Sallie Ann Jarrett | A Civil War Dog

“Loyal Heart” | Greg Stump Arts One week ago we released a new promotional video titled “Sallie Ann Jarrett: A Civil War Dog” for the upcoming River Fire Films documentary series – Once In A Lifetime. Sallie Ann Jarrett was described as a brindle “bull-and-terrier” (aka a 19th Century pit bull dog) – which got its […]
The Archives | 1933 Boston Bulldog

To reiterate, this archive is meant to help tell a very complicated and controversial story pertaining to the history of pit bull dogs. While I may eventually end up using digital files from other archive sources in the future, the pieces I will be writing about in this blog series are historical artifacts currently in […]
Don’t Know What You Got Til It’s Gone.
I never really wanted three dogs…it just sorta happened, which is partially why the process of gathering my thoughts for the contents of this blog entry have been so painful to digest and write about. But, since the evening of July 8, 2020, it’s been long overdue. I can’t seem to locate the first time […]
The Archives – 1929 Pete the Pup

For nearly a century – children of all generations, regardless of which decade they were born in, have grown up to know and love a dog named Pete. ‘Pete the pup’ was a character from the popular American comedy series – “Our Gang“ in the late 1920s and 30s, which later became known as “The […]
The Cost of Political Wars | Season 1, Episode 4

In this fourth episode – “The Cost of Political Wars”, of this inaugural season of the “I Am Human. This Is My Dog.” podcast, I am forced to jump slightly ahead to the spring of 2009 to an interview I conducted with a man named Leonard Shelton.
The Archives – 1915 WWI Poster

Since today is Memorial Day, I felt it was only appropriate to share an vintage piece from the archive that features both a pit bull dog with a U.S. military theme. Thankfully for me, this type of dog was prominently placed in propaganda posters and other items during WWI, and often used to depict the […]
The Archives | 1900s Pit Bull Dog and Baby

An early theme in this “The Archives” blog series so far is three out of the first four have been cabinet cards (as seen in the first and third editions). Aside from the photography studio name printed and/or stamped into the image, it’s extremely difficult to find out more about the subjects (dog and human) […]
The Archives | 1893 Pit Bull Dog and Children

This specific piece is another cabinet card from the 1890s – the type of photograph previously discussed in the first blog entry for “The Archive” series. To find out more about this cabinet card, there were several clues I used to conduct my research. On the the front of the card “Austin’s Studio” is on […]
The Archives | 1870s Pit Bull Dog and Gentleman

The oldest item in my collection is this photograph of a gentleman smoking a pipe with a (pit) bull dog laying at his feet. It was taken post-Civil War, sometime around 1870 (circa). click to zoom Since the term “pit bull” technically didn’t really make its way into our vocabularies until after the turn of […]
The Archives | 1890s Pit Bull Dog

Over the years while researching my documentary films, I have acquired numerous historical artifacts related to the topics these films explore. I quickly became fascinated by the history of pit bull dogs, and sought out old photographs, postcards and other items for inspiration. It started in 2007 after beginning a documentary about dogfighting titled “Fighting […]
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