My family has always been a golden retriever family.
Ever since I can remember we’ve had the obedient, gentle, and playful copper-haired canines trotting through our house, a blue racquetball in their mouths’ so often, they’d almost look naked without them.
That was until my sister decided to rescue a pit bull she named Dolores.
“More like Hurricane Dolores,” my mom would refer to her as whenever I called, her beloved pet cockatiel singing in the background.
Dolores was by no means a golden retriever. Being only a year, she had tons of puppy energy and no concept of her strength. She would aggressively pounce on any human she encountered and would break and bump into things all the time, like the cockatiel’ cage.
Dolores was also smart and quickly learned how to do things like open doors, a skill she proudly demonstrated to our family’s mailman one day while he was trying to leave a package on our front porch.
“She chased him half way down the block!” my mom told me.
Dolores was a handful, but her most pronounced personality trait was love, and it didn’t take long for my dad and sister to fall completely head-over-heels for her.
My mom, however, did not trust her, and one day she called me and said: “I think she’s killing my birds…”
My mom did not like Dolores at first. She, like many, didn’t think you could trust a pit bull.
“She tries to stare me down and intimidate me a lot,” I remember her telling me. “And whenever I walk her, she’s so much stronger than me, it scares me.”
During this time, my mom would find refuge with her six cockatiels that she kept on the back patio near a swimming pool. She had started with just two birds, named Lucy and Louie, but those lovebirds had five chicks that my mom couldn’t bare to part with. So she decided to keep her flock, naming the babies Mr. Featherbottom, Mrs. Featherbottom, Jasmine, and her favorite, Romeo.
She loved all of her birds very much and one day she called me to tell me that Romeo had died.
“I found him floating facedown in the pool,” she said on the verge of tears. “And he had a tooth mark in his head.”
Naturally, she blamed Dolores.
Then one day, she walked out on the patio and noticed the birdcage door was open. Two of her birds were missing, Jasmine and Lucy. Then she noticed Dolores.
Dolores was sniffing around below a barbecue grill, and when my mom walked over to see what she was sniffing, my mom found Lucy.
“She was about to eat Lucy!” my mom yelled and placed the bird back in the cage.
Then Dolores ran off.
Jasmine was still missing, so she ran after her. Dolores began sniffing around the side of the house when she stopped at one spot and began aggressively growling, pawing, and digging. My mom looked where Dolores was digging and didn’t see anything. She dragged Dolores back to the patio, when Dolores began barking at the pool.
My mom looked to see what she was barking at and found Jasmine floating in the pool, in the same spot where she found Romeo. But Jasmine was still alive.
My mom picked her up, and when she did, she noticed the same tooth mark in the bird’s head.
Now my mom was furious. She knew Dolores was killing her birds.
Again, my sister and father knew their sweet dog couldn’t have killed anything. So they tried to convince my mom otherwise, but she thought she finally had proof.
Dolores was a monster.
Then the next day everything came to a head.
My dad and Dolores were hanging out on the patio.
This is how my dad recalls the following incident:
“While I was enjoying my a cigar, Delores ran to the birdcage and started to chase an unknown critter.”
It was a rat!
It jumped into the pool … and swam to the very same spot where my mom had found the birds with the bite marks in their head. That's when everyone pieced together that the rat had somehow snuck into the birdcage taken hold of the birds.
“Delores jumped in the pool to engage in a sea battle with evil rodent, and I became alarmed for Delores’ safety,” my dad said.
Thankfully, my dad got Dolores out of the pool, and she immediately ran to the birdcage and stood in front of it, keeping guard.
That’s when my parents realized that Dolores wasn’t to blame for the birds getting loose and Romeo dying. She was trying to protect the birds, not kill them.
Since this incident there has not been a single cockatiel fatality. In fact, Dolores still guards the cage to this day.
Most importantly, my mom’s relationship with Dolores has drastically changed.
“I absolutely love her,” she says now.
She has learned a great lesson about pit bulls. “They are not vicious. They are not monsters.
They are wonderful, loving dogs who love their families,” she says.
And thankfully, my family loves their pit bull the same way she loves them.
Please SHARE if you love pit bulls!
