Pauline Nevins

At 5 each morning, my brother, Kevan, runs his two border collies across the meadows near his village, come rain or shine. Mostly rain. It’s England.

I have a soft spot for border collies. Oreo, our pet for the years our children were young, was one. My husband, Jim, selected him from the litter birthed by his mother’s dog. Oreo was the only black-and-white pup. The rest were brown and white. If you’ve met me, you’d know my husband likes the unusual.

During the phone conversation, my brother and I commiserated about our shared experience with border collies. We agreed they were a gentle breed but one that needed exercising, hence Kevan’s morning hikes.

Where did the breed border collie originate, I wondered. I knew they were herding dogs long before I had the pleasure of watching a sheepdog demonstration a couple of years ago at Kells Sheep Centre while on a tour of Ireland’s Ring of Kerry. I learned the breed was so named because they were bred on the border between England and Scotland. That made sense.

As Kevan and I chit-chatted about various dog breeds, I told him pit bulls scared me. I’d read about their gruesome attacks. “Can’t own one in the U.K.,” he said in his usual brusque manner. I learned Parliament passed the Dangerous Dogs Act in 1991, banning pit bulls and several other breeds. Exemptions are possible, but the dog has to be muzzled in public and you can’t breed or sell them. Apparently, not everyone was thrilled with this ruling. Blame is placed on the owners who train the dogs to be aggressive.

During our phone chat, I told Kev about the stout little pit bull that roamed our property not too long ago. My husband would shoo it away. It never growled or turned toward him — just kept on chugging down the trail.

Pretty soon, we stopped seeing it. That summer, we were invited to a neighborhood barbecue. As I sat on the patio munching away I turned when I heard a screen door bang. Strolling out of the house was none other than the chunky pit bull. I froze. The dog lumbered by me and lay down a few feet away. I kept a suspicious eye on it for the rest of the afternoon.

Before I left the barbecue, I asked our host about the dog. He said it had wandered onto their property and stayed. Efforts to find the owner were unsuccessful. They were delighted with its calm temperament. I also related this story to a friend who said she knew someone with a similar experience with pit bulls.

I called him. He was the proud owner of a pit bull for 19 years, he told me, and it was the gentlest dog he’d ever had. When walking his pet, it would lurch toward people, tail wagging, ready to lick them to death. I imagined what my reaction would have been had his pit bull lurched toward me.

Until recently, I’d never been within six feet of a pit bull nor heard them described as gentle. My fear of them was developed from reading and hearing about their grisly attacks. I wondered if that’s how human prejudices are developed, and stereotypes perpetuated when one is exposed only to the negative, and never the positive?

The pit bull owner went on to tell me about the day he took his dog with him to the dump. “As I pulled up to the gate, my dog threw himself at the truck window barking furiously at a young man at the entrance. This totally perplexed me. I’d never seen him act like this. Several days later, when my dog was outside in our fenced yard, he began barking incessantly. I looked out and saw a young guy. He’d propped his bike up against the outside of the fence. He bent down, picked up a handful of rocks, pelted my dog, jumped on his bike and rode off. It was the kid from the dump.”

I’d now heard two stories about mild-mannered pit bulls. I’m not about to run out and get one, but it did give me food for thought.

Kevan and I ended our conversation laughing about our mother’s devotion to her little dog. After her eight kids left home, she purchased a toy poodle. Mother lavished more love on “Pepe Duke” than any one of us kids had ever received. When teased about this, our Irish mother had no qualms about defending her actions. “The dog doesn’t give me any lip,” she’d say.

Ironically, an acquaintance recently told me the only dog that had ever bitten him was a poodle.