As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I volunteer as a dog walker at my local SPCA. It’s not uncommon for volunteers to become attached to the animals that they volunteer with, and I have my favourites too. On this particular day however, I decided to walk a dog that I hadn’t walked before. There was a pretty little tan coloured female Pit Bull named Breezy that had recently arrived. She seemed nice, so I thought I’d walk her. Once we got outside, I noticed that there were parts hanging from Breezy that made it impossible for this dog to be Breezy at all, this dog was a boy!
He’s a handsome boy, tan in colour with a white stripe on the top of his head and white on his chest. Not a big Pit Bull, but in good shape, lean and muscular, and where there’s muscle there’s strength. This guy would do well in the “tractor trailer pull” event in a strong man competition!
We were both having a good time, I could tell he was, because he was smiling that famous Pit Bull smile. That’s when I noticed that his bottom left canine looked odd. On closer inspection I could see that the tooth was flat on top, no sharp point that a normal tooth would have, and that the flat part of the tooth was blackened. Same thing with the other three canine’s, and, all of the molars on the top and bottom of his mouth seemed as if they’d had their points removed uniformly. My mind jumped to the whole Michael Vick horror show, and then to thinking that this dog, the one that I was walking right now, might have been prepped to be used as a bait dog by having his teeth filed. In that moment I knew I wanted to adopt this dog.
I don’t know for sure whether or not this dog’s teeth were filed or if somebody had plans to use him as a bait dog in a dog fighting ring. Maybe at some point he had been chewing on a chain or something and that wore his teeth down? It just seems very strange to me that all of the points on all of his teeth have been flattened, and so uniformly. I tried finding some pictures online of bait dogs with their teeth filed, but couldn’t find any.
I met this handsome boy on Thursday September 10th, and the following Thursday Zeus was at home with Sweety and I. The SPCA actually had a name on file for this guy, identified by a tattoo in his ear. The name they had on file was Zeus. I liked that name, so I kept it.
I made the following video this past Friday. Zeus’ and my first time at the ball park together. =]
I'm a dog guardian to Sweety, my 15 year old Border Collie & Zeus a stray American Pit Bull Terrier that I rescued in October of 2009. I write about canine health and nutrition focusing mainly on topics relating to feeding a raw meaty bones diet.
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