I want you to imagine that you are given a device denoted by governments as a threat. The device is the only one of its kind. Your device is banned in 12 countries. It’s ranked as one of the most powerful of its class, able to subdue a fully grown bull. Its history is that of humanities past with action, murder, and our control over nature.  The device is most draughted of its instability, as even a skilled expert could see the device going off by random. If this device or even its milder versions are even found in certain places, they’re immediately sent to be destroyed for the government’s status of such devices being “menacing”. The outlier of these statistics is one incorrect fact, and it is wrong by a huge proportion. It has nothing to do with the device itself.   You can’t manufacture the device in any factory, no matter how hard you try, but you could find it being sold next to chew toys. The device, in all of its glory, is a pitbull. Not necessarily worth the over hyped buildup, but how else would you describe the world’s deadliest dog? Especially when this dog first becomes apart of your daily life. I always felt the disconnection between how the impossible seem to become the possible. When it became the possible, a new impossibility came into existence, with how I should be able to love a ticking time bomb.

Getting a dog was to my family something that always toyed with our emotions. The idea of getting a dog was sparked by random chance. Everyone would talk about it, and then it just sizzle down until we forget we even talked about it. But the hope of getting a dog would always sprout when we would move into a new house, two new houses exactly. It was the beginning of the seventh grade when we first moved. The house was in a new school district. The cliche was this was to be a new life, but in reality it stayed the same. When we did not get the dog, it was almost a confirmation of how things wouldn’t change. Time passed. Two years. The question of getting a dog was reintroduced when we started to move to the second house, with more success than the last time.

The dog was totally black, with a few distinct white patches on her front paws, nose, and her back. If you were in a dark room and she was walking over to you, you’d see the white patches before you saw the dog. Her tail was the only part of her body that wasn’t infected with a white patch, but over time, one managed to pop up at the base of it. It was with the whitening of her tail, at 5 months, that I was began to notice her angsty attitude more and more. With every day she grew, her cuteness was replaced with the distinct features of a grown pitbull. It was only me who seemed worthy of having this perspective, as she would use my room as a second bathroom. The occasional accident was much more than that to me. It proved to me that she would be unstable at times and wouldn't listen to us, and her being a pitbull, would lead her being on the news. A very paranoid cause and effect, but if you had to always air freshen your room, would you be happy about it? Whatever she did, I saw it from another 5 perspectives and tried to see how it was bad.

I was keen on how the dog food industry feeds dogs, and I was disgusted with the similarities I found to that of human food. I really didn’t want to have a dog that was feed poison. I was already struggling to getting more healthier food in the house for myself. For the dog, I could never love them if I were feeding them garbage dog food, as most of America does so blindly believing it is the right choice for their dog. Why would I want to raise a dog on poison? How could you love something you are killing?

You wouldn’t fear a child for acting hyper, as it’s a child, but I obviously didn’t think of her as a child. What she would do would make me question whether or not she was worth my time. When I would have to take her out, I felt that I was going to have to tackle a chained bear ( bad reference to the literal things pitbulls would have to fight). I only saw her as a wild animal out there, and whenever she would act crazy, I was not prepared to handle her.  Though she was small, she could jump off the grass like a trampoline. The grass was a catalyst to her believing that I was a piece of meat. I thought she was genuinely trying to attack me, but I now know she only wanted to play.  I only thought, during her ‘attacks’, that we would have an unstable pit in our lives for the next 15 years. I would go on from that to fear what she was, and believe that she was crazy. It wasn’t long, though, that I felt that this train of thought was extremely passive, ineffective, and useless. It was only my irrational thinking, as every dog could be tamed.

What I did, to ultimately set a path of my decision making, was to help Iris act like a normal dog before everyone got tired of her behavior. As I said, I noticed her behavior earlier than the rest of them, so I had more time to react to her than the rest of them. This was true, as everyone in my family felt the pain of her behavior. Iris would rip their pants from acting to rough, and my dad, the one who got her, advocated in getting rid of her already. We were all trying to teach her, but I basically became her caretaker. This would mean playing with her more so she wouldn't spaz out on everybody and also to give her a better diet. I also used a lot of discipline, like teaching her the rights and the wrongs of being a house pet. I finally said her name now because she acts normal now. The dog before Iris wasn’t Iris, but a dog doing what they’re instincts told her to do. I can’t tell if she will act out anytime soon, but she only acts normal, so I feel glad that I was there to help that dog become Iris.