Pit bulls go to work as therapy dogs

AUSTIN (KXAN) - In the gymnasium at north Austin's Gullett Elementary School, a young boy sits on the floor with a book in his lap. The child is trying to sharpen his reading skills and he has a helper. Actually, he has two helpers: a woman who is volunteering her time and her dog.

Across the room, Patti Brauss, a 14-year veteran physical education teacher, watches with a grin on her face.

"There are kids who absolutely light up when they see a dog and that builds bridges sometimes if there's a stressful situation in the classroom," said Brauss, "or a skill the child can't do, and by being able to share that with a dog or be motivated by the dog, we can't do that as humans. It's the power of the petting."

On the gym floor another dog rolls over on her back and accepts some of that petting from another student.

"I think she's precious," the child said. "She's precious; she's a precious dog."

Nearby, another girl bends down and kisses a dog on the head.

It's not just the kids that are getting into it all. Owner Ashley Arkin brought her dog to the gym.

"It's that emotional connection that just breaks you down and brings you back to your primal self," she said. "I love it; I love helping other people and the best thing I can do is help others with my dog."

The thing is, though, Arkin's dog is not just any dog. He's a pit bull dog! That's right, the breed that many people condemn as vicious and uncontrollable. Type "pit bull attacks" into Google and you'll be deluged with over 2,000,000 hits. Pit bull owner Lydia Zaidman begs to differ.

"They love people; they're extremely tolerant of people." Zaidman said. "Of course, each individual one has to be temperament tested and each one is an individual like any other dog. But in general, they temperament test very high. They really love people; they like to be around people and so they do really well."

Zaidman is president of " Love-A-Bull ," a nonprofit group that sticks up for the pit bull breed. She also runs the " Pit Crew ," thought to be the only program in the country that trains only pit bulls for therapy work. Working with professional dog trainer Julie Eskoff, Zaidman just concluded a training program designed to certify pit bulls for use in a school setting.

"What we want are dogs that offer behavior," Eskoff said. "As humans, we micromanage: 'Sit, down, quiet.' I want to teach dogs to offer behavior and then we reward them. Then you have a dog that's chosen his consequences. You have a completely different animal that's offering behavior. We nag them, you know, humans are task-oriented and I'm teaching people that you've got to get on dog time. You've got to learn to be more instinctive. You've got to learn their culture and their language."

Pit bulls are just as capable as any other breed, she insists, but not all dogs in any breed will work out. The pit bull training program started with nine animals, but two were soon sent home. The other seven graduated.

"We're looking for trustworthy, reliability and control," said Eskoff. "One dog got culled because the guy had been playing with him and made him a running buddy. We didn't want to take that away but a running buddy is not a therapy dog. From what I understand, that gentleman is going back and really training and ramping up for this.

"The other dog was going through the program quite well but by the time we got to adding the human stimulus and the activity, this dog's arousal came to the table. He doesn't know how to govern himself yet. He's a young dog and he was using his feet and mouth too much. You can't put your feet on people and you can't put your mouth on people. But I hope that dog comes back in about a year. I want that dog to grow up a little bit and we'll teach him to govern himself.

"If not, we'll find him nose work or agility. Sometimes you realize a dog isn't made for this and I'm certainly not going to make a dog unhappy to do this. You either inherently have this skill or you don't."

This, by the way, is not the first time pit bulls have gone to class with kids at Gullett Elementary . Zaidman's dog has been working with students there for two years, as a part of another, multi-breed therapy program.

"We're an animal-friendly school," said Brauss. "There's bunnies and lizards and all kinds of interesting creatures around. We even have a school cat."

Parents, she said, are supportive, even when it comes to the pit bull breed.

"They want to talk with you and ask questions about the dog and how they got such good manners and things like that," said Brauss. "We can talk to them about the value of training and the work that goes into supporting a dog and helping them be successful."

So how does all this jive with the never-ending stream of news stories about pit bulls running amok, attacking everything from other dogs to children, even adults? And what about all the stories about dog-fighting rings that send pit bulls into a pit for a bloody fight to the death?

"They are the number one most abused