Stupid Dog fighting is no sport

Published 8:56 am Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Enough, already. Really, wouldn’t you think the Michael Vick story would have been enough to put an end to the raging stupidity that is the “sport” of dog fighting?

The man went to prison, fell from a $13 million football-playing contract to a $10 an hour construction job and lived under house arrest for more than a year after he pleaded guilty to fighting dogs and killing those that did not perform.

Now, less than two years later, Warren County firefighters — volunteers at that — were out doing their work when they found 12 pit bull dogs tethered by logging chains to spikes of iron, left in the woods without adequate food and water and ready to fight, only because that is all they had been taught. For what? For the “sport” of watching, betting, smelling the blood that oozes from the gashes as the dogs scrap for their lives. Stupid enough?

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Forms of gambling are legal in Warren County, across the river in Louisiana and in most states in the Southeast. Dogs do not have to die or be maimed. How stupid is it?

So what happens to the Michael Vick of Warren County? When he or she or they are caught — and Sheriff Martin Pace is confident arrests will be made — felony charges likely will be filed and court action will come. Vick was allowed to return to the football field eventually; the outcome for Warren County’s Vick is yet to be determined.

And the dogs? Because of Vick’s notoriety and the nationwide outrage, many of his victims were saved, nursed to health and re-acclimated to a kinder and gentler life.

The 12 dogs in Warren County, on the other hand, could look only to a peaceful death with a knockout serum instead of knockout rips in the ring. How stupid is it?