Word: pit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...good news for nearby White Pine County, a dusty patchwork of small towns, ranches and mines. Indeed, merchants from Ely (pop. 7,000) convinced Nevada's congressional delegation last summer that the park was desperately needed. For decades, Kennecott Copper Corp., which provided thousands of jobs at an open-pit mine near Ruth, had argued that the mountains might be mineral rich. By 1980 the mine was closed, undercut by cheap foreign copper. Unemployment skyrocketed. The new park, they hoped, would bring paying guests for hotels, restaurants and other services. Conservation suddenly began to look like good business...
...this orgy of pain and violence? "The dogs are almost like an extension of the owners' egos," says Orville Walls, a Philadelphia veterinarian. "The owners think, 'I may be low man on the economic totem pole, but I have the meanest, toughest dog on the street.' " Owning a pit bull, says Robert Armstrong, Houston's chief animal controller, "is a warning to others to stay off the sidewalk." Randall Lockwood of the Humane Society notes that the animals have become increasingly popular as dog fighting has moved from rural areas into cities. They appeal "to the disfranchised and the unemployed...
...result of the growing fear of these killer dogs, responsible owners have been put on the defensive. The name pit bull loosely applies to a crossbred strain of the American Staffordshire terrier and the American pit bullterrier as well as to other varieties. The most ferocious dogs, says Pat Owens, director of the Women's S.P.C.A. of Pennsylvania, are crossbred with German shepherds or Doberman pinschers. Richard Laue of the Northern California Pit Bullterrier Association accuses these "backyard breeders" of producing unpredictable "garbage dogs...
Despite the dogs' bloody reputation, owners such as Laue insist that purebred pit bulls have a "steady temperament and intense loyalty." Indeed, breeders believe that in time the animal will regain its gentler image of the 1930s, when a pit bull played Pete in the Our Gang films. Only 30 years ago, notes Ed Almeida, a dog trainer in El Monte, Calif., the Doberman was the most vicious of dogs. Now, he says, after years of careful breeding, Dobermans are "big boobs" compared with the pit bulls...
...Pit bulls are not bad dogs, but sadistic owners are turning the strong- jawed canines into a breed of dangerous killers...