Catching up: On dogs of a certain breed, a triumphant boxer and a passing

Catching up:

- For me, the pit bull story of 2008 had nothing to do with Michael Vick.

Rather, it involved a Bedford County dog named Prince, owned by William and Lois Holland.

Prince was a lover, not a fighter, a dog that would be far more likely to lick you to death than tear your throat out. His problem was guilt by association.

On Jan. 15, 2008, 62-year-old William Holland was walking up the hill from his house on Burk’s Hill Road to his sister-in-law’s trailer.

“He said he was going up to get a piece of cake,” Lois said later.

But he never arrived, because his sister-in-law’s four pit bulls attacked him.

“He walked past them all the time,” Lois Holland said. “We all did. They were never known to bother anybody.”

Fortunately for Holland, he happened to have a knife on him, which he used to kill two of the dogs. The other two ran away, later to be discovered and shot. During the attack, though, Holland was badly mauled.

“They’d have killed him if he didn’t have that knife on him,” Lois Holland said. “His right foot was just about eaten off. All the tendons were showing.”

Prince, a pit bull with a dash of black lab mixed in, had nothing to do with this. While all the growling and screaming were going on, he was curled up on the living room rug.

Yet William Holland spent two months in a Roanoke hospital, and he had a lot of time to think. Sure, Prince seemed harmless, but so did the other pit bulls. Could he, too, have a ticking time bomb inside? Was the breed really bad to the bone?

“When I talked to William right before he came home from the hospital,” Lois Holland said, “I knew Prince had to go.”

I wrote a column about that last March 12 and never thought much more about it, until a few weeks ago when Bev Jordan called me.

Jordan, an animal lover, had heard of Prince’s plight and arranged for him to be taken to the Briggs Animal Adoption Center in Charlestown, W. Va. Just after Christmas, Prince was finally adopted.

“He’s got a wonderful home now with a family that has experience with American Staffordshires,” said Kristi Curtis of Briggs. “They’re a fan of the breed. They had two other American Staffordshires that died.”

In our brief conversation, Curtis never used the term “pit bull.” She knows the baggage it carries.

“That was the main reason Prince stayed here so long,” she said. “This particular breed has gotten a bad reputation. I always tell people it’s like kids — how you raise them determines what they’ll become.”

Prince still thinks he’s a lap dog, despite his 70 pounds. His family doesn’t mind.

- Remaining with the killer dog theme, I wrote a column last month about Bedford boxer Scott “Cujo” Sigmon, who was scheduled to fight one Alex “Superman” Dill in Staunton on Jan. 31.

In case you were wondering, Cujo won a unanimous six-round decision over Superman and is now scheduled to fight March 7 in Fluvanna against that dreaded opponent, To Be Determined.

“I think my promoter will be conservative with who I fight there,” Sigmon said. “What I’m really excited about is my fight with Taurus Brewer at the Lynchburg Armory on April 11. It will be a chance for my hometown fans to see me, and I’ve wanted to fight Taurus ever since I was 14 years old and saw him on ESPN2. We sparred once down in Charleston, S.C., where he’s from, and some bad blood came out of that.”

Brewer has a 14-2 record, Sigmon 4-1. According to Cujo, a dollar of every ticket sold will go to the Jamerson YMCA, where he works as a personal fitness coach.

- We’ve written a lot over the years about Lynchburg native Desmond Doss, the only conscientious objector ever to win the Medal of Honor, but hardly anything about his second wife Frances, who died on Feb. 3 in Piedmont, Ala.

Frances was not only Doss’ loyal companion in his last years (he died in 2006), but one of his biographers, writing two books about his World War II exploits.

Desmond and Frances were both widowers when they married in 1993, Desmond’s first wife Dorothy having died in an automobile accident on Lookout Mountain in 1991 (Desmond was driving). No doubt the slow physical decline that Desmond endured in his last few years would have been even more of a challenge without the constant presence and encouragement of this woman who so admired him.