Lastly, we analyzed data from an animal shelter that ceased applying breed labeling on kennels, and compared lengths of stay and outcomes for all dog breeds, including pit bulls, before and after the change in labeling practice. We call the latter dogs, "lookalikes." In Study 3, we compared the perceived attractiveness in video recordings of pit-bull-type dogs and lookalikes with and without breed labels. In Study 2, we compared lengths of stay and perceived attractiveness of dogs that were labeled as pit bull breeds to dogs that were phenotypically similar but were labeled as another breed at an animal shelter. We also assessed whether the addition of a human handler influenced those perceptions. In Study 1, the perceived behavioral and adoptability characteristics of a pit-bull-type dog were compared with those of a Labrador Retriever and Border Collie. However discrepancies have been found between breed identification as typically assessed by welfare agencies and the outcome of DNA analysis.
Current dog breed identification practices in animal shelters are often based upon information supplied by the relinquishing owner, or staff determination based on the dog's phenotype. Previous research has indicated that certain breeds of dogs stay longer in shelters than others however exactly how breed perception and identification influences potential adopters' decisions remains unclear. By studying the aesthetic and rhetorical paradigms used in the online sale of the American Bully, we show how, and why, the pit bull has been both physically redesigned and ideologically reconstructed as a vehicle by which its breeders and owners might now claim patriotic belonging and social normativity. Embodying exaggerated and "extreme" features of the pit bull that the American public has been conditioned to fear, the American Bully functions as a pointed retort to the socio-economic and political systems that have kept American 'Others' on the margins of society and made sense of this discrimination by way of the understood inherently violent capacities of the Other'd body. We argue that it is the prevalent American fear of disorder – and, in more recent decades, 'disorderly' racialized bodies – that has had the paradoxical effect of both vilifying the pit bull, and laying the groundwork for the emergence of a new breed of pit bull-type dog called the American Bully. We trace the history of pit bull-type dogs in the United States along race and class lines (early 20th century - present), showing how the efforts to control and contain certain humans runs parallel to the profiling and elimination of certain domestic dogs. This article examines how fear of human Otherness affects the contemporary breeding and marketing of dogs in America.
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