Nanny Dogs

In one corner of the internet, vintage photos of pit bulls (an umbrella term for the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, and Staffordshire Bull Terrier) dominate. They grace Pinterest boards, Google image results, and many, many blogs.

For a time I believed the story in the captions of these delightful photos; that they showed a forgotten history of the pit bull as ‘Nanny Dog’—a protector of children, a breed that is perhaps uncomfortable with other canines, but a guardian angel to children in the late 19th and early 20th century. This melded with my view of the breeds, formed by a series of wonderful staffies owned by family friends during my childhood.

This would make a good zine,
I thought—a little known factoid, depicted through charming vintage photos of children and dogs—what could go wrong?

People have very strong opinions where pit bulls are concerned. While looking for higher quality images and a reliable source for the Nanny Dog myth, I fell down a rabbit hole of blogs, Facebook groups, Flikr albums, the Wayback Machine, the New York Times archives, and simply too many Reddit threads.

Please take this zine as a starting point. The myth goes deep, and in these pages I’ve only scratched the surface.