Gypsy is found stumbling along Gaston County’s main highway in North Carolina. Her right front leg is shredded. Flesh falls from her face, exposing teeth and gums in a perpetual bite. But the battered pit bull can no longer bite anyone. Her lips and nose have dissolved into pus.
This dog with no face is a familiar sight to Tri-County Animal Rescue staff who admit her in April 2005. She is dogfighter’s garbage. Her moneymaking days are over.
Months later, three boys meet at a levy in Algiers, Louisiana. Their pit
bulls still display “gameness,” the battle-till-death vigor dogfighters
covet. The boys, ages 9 to 14, face two dogs nose to nose and release them.
One sinks razor-sharp teeth into the other’s throat and savagely shakes his head. Blood sprays as the losing dog howls. The boys jab both dogs and cheer them on.
A hundred yards away, Jeff Dorson crouches in the shadows. The founder and executive director of Humane Society of Louisiana simultaneously flips on his video camera and dials 911. But the police never show. After 15 minutes, the boys yank their limping dogs away on heavy chains.
Though dogfighting is outlawed in 50 states and a felony in 47, American Pit
Bull Terriers and other “pit bull” breeds are raised to compete on the
underground circuit. Dogfighting statutes in 46 states forbid possession of
fighting dogs and 48 states ban presence at matches.
Dogfighters convene in empty homes, garages and warehouses or remote parks and barns to play their dogs in makeshift arenas hemmed in plywood walls.
“Dogmen” compete nationwide, attracting fans who bet as high as $10,000 to $50,000 on dogs honed in “hard bite, athleticism and gameness,” reporter Eileen Loh-Harrist writes in “Fight Clubs” for the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans (2001). “Professional dogmen are akin to the Mafia, bestowing to the illicit activity a set of generally accepted rules.”
During matches that last two or more hours, dogs paired by weight are situated behind “scratch lines” etched on either side of a soft-surface pit. A referee orders each handler to “face your dog.” Upon the “let go” command, dogs are freed to attack until one turns his head and shoulders away from his rival.
Trainers then line them up for a repeat encounter. The dog who turned gets 10 seconds to cross the line and clamp down on his opponent (a scratch). “The match continues this way,” Loh-Harrist explains, “ending when one dog is too injured or unwilling to continue, jumps the pit, or is killed.”
Unlike career dogmen, hobbyists rarely vie beyond the local level. But they do adhere to the precepts of a refereed brawl. Street fighters ignore rules and bloodlines, preferring the big fierce dogs symbolic of gang culture. Many are restless kids drawn to the thrill of an illegal blood sport.
Jeff Dorson knows them all. For the past 18 years, he’s done the
sitting-on-the-porch-drinking-lemonade thing with scores of dogfighters. He logs their war stories as evidence for law enforcers.
In 1987, PETA hired the Midwest native to spearhead a campaign for monkeys removed from a Silver Spring, MD research laboratory after the conviction of psychologist Edward Taub on animal cruelty charges. At that time, the Silver Spring Monkeys were held at Tulane University in Louisiana.
After PETA’s contract expired, Dorson formed League in Support of Animals (LISA) to lobby for stronger animal protection laws and track cruelty cases in the field. LISA evolved to Humane Society of Louisiana with a dual mission to enforce state laws and rehabilitate/adopt abandoned animals.
Dorson’s focus shifted to dogfighting the longer he lived in Louisiana, a state revered for its champion bloodlines and prolific fight circles. The Boudreaux dynasty, whose prized pups netted up to $10,000 a head, ruled for half a century — even hosting hometown festivals with rural law officers in attendance. But the homage ended when state and federal agents raided their Broussard, Louisiana property in March 2005, arresting “dogfighting don”
Floyd and his son Guy for animal cruelty, illegal possession of steroids and a sawed-off shotgun, and 64 counts of dogfighting. The district attorney’s office began prosecution in the case this year.
At least there is a case. Until recently “two bloody pit bulls were never
high on police radar,” Dorson contends. “Even with detailed documentation, New Orleans police simply call Animal Control to come euthanize the dogs.”
Animal fighting arrests are tricky. Most police departments don’t have the resources or know-how to nail dogfighters at the scene. By the time they take action, the match has disbanded.
But in late 2004, Louisiana State Police arrested over 125 dogfighters and seized 680 dogs in 16 months. Dorson credits the dramatic spike to new Superintendent Henry L. Whitehorn’s willingness to employ a preemptive-strike approach: Officers talk to alleged dogfighters, tape the transaction, acquire a search warrant, and return to book them.
Acting upon Dorson’s addresses and descriptions, an initial sting landed three criminals, 10 dogs, weapons and narcotics. “[Since then] state police have dismantled enormous dogfighting structures throughout Louisiana. Today they function like a military Special Ops unit, totally informed about dogfighting and prepared to move quickly,” Dorson says.
Once cops know what to look for, a dogfighter’s autograph is unmistakable. In between fights, dogs are tethered on thick logging chains in backyards cluttered in feces, ant-infested kibble and rusty wail pails. A few rickety structures offer limited shelter. Dogfighters live by the credo: The meaner you treat a dog, the meaner he’ll perform in the ring.
