily afraid of pit bulls because any dog could be aggressive or any dog could be sweet," Matilda Nielsen, a student in the class, said.

As the humane society works on education, there is a package of bills that have been introduced in the Michigan House that is looking to prohibit counties, townships, cities, and villages from enacting or enforcing rules that regulate a dog based on breed.

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Over the past few years, dozens of cities in Michigan have banned or restricted pit bulls specifically.

Tyrion, one of the shelter's ambassadors, is looking to help shift the stigma.

"He just seemed so happy because he was just trotting around everywhere. And he kept going up to people and just giving them hugs. And it was really cute," Matilda said.

While cute, Heddy explains you should treat every dog as an individual.

One of the biggest lessons driven home during the class when meeting a new dog is always to ask the owner's permission to interact with them.

"'May I pet your dog?' lesson to them. It's always the very first thing you should do. If you see a dog with an owner, ask if you can pet it before you approach it," Heddy said. "We just want them to go about when they meet pit bulls, we don't want them to be scared. We don't want kids to have a fear of a certain kind of breed, any breed, really."

This was their first class on pit bull education, and the humane society hopes to do another one in the future. Next month, they're planning a class on teaching people how to better cope with the loss of a pet.

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