🚀 go-pugleaf

On Aug 22, 6:09 am, Mike <yard22...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR200...
>
> A Blood Sport Exposed
> Vick's Case Puts Dogfighting Culture in the Spotlight
>
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A01
>
> It's a disturbing narrative, the 19-page indictment of football star
> Michael Vick and three of his friends. Perhaps the details shocked
> people unfamiliar with the secretive world of illegal dogfighting: the
> breeding and training of pit bulls for savage, high-stakes combat and
> the brutal executions of dogs that fail to measure up.
>
> Dogs shot, hanged, drowned, beaten, electrocuted. An awful story.
>
> Yet to animal-welfare workers, the ugly particulars were far from
> surprising. They said the dogfighting subculture is deeply entrenched
> in the United States. And in that shadowy realm, they said, the sort
> of business allegedly conducted on property owned by Vick in rural
> Surry County, Va., has been going on for generations, especially in
> the rural South.
>
> "For us, the Vick case has had tremendous value," said Jeff Dorson, a
> Louisiana Humane Society official. "We've been trying to tell the
> public how typical this is, how widespread it is, the horrors the
> animals go through. . . . It's opened the curtain so everyone can see
> what's going on."
>
> Vick, quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons and a former Virginia Tech
> all-American, is scheduled to plead guilty Monday to dogfighting-
> related offenses, with federal guidelines calling for a prison term in
> the range of 12 to 18 months, according to his attorneys and sources
> familiar with the case. His co-defendants have pleaded guilty.
>
> The blood sport goes on.
>
> "Dog men," they call themselves, the untold numbers of breeders and
> fighters. With their pastime illegal everywhere in the country, they
> stay in touch through secret networks and underground magazines. They
> say they love to compete. They tell themselves the pit bulls love it,
> too.
>
> "The reason for the Michael Vick thing . . . is because athletes have
> a keen insight into courage and determination, which is what pit bulls
> possess," said Bill Stewart, a breeder in Romance, Ark., who publishes
> the Pit Bull Reporter. "Athletes understand better than anyone what
> dogfighting is about. It's about two highly conditioned athletes going
> at each other with everything they have to try to win. It's the purest
> form of combat on earth."
>
> To dog men, all dogs are curs except the American pit bull terrier,
> descended from canines used in English blood sports centuries ago.
>
> Animal-protection workers and others who have infiltrated the
> underworld of pit bull fighting say dog men train their animals for
> weeks before bouts, perverting the dietary and fitness sciences to
> build ferocious canine maulers.
>
> They perform unlicensed veterinary surgery on the grievously wounded
> and stud their battle-scarred champs, often for fees in the hundreds
> of dollars. A pit bull in its prime with a string of victories can
> fetch $10,000 or more. To save on upkeep and preserve the breed,
> weaklings are destroyed, either painlessly or with a vengeance.
>
> The illegal bouts, in carpeted 16-by-16-foot pits surrounded by four-
> foot walls, are staged in hidden venues, usually with no more than a
> few dozen spectators allowed. Elaborate, decades-old rules are
> followed. Bets are posted in cash, sometimes five figures. Afterward,
> dog men tend to their pit bulls' injuries, provided the animals fought
> gamely. They won't tolerate dogs that quit.
>
> Young pit bulls that survive training become "match dogs," weighing 35
> to 55 pounds and fighting in weight classes. With a pile of cash
> riding on the outcome, a regulation match is officiated by a referee.
> A typical bout lasts 45 minutes to an hour, usually ending when one of
> the bloodied combatants is too torn and gouged to go on.
>
> Dog men have too much invested in their animals to let them fight to
> the death, so fatalities in the pit are rare. But grave, disfiguring
> wounds are the norm.
>
> "At the top level, there are probably several thousand guys," said
> John Goodwin, the national Humane Society's manager of animal-fighting
> issues. "When you include the guys who are part of organized
> dogfighting but don't have quite as sophisticated an operation as we
> saw in Surry County, we're talking about upwards of 40,000."
>
> The July 17 indictment accused Vick and the others of running Bad Newz
> Kennels, a boot camp for fighting dogs on 15 acres near Vick's home
> town of Newport News. Starting in 2001, officials said, the men
> entered pit bulls in more than two dozen fights in several states,
> with bets of up to $13,000 per side. Officials said they seized 66
> dogs, pit bull carcasses and training gear at the compound.
>
> Authorities say the pit bull fighting subculture encompasses not only
> dog men with their training kennels and scheduled matches; it also
> includes less organized dogfighting that frequently takes place in
> poor urban neighborhoods, including in the District.
>
> Although in both types of fighting the dogs maul each other in a
> frenzy of blood and saliva, inner-city fights usually are spontaneous.
> One gang member strutting with his nasty pit bull sees another, egos
> swell, and soon they're in a vacant building, the dogs ripping into
> each other while still on leash chains. "Street fighting," these
> impromptu bouts are called.
>
> Unlike a dog man's pit bulls, most street maulers aren't carefully
> bred from fighting stock. They aren't put through weeks of pre-fight
> cardiovascular training on treadmills and in swimming pools. They're
> not steroid-enhanced. Their jaw muscles aren't pumped from a regimen
> of "bite-and-shake" exercises. Their teeth haven't been sharpened with
> electric grinders while they're sedated.
>
> Pit bull fighting emerged as a popular betting pastime in the
> mid-1800s. As laws against it were enacted, it moved underground. By
> the mid-20th century, it was mostly a rural pursuit.
>
> About 15 years ago, after it became fashionable in the urban thug life
> to be seen with a menacing pit bull, spur-of-the-moment street fights
> became common.
>
> In this realm, to train them, owners often whip their pit bulls, burn
> them with cigarettes, feed them gunpowder and jalapeño peppers until
> they turn unremittingly vicious. Authorities said a dog man's pit
