Pauline Houliaras surveyed her troops one last time.
“Please be aware,” she advised the 70 or so pit bull owners gathered around her, “dogs we encounter along the way are not all as well-mannered as ours are.”
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Tails wagging, the dogs set out with their owners from Rash Field in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and fanned out, cutting a path through the friendly and the fearful.
The event was Pit Bulls on Parade. Houliaras’s group, B-More Dogs, has organized such events monthly for more than a year to improve public perceptions of pit bulls. But this week’s promenade drew twice as many pit bull owners because of a recent Maryland Court of Appeals ruling that declared the dogs “inherently dangerous.”
“We got so tired of the negative images,” Houliaras, 44, said, referring to the stereotype of the animals being vicious, fighting machines. “We want to show [people] what the majority of pit bull owners look like.”
The high court ruling, which stemmed from a 2007 attack on a child in Towson, changed state law by singling out pit bulls. Previously, dogs of all breeds lived by what trial lawyers sometimes call “the one-free-bite rule.” If a dog bites someone and has no history of similar attacks, the owner is not automatically held responsible.
Under the recent ruling, an owner and an owner’s landlord can be held legally responsible for a pit bull bite even if the pit bull has never bitten anyone before.
The ruling could have wide-reaching effects beyond dog-bite cases. Depending on how a lease is written, a landlord can evict a tenant who has a pit bull, and some landlords have already put tenants on notice.
Enforcement can be tricky. The term pit bull actually refers to a number of breeds, but often any dog with a square-shaped head and short fur gets lumped in.
The ruling has galvanized animal rights supporters and pit bull owners in Maryland, who in the past few years have become increasingly more organized, forming coalitions using Facebook and Twitter.
Just a few days before the parade, a couple hundred people attended a rally in Annapolis while the state legislature was holding a special session focused on the budget. Pit bull advocates, some meeting in person for the first time, wanted lawmakers to take up an emergency bill to counteract the impact of the court decision. Many advocates want to abolish the one-free-bite rule and impose the same liability on all dog owners.
Vanessa Lee, 38, of Baltimore, who attended the parade with her pit bull, Mr. Crocodile, said she has been afraid to discuss the ruling with her landlord. She said she had a hard enough time finding a suitable apartment because Mr. Crocodile, who is 131 / 2, has arthritis and can’t climb stairs.
Lee pushes him around in a covered bike trailer that she jokingly has dubbed “The Chariot.”
As Mr. Crocodile stands by her side, the need for the chariot becomes apparent as his hind legs begin to wobble. Lee pays for laser therapy to treat his arthritis.
“If my landlord changes the lease, I don’t know what I am going to do because I’m certainly not going to get rid of him,” she said.
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