A tortured adolescent walks into a school and shoots it up.

I then deduce that all adolescents must be horrible, vicious, murder machines.

Does that seem fair? I find it pretty illogical reasoning. Stereotyping if we want to be technical. Yet we are all guilty. 

We stereotype where it suits us and individualize where it suits us. Rescuing a Pitbull made me see my own behaviors in this area.

When someone stereotyped sweet Bandit, I was offended. He’s a giant teddy bear and someone wants to go on about how viscous his breed is. “How dare they?!” I thought. It hurt me that people feared this sweet soul because of his breed, and I understood what it felt like to be stereotyped. I felt the unfairness of it.

As my mindfulness grew I started seeing my own patterns. I claimed openness, but I still stereotyped Republicans, hipsters, Asians, and teenagers to name a few. If I didn’t agree it was easier to lump everyone together. Sh*t it’s exhausting to see individuals as they are!

I stopped lumping them all together and started looking to individuals for examples of behavior. As I grew even more, I started seeing that I have no place to judge anyways and started focusing my energies on growing myself and that the more I grew myself the less I needed to judge others.

But that’s besides the point.

The point is I was inspired by an adorable, sweet dog that would have been deemed unadoptable at a shelter because he was five months old, completely unsocialized, food aggressive, untrained, not house broken, and scared of everything that moved. And oh yeah, a Pitbull. He would have been put to death in a shelter. He found me and taught me invaluable lessons.

So here is my tribute to challenge the belief of anyone who stereotypes dog breeds. A Welsh Corgi puppy owning two Pitbulls. Or you can just watch them for the cuteness factor!

~

Relephant Read:

Another Good Reason to Adopt a Rescue. 

Author:Lindsay Carricarte
Apprentice Editor:Lindsay Carricarte
Image:Author’s own