> bulls normally are safe for people to handle, while a street dog
> usually will attack anything that moves, except the "alpha male" who
> abused it.
>
> A dog man's pit bulls are taught to be human-friendly because, under
> fight rules dating to the 1950s, each side handles and washes the
> other's dog before a match, in case the opposition has coated its
> animal with a poison or sedative.
>
> In time, street-fighting pit bulls -- scarred and missing ears, racked
> by infection, their teeth broken and legs mangled -- will cease to
> look menacing.
>
> "We get them left in abandoned buildings, thrown in Dumpsters,
> severely injured," said Chris Schindler, a Humane Society officer in
> the District. "We had an incident where somebody threw a trash bag out
> of a car, and it was one dog that was alive and one that was dead --
> all fought up, really bad injuries. Just threw them out the window."
>
> In a field near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station in Northeast
> Washington, Schindler said, "there are some old train tracks, and for
> about a year straight, we were constantly finding dogs tied to the
> tracks out there and left to die."
>
> Researchers say organized pit bull fighting is less prevalent in the
> Washington region than in states farther south, although a dog man in
> Richmond was sentenced to four yeas in February. The FBI keeps no
> records on dogfighting arrests nationwide. The Humane Society has
> counted about 150 in the past two years, including eight in Virginia,
> two in Maryland and one in the District.
>
> Because urban pit bull fights usually are spontaneous, police said,
> making arrests is difficult unless owners are caught in the act. Based
> on the dozens of battered and scarred pit bulls abandoned or seized in
> the Washington area every year, however, animal-protection advocates
> say street fighting is common.
>
> Dog men, with their kennels of pit bulls and equipment, are easier to
> prosecute because authorities find more evidence, as in the Vick case.
> Since starting an anti-dogfighting task force in 2003, the South
> Carolina attorney general's office has prosecuted at least 20 cases,
> with more awaiting trials, said Jennifer Evans, the unit's chief
> prosecutor.
>
> The granddaddy of all dogfighting cases, in terms of punishment, was
> prosecuted in South Carolina three years ago. There, as in other
> states, the maximum prison term for one count is five years. A breeder
> named David Ray Tant, then 57, pleaded guilty to 41 counts -- and was
> sentenced to 30 years.
>
> "There's never been a sentence like it anywhere in the country, as far
> as I know," Evans said last week.
>
> Tant also had laid a half-dozen booby traps around his property --
> pipes with tripwires, rigged to fire birdshot -- and a land surveyor
> was severely injured after stepping on one. Tant got 10 years for
> assault, on top of the 30.
>
> In another major case, 70-year-old Floyd Boudreaux, dubbed "the don of
> dogfighting" by the Humane Society, is awaiting trial in Louisiana,
> charged with 64 counts. He has pleaded not guilty. His attorney did
> not return messages seeking comment. Known as "Boudreaux dogs," the
> pit bulls bred in his kennel are among the strongest, most coveted
> animals in the field of canine combat, police said.
>
> Based on details in the indictment, the Bad Newz operation was typical
> of many others in the "professional" realm, said Eric Sakach, a
> California-based official of the national Humane Society.
>
> Generally, the process of turning a well-bred pit bull pup into a
> fighter begins when the dog is 16 months old, said Sakach, who
> witnessed a dozen organized dogfights as an undercover investigator in
> the 1980s and 1990s. He now trains enforcement agencies on how to root
> out dog men.
>
> The "prospect" is pitted in bouts against an over-the-hill fighter in
> the kennel, sometimes with filed-down teeth, a dog unable to do much
> damage.
>
> "These are short combats, about 10 to 15 minutes," said Sakach,
> "during which the prospect is going to get lots and lots of lavish
> praise. The point is, you want the dog to start associating praise
> with what its master wants it to do, which is fight."
>
> After a few months, this "schooling" process turns deadly serious, as
> the dog begins preparing for its "game test," a full-fledged bout with
> a kennel-mate in its prime, to measure how much punishment the young
> pit bull can take. The prospect trains for six to eight weeks, hour
> upon hour -- running, swimming, jumping, chomping -- until test day
> arrives.
>
> "The idea here is, you want your prospect to get hurt," Sakach said.
> "You don't want it hurt so bad that it's going to die. But you want it
> hurt badly enough so that it really understands pain and exhaustion.
> Because you want to know if your dog's going to quit."
>
> For a prospect that fails, life is short. "If they're not going to
> make money for you," Sakach said, "then you don't want them around."
>
> At Bad Newz, the indictment says, Purnell Peace, 35, shot two dogs
> "that did not perform well" in schooling. Vick, Peace and Quanis
> Phillips, 28, allegedly executed eight others by "hanging, drowning,
> and slamming at least one dog's body to the ground."
>
> Sakach said such brutality is common. "Some guys just decide they're
> going to exact some retribution for what they apparently feel is a
> betrayal."
>
> Pit bulls that survive schooling become full-time canine
> prizefighters. But not all have long careers.
>
> In March 2003, according to the indictment, the men of Bad Newz
> Kennels traveled to a venue near Blackstone, Va., with two pit bulls
> that they entered in separate bouts. The bets: $13,000 per side on one
> match, $10,000 on the other. After both dogs lost, "Vick retrieved a
> book bag from a vehicle containing approximately $23,000 in cash" and
> gave it to the winning dog man.
>
> The female dog defeated in the $13,000 match not only cost its owners
> a bundle of money but apparently suffered horrible injuries. So it was
> disposed of, the indictment says.
>
> "Peace, after consulting with Vick about the losing female pit bull's
> condition, executed the losing dog by wetting the dog down with water
> and electrocuting the animal."

As expected, the vast majority of dog fighting creeps are negro or
hispanic.

ted

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