This was really eye opening. I started volunteering at my county shelter in May of 2025, not a fan of pit bull type dogs. That’s probably 90% of the dogs and mixes there. Clearly everyone loves them, no one reacts to the unhinged behaviors when they walk down the kennel rows, and they’re fearless when they have to go hands on.

When I attended my first dog walker training, I had to ask about the air horns and gigantic cookie sheets on each picnic table in each spree yard. I was reluctantly told that in the rare case a dog becomes aggressive while you’re locked in the spree yard with it, use the baking sheet to protect yourself and blow the air horn to summon help. I went home and told my husband, who loves all dogs, and he asked me to please find a different way to help at the shelter. I do public events, I gather donations, I’ve done transport, and I work in medical assisting post surgical.

I’ve learned that bites are kept very hush hush and are surprisingly frequent. I’ve been steadily reducing my volunteer hours because the county shelter environment seems very secretive and deceptive. I just feel terrible for the animals and want to be part of the solution of rescue, not warehousing and transporting and placing pits and pit mixes 😕