“There is a moral in every story if we will just look for it”

                                                            - Lewis Carroll

Francis Metcalf Interviews Richard F Stratton

When I was 14 I fell in love with a dog.  This dog happened to be a Pit Bull.  I searched for information about the breed.  My school library had nothing.  I hit the micro fiche, I found many articles from various papers around the country.  Most of them were horror stories, they were fascinating, but was I to believe that this powerful dog came out of no where to plague mankind?  This certainly was not the case with my awesome friend who inspired me everyday.

I found nothing about Pit Bull history and development.  I went to the librarian to ask if she could find me a book on the subject.  I remember the ancient computer monitor blinking in green hieroglyphics:  

   _Richard_F_Stratton_The_American_Pit_Bull_Terrier____...

I asked if the librarian would order it.  One month later the book arrived.  I opened the package and pulled out a book that was over an inch thick.  I covered it in brown paper like you were supposed to do with your school text books, this way I could read it during class.  I read with awe the quotes at the chapter heads.  Quotes by Einstein, George Washington, and Lewis Carroll.  “Jeez I could even show this to my mom,” I thought as I ventured deeper into the Pit Bull rabbit hole.

The quotes indicated to me that this book was about more than a breed of dog; it was about history, culture, perception, class, aggression, and free thinking.  All the same stuff that the punk rock music I was listening to was telling me.  All the same stuff that my beatnik parents had taught me to value, sans aggression, but I had enough of that raging in my early teenage system.  I decided that every school report-- history, science, english, etc.--I had to do would be about the Pit Bull.   Stratton's books allowed me to think of a dog as four dimensional.  But more than that, Stratton encouraged me to question all conventions.  The message was loud and clear.  Question authority!

Twenty one years later I am still questioning.  It’s strange to think that what is considered to be the epitome of macho in the dog world sparked in me whirlwinds of thought.  I owe much of this to finding Stratton's books.  By the way when I told him how much he had influenced me, he politely apologized.  No apologies necessary, Mr. Stratton!

"The cichlid fishes are a natural treasure, a priceless gift to Darwinists. They have made of Africa's great lakes exhibition tanks of high speed evolution. The cichlid species of these three lakes outnumber the combined mammal and bird faunas of the whole of North America. In Lake Victoria, some 500 new species have arisen in a mere 12,400 years (that's approximately the time since humans first discovered agriculture), reinventing the same range of trades as evolved geological ages ago in the much older Lake Tanganyika. The cichlid fishes are almost too good to be true, and nobody is better qualified to show them to us than George Barlow. But he does more than tell us about his beloved fishes. He makes his fishes tell us about ourselves."

— Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

"This is the most significant book on cichlids ever published. The marvel is that the book is so wondrously written that it can be read with nearly equal compensation by professional biologists and inquisitive layman alike. It is the book cichlid hobbyists have had in their dreams. At last, it is a reality."

— Richard F. Stratton, writer and aquarist.

TWO QUOTES about George Barlow’s book The Cichlid Fishes by Richard Dawkins and Richard F. Stratton.

Links of interest from Stratton & Metcalf’s conversation:

Below are just a few of the books written by Richard F Stratton.

NOTE:  I have to mention that this interview is not an endorsement of Stratton’s books.  Richard F. Stratton is a complicated man: worldly, curious, liberal, but the books he has spent 3 decades writing cast a much darker shadow on Stratton’s identity.  His Pit Bull books are not warm and fuzzy.  Most of the characters mentioned are glorified scum bags, glorified by Stratton’s personal attachment to the characters and his detachment from the acts of animal cruelty they were participating in.  A lot of stuff Stratton writes about, I do not agree with; however, his books were still influential to me, at the age of 15 they made me think, and form my own opinions.  As I grew up and became more and more interested in dogs, my reading of Stratton’s books, combined with my obsession with animal training and my love for pit bulls created someone who was uniquely suited to help a breed in peril.  I pride myself on being able to understand both the light and the dark sides of the Pit Bull, and I resent people who either try and paint them as harmless and cutesy calling them “Pet Bulls” or “Saint Francis Terriers” or people who paint them as vicious, and unpredictable.  The truth is much more complicated and reading Stratton is just one clue in untangling the knot of the Pit Bull breed and those who identify with them.

The interview took place at the 2008 Working Pit Bull  National Championships in Riverside, CA  where I was asked to judge the protection portion of the test and Stratton judged the conformation.   I was honored to judge along side of him in an event that is actually trying to do good by the Pit Bull by allowing them to prove themselves in an arena that honors their innate power while still asking for control and versatility.  Definitely a step forward in the evolutionary process of the American Pit Bull Terrier.   

I believe you are either part of the solution or part of the problem.   Some would consider Richard Stratton to be more part of the problem, however if you really want to help the Pit Bull evolve you must first understand their history, the influential people behind the breed, and the culture that has developed over hundreds of years.  Also I hope this interview will show the viewer a different side of Mr. Stratton.   A side that is not evident in his books. Most of all  I hope to inspire people to look at things not just in two dimensions as they sit on the page but in four dimensions, that is, in a way that takes into consideration the connectivity that exists even amongst subjects that are so seemingly different such as:  Pit Bulls, Fish, Politics, and language.

--Thanks for reading

   Francis Metcalf

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