Pit Bull Queen of the Flowers: Inspired by Sophie Gamand

* take a moment to soak in how precious she looks!*

I am currently attending college classes at one of my local community colleges and was recently assigned the task of giving an informative speech for one of my assignments. Never in my life did I ever think I'd jump for joy at the opportunity or in this case assignment, to stand up in front of people and talk for 5-7 minutes for a grade that could make or break my college status. No pressure right?

For my speech I had to choose a topic that I actually already had prior knowledge of which quickly knocked out my ideas of Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation, Pogonotrophy , and Hymenopetrous formicidae.

* drawing a square backwards, growing and grooming a beard, and ants. Get your mind out of the gutter people!*

So one day while I was running...just kidding I was watching Jurassic World...I heard my mom mention my dog and instantly decided to give my speech on Pit Bulls. Owning a pit and having first hand experience of how loving and gentle they are, as well as first hand experience with the negativity they are surrounded with, it helped establish my personal knowledge and credibility for my speech!

Along with my speech I had to create my own visual which opened the door for my own personal work to come into play.

I'm a huge follower of an artist/photographer called Sophie Gamand. If you're not familiar with her or her work, she is an amazing artist and animal advocate based out of New York and well known for her Pit Bull Flower Power project where she photographs different pit bulls with flower crowns and bright backgrounds to showcase the beauty that goes unseen with this misunderstood breed.

The day I found out about her project I quickly grabbed a flower headband I had and snapped a photo of my dog Butter, yes she is named after a food, and posted it to my IG with the hashtag #PitBullFlowerPower. Little did I know, Gamand would respond to my post and have me dancing around my dog proclaiming she was famous.

For my display piece I decided to recreate my original post and really give it some creative thought. I love putting Butter in pink stuff so that helped me start my color scheme and based my floral bonnet/headpiece off of this youtube video for making your own newborn flower bonnet prop!

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I bought all my flowers at Dollar General because they are super cheap and I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg for ones from Hobby Lobby. Although, I did give into the gold ones when I saw them! The rest of my supplies I got at Hobby Lobby.

- fabric for the backdrop in fuschia

- glue gun and glue sticks

- ribbon

- felt

I borrowed my brothers football helmet to use as a base! You should have seen his face when he thought I glued all the flowers to it!

The flower bonnet took me about 3 hours only because I was watching a movie at the same time and it was actually really easy! The hard part wasn't getting Butter to wear it but to get her to sit where we needed her to. Luckily I had help from my sister and her friend plus some beef jerky as incentive. Ultimately, Butter did great! I think she liked her short modeling career.

I am a firm believer that this dog breed isn't the vicious animal that people are so afraid of. The bad image these dogs carry around is so bad that it's lead to an incident where my dog was kicked in the stomach by another dog owner at our local dog park because she "didn't belong". He even took it apon himself to psychically remove my family and I from the park using brute force by literally chest bumping my mother and using swear words and threats towards my younger brother who at the time was 12! This man knew nothing about our family and my poor dog and based his actions off of what he though he knew about pit bulls. It's been four years since it happened and we never went back.

So much goes into raising an animal in your home. As owners we play the crucial part in raising them and training them. Animals are animals and demand our respect. Butter doesn't know she's a pit bull. She doesn't know that she is strong, powerful, and can hurt someone. She honestly in my opinion thinks she s a cat. I swear! She lives with three house cats and she would rather eat cat food than dog food. I have no clue why. She's one of the most loving and gentle creatures I have ever known but that also doesn't stop me from thinking that she won't ever cause harm. She is an animal and that can never be forgotten, especially with my baby niece in the house.

Now Im not trying to preach that we should all go out and adopt a pit and start advocating but I'm hoping that with my assignment and my trusty flower pit at my side we will make a small difference in how this breed is seen, prevent incidents like the one I sadly experienced, and encourage better training and care for animals we keep in our home because we are the ones who set the stage for how our animals turn out and when we mess up they pay the price.

Rant over.

And fingers crossed I get an A+

Will update once I've given my speech!

Until then keep shooting #FlowerPower