In February of 2004 a Bouvier internet discussion list of long standing was subjected to denial of service attack by a pack of pit bull scum, including a creature called Hermine Stover, a washed up singer called Alvin Crow and an internet troll out of Amarillo Texas called Bill Thurmon whose internet persona is "treysdogbites" among many others.
The invasion began when a long term member of the Bouvier list generated a post reporting on harassment by punks with pit bulls in a Florida dog park. This was a very open list, was essentially ignored by the Dutch list owner, who apparently had pretty much lost interest, very seldom even read the posts. This openness produced a very large and active community with virtually no oversight. It had worked well for many years.
Within hours of the original post this Hermine creature joined the list and sent in a vindictive message addressing the Bouvier member as "fuckwad" and castigated the woman about the rights and virtues of the wonderful Pit Bull. And it went down hill from there. A group of ten to fifteen of what came to be known as the "pit scum" invaded the list with the purpose of sending in tens and hundreds of abusive daily messages, essentially making the list useless. The Bouvier list member was terrified by the tone and the threats, both implied and overt, physically frightened.
It took a week or so to contact the absentee Dutch owner, set up a set of moderators and then clean the pit scum off the list. In the process it came to light that this is a long standing MO of this group, coordinated through something called “Hagbusters” which had invaded a number of other lightly defended lists.
The net result was that large segments of the Bouvier community came to see the Pit Bull and pit fighting in a much more sinister light, came to see that the breed and the killing sport are opposite sides of the same coin, came to see that all too often those portraying themselves as nice dog owners and concerned "rescue" operators are just more of the same playing a convenient role.
Personally this opened my eyes to the fact that most pit bull people's primary attraction to the breed is the thrill of possessing a real fighting dog, not much more sophisticated than the grade school child's pride in my dog is tougher than your dog.
That this is the case of the original pit men and the small time street punks was a given, but it was a bit of a revelation to learn that it also applied to the breed activists and promoters up and down the food chain. The support of the continuation of pit fighting as essential to the breed among the most upscale elements, including crusaders against breed specific legislation, came as a revelation; it is virtually impossible to get any of these people to take a hard core stand against pit fighting on fundamental moral grounds.
The fact is that all of these people, from the street punks to the prim suburban housewife activists, are fundamentally driven by the thrill of owning a real honest to god dog fighting machine. The punk sees the prospect of respect in a life where otherwise he is, well, just a punk; and the matron is thrilled that her kindness and love have controlled the aggression below the surface, proving that there really are no bad dogs, only bad people.
Running the scum off of the list was not, in the end, enough. Just as it is necessary to deal with a poisonous snake rather than pushing it out, sending it to a neighbors yard, it is necessary to stand up to these people, stand up for decency in the canine world.
That is the purpose of this web site.