When January of 2016 came around, Pitbull Trucking was still just a site where lonely truckers came to view and post pictures of their Pitbulls that they had either seen at various truckstops or owned themselves
My wife Teryl and I had started Pitbull Trucking in honor of our beloved Sampson who passed away Jan 23,2014 from kidney failure. In fact, we get comments of why we are called "Pitbull Trucking" when truly, we really don't have much to do with the trucking field as such. Oh sure, I am a truckdriver and have been one for almost 15 years now, but that's not why we call it that.
Our boy Sampson was a red-nosed merle purebred Pitbull that traveled Canada and most of the United States of America in his big rig home. Teryl and I met so many Truckdriver who had companions for Pitbulls and there wasn't one of them, that Sampson didn't meet and interact with either.
What we started as a basic site as just trucking pictures with our fellow truckdriver's became something for Sampson's new found "pitty friends" Then as I left the long haul trucking field in 2013, our site kind of took a back seat, for awhile and pretty much remained dormant. After Sampson passed away, early in 2014, my wife grieved for two years on his loss, and I continued with mainstream trucking life. I was into hauling recycling, dabbling in the Oilpatch, hauling cement to rig sites, and most recently hauling chickens for the last year and a half.
After Sampson, passed away, I started writing my life story again, as I knew after the last six years of toiling away, 500,000 words later, something had to give and it did.Not only did I write a book on my life, but I discovered that to my ultimate surprise, I wrote five books, broken into various stages of my life. Most notably books three, four and the fifth and final one involve stories of our dogs, including pitbull mixes like Shadow, who really started the whole pitbull thing for us. However, Sampson and his sister Brodi were a very large portion of the last 14 years of our lives, so yes there are stories of them as well. I should mention Brodi is a brindle pitbull that had sired two litters of puppies, and still is very much alive, living with my stepdaughter Teal in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. So what changed everything, you ask, why is Pitbull Trucking becoming such a strong entity now on facebook.
Well to answer that question, it basically came about with the arrival of two rescue bully bred dogs. There was my rescue Pitbull/Whippet mix female six-year-old dog Oklahoma, or Okee as we now call her, and we can't forget our newest member of the family, Julips or just Jewel. Ironically both dogs were rescued from Ardmore Oklahoma and Sacremento California in the USA.
In the last six months or so, Pitbull Trucking has acquired almost 1,200 true followers.We have seen over 6,000 views come through our site alone, and we presently enjoy a stellar rating of 4.5 or better. In early summer, we were one of the lucky people that were recently interviewed for the documentary filmed by Brian Barnhart called BSL Montreal. We are strong advocates and fully support rescue societies like "Lauri Restad and Just One more Animal Rescue and Recovery of Swan Hills, Alberta, or Brian Ferreira of Rescue Foodie in Ontario.Recently we started our first home visit in helping people like Lauri, in the interview process of rehoming a rescue or shelter dog, most notably a pitbull breed.
This site has become a labor of love for my wife Teryl and I and I definitely could not do it without her constant awareness and various postings of bully breed paraphernalia. Our aim is to make people aware of what is going on with the plight of this wonderful breed of dog. They are one of the most humanistic, tactile dogs you will ever own.Unfortunately, the media has almost destroyed the bully breeds reputation, to the point where people like Mayor Dennis Coderre of Montreal has instituted a complete ban on not only Pitbulls but any dog over 30 kilograms. It is ignorant, uneducated assholes like him, and others out there, that our aim is to bring the awareness of BSL (breed specific legislation) that it does not work. In fact, if you look at all the scientific data that supports this, it will never work. Yet many provinces, such as Ontario, Manitoba and soon to be Quebec enact it, thinking they are doing the right thing. Not to mention, countless cities and states of the USA that have the same stupid ineffective BSL laws, sentencing thousands of pitbulls to a needless death.
That's where sites like ours come into the picture, to bring awareness and educate the ignorant and truly not knowing out there in internet land that really don't have a clue what a Pitbull is. I maintain until you have owned one, you cannot possibly make an informed educated opinion on this breed.
Our plans for the future include merchandising things like calendars, tee-shirts, coffee mugs etc, with our new upcoming logo on them. I will be marketing my books I have written, plus hopefully getting more involved in home visits to know we are making a difference in a Pitbull's life someway, somehow. You can better believe, we will also be giving back, by donating funds to rescue centers, and societies as well. Maybe if we win the lottery or the book sales become a success as I hope, we too can start our own rescue society. I don't know where the future will take us, but I do know that Pitbull Trucking will continue to be a voice for this breed, to support Sampson in his memory, we will keep on trucking against canine profiling and BSL. Sampson did not leave this world for nothing, for us he will live on through our Pitbull Trucking site!