Dog compounds are outfitted with restraining tables, treadmills, and wooden ramps. Serious trainers follow a hard-line regimen of forced daily runs, hand-walks, and treadmill exercises to pump dogs from chain weight to fight weight. Dogs are fed steroids and hormones typically acquired on the black market. “These guys aren’t real bright,” Dorson concedes. “Sometimes they mix gunpowder in dog food, assuming it will give their dogs explosive energy.”
Most use “bait” animals to arouse aggression. Cats, rabbits, small dogs, or chickens are strung to a pole and twirled like toys until the dog fatally mauls them. Sometimes a caged chicken or rabbit is placed in front of a dog on a treadmill as incentive to chase. For a practice fight, or “roll,” trainers mismatch a submissive animal with an aggressor. “No bait animal survives training,” Dorson says.
Dogfighters commonly steal companion animals to use for bait, as the Pima County Sheriff’s Department learned after years of unearthing the gnawed remains of lost pets in the Arizona desert.
In National Geographic’s “U.S. Dog-Fighting Rings Stealing Pets for Bait (2004),” Detective Mike Duffey, co-chair of the Animal Cruelty Task Force of Southern Arizona, claimed 50% of 3,396 animals missing over a six-month span were likely stolen. Although no national statistics depict the number annually snatched for bait, the sheriff’s department noted a parallel between a rise in dogfight rings and pet theft.
The stealers tend to be bored teens in an urban hierarchy where tough dogs elevate status. Sergeant Steve Brownstein, a Chicago Police Department veteran who investigates animal abuse on his high-crime beat, has come across a pit bull pup with a split open stomach. He’s seen a Rottweiler mix with skin slashed off her face and a shepherd mix whose penis was fragments.
If fight dogs don’t succumb to internal trauma, blood loss, shock,
dehydration, collapse or infection, they live with wounds and abscesses on their heads, throats, shoulders and legs. Ears are bloody stubs and some faces are so lacerated dogs can hardly breathe.
Once a dog’s “game” is gone, dogfighters view him as a liability. So they discard him in a trash heap or barren building to starve to death. Sgt. Brownstein has found spent dogs burned alive as punishment.
Dogs abandoned on the streets are at the mercy of humane societies and animal control. “You can’t un-train a true fighting dog,” Dorson says. The majority are euthanized.
Left to die. [url=http://www.pet-abuse.com/cases/4402/]http://www.pet-abuse.com/cases/4402/[/url]
For each dog at the end of a short chain, life is a brief mix of arduous
training and gory scrimmages. Still, the dogs seem little more than props in an underworld linked with gambling, auto theft, drug trafficking, arms
smuggling, money laundering, and acts of human violence.
Children, who often take part as spectators, fighters, or runners for the betting operation, are desensitized to animal suffering and criminality. A fifth grader by his uncle’s side at a dogfight told Sgt. Brownstein he was the only bystander who didn’t “explode with laughter” when a defeated dog urinated and defecated upon himself before dying.
“The danger is that [children] will emulate the violence around them,”
Brownstein says. “I know of a group that swung a puppy around by a rope, snapping its neck.”
Psychologist Stephanie LaFarge, the nation’s first expert in court-mandated animal abuse counseling, calls extreme cruelty towards animals “a marker for potential violence toward humans.” In particular, young males with a history of parental neglect or abuse may vent feelings of powerlessness upon animals. Nearly every young male behind the rash of high-profile shootings tortured animals before aiming weapons at students, teachers or parents.
Some question the validity of Dorson, Duffy, Brownstein and others devoted to eradicating dogfighters in a world plagued with weightier problems. Brownstein counters with a simple question: “What kind of society do we become if our children lose their humanity?”
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Ask your FEDERAL Representative in the House to support the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act (H.R. 817), which makes dogfighting (and related crimes) felonies at the national level. The Senate passed a companion
bill by unanimous consent during the 109th Congress.
If you DIDN’T RECEIVE 10/25/06 — Pass The Animal Fighting Prohibition
Enforcement Act, request this sample letter: kinshipcircle@brick.net
2. If your state only has misdemeanor dogfighting penalties, urge your STATE legislators to make this crime a felony.
****************************************************************************
By Brenda Shoss, founder/president of Kinship Circle
[url=http://www.KinshipCircle.org]http://www.KinshipCircle.org[/url]
Ms. Shoss writes a bimonthly column in The Healthy Planet and is a
contributing writer for The Animals Voice, Vegnews, and other publications.
To subscribe to Kinship Circle’s weekly action campaigns for animals:
subscribe@kinshipcircle.org
BEAR WITNESS. SPEAK. DEMAND. ACT.
Kinship Circle – Action Campaigns I Literature I Voice For Animals
Nonprofit working in animal protection/cruelty + animal disaster relief campaigns
info@kinshipcircle.org * [url=http://www.KinshipCircle.org]http://www.KinshipCircle.org[/url]
Reprinted with permission