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Pit Bull Rehab: Rio Woman Teaches Tough Dogs New Tricks
Retired From Fighting, They Try Swimming, Sprints; Training With 'Stallone'
By MATT MOFFETT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 4, 2005; Page A1
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Renata Bitencourt says the problem with "Bin Laden" was that he'd been fighting since a very tender age. "Capone," she says, wasn't loved by the family that raised him. "Hitler" suffered from toothaches.

They are among 150 pit bulls Ms. Bitencourt has rescued from Rio's illegal dog-fighting rings and retrained as competitors in the canine olympic games she organizes. Instead of fighting to the death for the entertainment of drug traffickers and other high rollers, the pit bulls now soar 12 feet in high-jump competitions or haul half a ton of concrete in weight-pulling contests.

Ms. Bitencourt, 32 years old and barely 5 feet tall, has won awards from animal activists, but also raised the ire of some Rio politicians who want to restrict pit bulls. In the favelas, slums set on the hills above the city's glittering condos and hotels, the woman fondly known as "Renata Pit Bull" is something of a legend.

"The guys with dogs pay attention to her because they know that little woman isn't afraid of anything," says pit-bull owner Gilberto Moreira de Oliveira.

Before he met Ms. Bitencourt, Mr. Moreira had managed his dog, Saddam, to an undefeated record in eight fights. The fights, which took place in a pit or enclosure, would last until one dog was dead or incapacitated. Sometimes it would take an hour or longer before a dog was beaten. Spectators included local gang members, as well as visitors from outside the slum looking for a little adventure. Crowd members laid down thousands of dollars in bets.

Though the dog gave him status in the favela, Mr. Moreira, a 26-year-old truck driver, says he never had much money to wager. And he would get stuck with the veterinary bills for treating Saddam's battle wounds.

Mr. Moreira had a change of heart after he watched the owner of a dog that had been mauled by Saddam dump the injured animal off a highway overpass. "Sometimes it takes a shock to make people see the light," says Ms. Bitencourt.

Mr. Moreira says he and Ms. Bitencourt had to "brain wash" Saddam to perform in nonviolent sports after he abandoned the fighting ring. They trained the pit bull for the high jump by slipping a motorcycle tire on the end of a broom stick and raising it higher and higher above his head.

"Now, Saddam is much calmer and even kids love him," Mr. Moreira says, pointing to a clutch of youths surrounding the golden-haired pit bull. Up to a point. The kids, who aren't much bigger than the dog, keep a safe distance while staring transfixed as Saddam shreds a coconut with his iron jaws.

Ms. Bitencourt, a tour operator by day, bought her first pit bull 10 years ago after she'd been robbed several times in her middle-class neighborhood. Partly due to rising crime, the number of the macho dogs in Rio has exploded to about 20,000 from 1,000 since the mid-1990s, says Ms. Bitencourt, who is president of the Pit Bull Club of Brazil. Dog-fighting grew along with the pit-bull population. To offer dog owners an alternative to fighting, Ms. Bitencourt launched her olympics about five years ago.

She holds four or five major athletic meets per year in favelas, each drawing about 70 dogs and as many as 400 spectators. The price of admission is a bag of rice or beans for a local food bank.

Pit-bull owners vie for several trophies. In the long jump, dogs make a running start, bound off a wooden platform and fly more than 20 feet, trying to snare a tire dangled in front of them. Dogs also compete in 10-meter sprints while pulling a man on roller skates. There are pit-bull beauty contests and swim meets. "Dogs, Animals & Co.," a magazine in Rio, gave Ms. Bitencourt its highest award a few years ago, citing her work for "advancement of the breed."

But Carlos Minc, a Rio de Janeiro state legislator, says pit-bull enthusiasts aren't focusing enough on protecting humans from vicious pit bulls. He receives about 10 complaints a month from people who have been attacked or menaced by pit bulls. In one 2003 case, in which a pit bull killed a 72-year-old woman, Rio police had to pump nine bullets into the dog to bring it down. Mr. Minc says Ms. Bitencourt exaggerates her capacity to curb pit bulls' violent instincts.

"Let's say that a child tugs the ear of a supposedly docile pit bull," says Mr. Minc. "Who can guarantee that he'll react peacefully?"

Other Brazilian officials consider Ms. Bitencourt an ally. When authorities in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul seized 19 pit bulls in a dog-fighting bust last year, they asked for her help in finding homes for the animals. It was a delicate task because police expected the previous owners to come looking for the confiscated dogs once they got out of jail. Ms. Bitencourt had to sign a confidentiality agreement, vowing not to reveal identities of the dogs' new owners. "It was kind of like a witness protection program for pit bulls," she says.

Before Ms. Bitencourt can enter a Rio favela, she has to have an intermediary seek authorization from the dono do morro, or "owner of the hill," invariably a criminal. That doesn't eliminate danger. Once, while on a visit to train dogs, she got pinned down for seven hours in a gun battle between police and traffickers. Another time, police with weapons drawn broke up one of her competitions, she says, mistaking it for a dog fight. Maj. Milton Fernandes, of Rio's military police, is unaware of that incident, but praises Ms. Bitencourt for "discouraging dog fighting and introducing healthy recreational activities to poor communities."

On a recent visit to a favela to recruit dogs for her competitions, Ms. Bitencourt found traffickers had put up tall metal stakes on both sides of the roadway, to keep out wide-bodied police vehicles. While she was working out a dog named "Stallone," a motorcyclist pulled up, making no effort to conceal a pistol on his lap. The rider watched wordlessly, then rode away.

Much of Ms. Bitencourt's work involves reaching out to young men whose fight dogs have made them figures of respect in the Darwinian favela culture. Sandro Pereira, 23, says his father used to organize cockfights. So he felt he was carrying on a family tradition when, at age 12, he bought his fighting pit bull, "Bruce," named for Bruce Lee. By pricking Mr. Pereira's conscience about the pain Bruce was enduring, Ms. Bitencourt persuaded him to end the dog's fighting days. "Renata changed my point of view," he says.

Well, sort of. Though he's sworn off dog-fighting, Mr. Pereira says he continues to lay bets on fights involving vicious Asian betta fish.

Ms. Bitencourt applied some tough love to another of her protégés, 21-year-old Giovanni Barbosa. She once took back the pit bull she had given Mr. Barbosa after discovering the dog had been fighting. But she also raced Mr. Barbosa to the hospital when he was struck by a stray bullet from a gang shootout.

Mr. Barbosa's dog, "Braddock," named for a Chuck Norris character, is such a legend in the favelas that there are T-shirts honoring him. The 60-pound Braddock can pull a four-door car a city block.

What finally turned Mr. Barbosa away from fighting was finding out that women, including the one he eventually married, were attracted to men whose dogs had prowess in nonviolent events. "A dog that talented gets you noticed," he says. But Mr. Barbosa's habit of sleeping with Braddock nearly nipped the romance in the bud. "I told him that at bedtime he would have to choose between me or Braddock," says his wife, Luciene, who eventually got her way.