Once again I will post an excerpt of my book for your reading enjoyment and we wish all of you a very merry Christmas and a joyous New Year. Here's hoping 2017 will be your year full of love and happiness. This was taken from Book 4 titled "Road History"
The dawn’s fingers were fumbling into a spectacular Texas Sunrise, so I left there after my “short-lived camel adventure” and headed down the highway. Nevertheless, I was free for the rest of the day so I came across an idea that day when I was listening to my satellite radio. It seemed the Anaheim Ducks were in Dallas to play my favourite team, the Dallas Stars, as it was game 6 of the conference finals. Afterall it was April 20, 2008 and I had an opportunity to get a ticket to watch the Stars take the ducks out of the playoffs, so why not.
About 3 hours later, I dropped off the trailer in Cleburne and bobtailed my way to American Airlines Arena where the Dallas Stars play there. I was surprised to find I could even still get a ticket at that, but it only cost me $80.00 to go to a playoff game here. I was pleased to find the temperature in Dallas that day wasn’t too bad, only 78 degrees Fahrenheit, which would be about 26 degrees Celsius. Well that much I was happy with, as it was my main concern for Sampson, leaving him parked in the truck, while I would be watching the game later that evening. Well I could idol the truck at least and keep the air conditioning on so he would be more than fine. However, when I got to the game which was a couple of hours away, the parking lot attendant told me that I could not idol the truck. So once again, my plan was side-tracked, so I came up with another ingenious idea. I decided to take Sam on a good long walk, hoping I would find some water fountains for him to cool off in. I parked “Barney” in a double-parking lot, paid twice the fee, and began to walk Sampson around downtown Dallas, where we were situated at. It was probably one of the best walks Sam had ever had, as he did indeed locate some tall cascading water fountain at a large office building near the Arena. I took off his collar and leash, sat down on a city bench and watch the dog play and frolic in the water. He especially liked moving the rocks and pebbles around with his front paws, while a showery mist of water cascaded down the wall. Sampson was jumping back and forth, and would shake the water off him literally every 3 minutes, as he was having one whale of a time. He must have been in those water fountains for a good hour until I realized I had to get him back into the truck. I made sure he was still a bit damp, when he got back into the truck, as the Wabasto stationary AC was working okay, but I still didn’t trust it. I made the decision to run all the ways back to the truck after every period to check up on Sam, despite the fact I would have preferred to stay for the whole game, including intermissions, but that’s the kind of pet owner I am. I pretty much will do anything for the care and comfort of my dog, that’s just the way I was raised, I guess.
So, I finally get into the American Airlines Arena, and it is without a doubt, the largest indoor arena, I have ever been to. Nothing compares to it, not even the Saddledome back in Calgary which I had been in a few times to watch my Stars play the Flames. As I was reading the program, I had specifically purchased for the game, I came across a section on the American Airlines Center. It stated that this place was in Victory Park which I knew was near downtown Dallas. This venue also serves as the home for the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA and of course the Dallas Stars of the NHL. This arena is also used for Rock Concerts with the Eagles being their very first concert here back in July 28,2001. In point of truth, this facility opened on July 27, 2001, with the largest ribbon cutting ceremony ever performed. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it set a record just for that. It cost just about 420 million dollars to pay for this center, with the American Airlines Corporation acquiring its naming rights at a cost of 195 million dollars. I could not believe the seat I had purchased as it gave me a good view of center ice as well as both end zones. I just couldn’t believe I was finally here in Dallas of all places about to watch my Stars take on the Ducks. Not only that, they had a chance to go on and meet the Detroit Red Wings, should they win this game tonight, so a double whammy in store for me, I thought to myself. As it was by the first period the teams were both scoreless, so I rushed my ass back to the truck where Sampson was sitting in the passenger seat pining for me to return. I quickly let him out to go the bathroom, returned him back into the truck, and checked on the AC back in the sleeper. It was all okay, so I locked up the truck and headed back to the game. By the time, I got there they had already started the second period, in fact, I probably missed about five minutes of it, if I can recall. All I know was the Ducks were leading one to nothing and for the rest of that period, there was no more scoring by any of the teams. So again, I quickly exited out of the building to get back to Sampson at the truck, to make sure, he was okay. Just as I suspected, he was asleep, when I woke him up, but now it didn’t really much matter as the sun had gone down and it was dark outside. However, it was still warm out, so I opened a good many of the windows for him. I gave him an Alpo dog treat, which he just loved, and assured him, I would be back in about another hour. When I had got back Dallas had scored to tie the game, along with another minute when I had just sat down, they scored again to go ahead in the game 2-1. By the last 3 minutes of the game Dallas had scored two more goals with a commanding 4-1 lead, thus winning the game and the series. I cannot say enough of my evening that night. Just watching all the celebrations from all the Stars fans was so exhilarating for me and you can better believe I took as much camera and video footage as possible. When I got back to the truck, I pretty much let Sam have all his head out the passenger window. I just blared on that air horn, leaving the arena to many Dallas Stars fans delightsome things happen in your life and that night was no exception for me, as I would never forget it.