ANIMAL PEOPLE AND MERRIT DRIBBLE

Pass-along pit bulls

Dogfighting in the U.S. today–and for the past 20 years, at least–uses mostly pass-along pit bulls who are bred in backyards, sold to people who strut them around for a short while and then give them away or resell them.

These dogs are eventually pitted against other dogs of similar history, or are starved and dehydrated for use as “bait dogs” in rigged matches meant to boost the reputations of the breeders of the “winning” dogs and the prices of their top lines.
Dogfighters need risk no money or property producing “bait dogs,” when pit bulls can be acquired on the street or through false-front “rescues” for less than the cost of feeding a dog for a couple of weeks.  The real money, for most dogfighting “professionals,” is not in “winning” fights per se, but rather in organizing the fights and collecting a cut of the admission price, gambling stakes, sales of  videos, and concession sales (including sales of illegal drugs on the premises)–and, especially, breeding and selling dogs to would-be dogfighters, like Michael Vick, who paid hugely inflated prices for dogs of exaggerated pedigree before his 2007 arrest.

Often, as in two recent mega-dogfighting busts in the Philippines, the organizers furnish the dogs on either side of the pit.  Dogfighters promote an image of themselves as would-be trainers of champions, but reality is that every dogfight is fixed: both dogs lose.  The “winner” may be bred, however, before being killed, either in fighting or after losing a fight.

Still another longtime humane legislative goal is seeking to outlaw the private breeding, sale, and possession of exotic and dangerous wildlife, including big cats, venomous snakes, and constricting snakes.  Markarian in particular has made much of the purported risk to human health and safety posed by private possession of pythons.

Globally, pet pythons and boa constrictors are known to have injured 10 people since 2005, killing a child in Florida, a man in Nebraska, and a man in Japan.  Large and exotic cats kept as pets, such as pumas, lions, tigers, and leopards, have killed and injured about twice as many, if the definition of “pet” is stretched to include big cats kept at private sanctuaries.

During the same years, pit bulls have killed 153 people in the U.S. alone, disfiguring 552. Relative to total numbers in homes, exotic pets may be more dangerous than pit bulls, but as a matter of priorities, most legislators tend to look first at the issues involving the most people.

Pandering to 2% of voters

Animal advocacy organization leaders should not be willing to squander the chance of legislative success on behalf of major categories of animals to court the support of the 5% of dog-keeping Americans who keep pit bulls and other “bully breeds”–perhaps 2% of U.S. voters.

To be sure, pit bull enthusiasts are a vocal and well-funded tiny minority, cultish in their devotion to “bully breeds.”  Pit bull advocates have also had more than a quarter century since the introduction of the first breed bans in major U.S. cities to rehearse and hone their rhetoric.  The rise of “no kill” advocacy has elevated wishful thinking that every dog might be saved, no matter what,  into an article of faith as fervently held as any tenet of organized religion.

Humane workers hoping to avoid the frequent necessity of killing pit bulls who are too dangerous and much too numerous in shelters to have rehoming prospects, and to avoid being stoned by “no-kill” zealots, have eagerly embraced falsehoods propounded by pit bull advocates, such as that pit bulls were once popular pets, even “nanny dogs,” who were bred by old-time dogfighters–like Charles Werner–to be not  human-aggressive despite being hair-trigger dog-aggressive.

Reality is that pit bulls–by any of their many names –were never more than 1% of the U.S. dog population until recent decades, according to retrospective surveys of newspaper mentions and classified ads offering dogs for sale.  The myth of pit bulls as “nanny dogs” appeared only once in mainstream print before the rise of debate over proposed breed bans.  John P. Colby, the old-time dogfighter who popularized pit bulls as pets from 1889 to 1941, produced dogs who in 1909 killed his own two-year-old nephew, Bert Colby Leadbetter, and later injured several other children.

But pit bull advocates are correct in asserting that “bully” dogs are the most frequent victims of abuse and neglect.  About 21% of the dogs impounded in cases of severe and prolonged neglect since 2005 have been pit bulls, and also 21% of the dogs impounded in cases of violent abuse–including 49% of the dogs set on fire and 14% of the dogs raped in bestiality cases.  No other breed type has ever been commonly fought.

The popularity of pit bulls among violent and abusive people is in itself a strong argument against breeding more.

Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960 | Clinton, WA 98236
Telephone: 360-579-2505
Cell: 360-969-0450
Fax: 360-579-2575
E-mail: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

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This entry was posted in ANIMAL BUSINESS, ANIMAL CRUELTY, ANIMAL ETHICS, ANIMAL EXPLOITERS,BLOOD SPORTS, CATS & DOGS, DOGFIGHTING, EDITORIALS, SEPTEMBER 2012, THE LAW. Bookmark the