Vick's Dogs Dying Anyway?

Yes, dogfighting is cruel. Yes, Vick and his cronies buying dogs, "training" them and then fighting them to the death is cruelty. You're not going to hear me say otherwise - it's a vicious thing to do and he deserves jail time for his misdeeds.

But at the end of the day - aren't they just going to die anyway?

Welcome to the life of pit bulls - a breed of dogs that has been bred over many years to be an aggressive animal used for guarding and attacking. Just as golden retrievers have been bred to be best at helping the blind get through their day as seeing-eye dogs, and just as border collies have been bred to herd sheep for their owners, and just as chihuahuas have been bred to shake nervously and pee - pit bulls were bred for vicious action.

No, I'm not blaming the dogs for the cruelty they were put through - I'm saying that they're the most likely candidates to fall victim to this bloodsport in the seedy underbelly of society. You're not going to train a poodle to kill in the ring - you'd want a dog that has the look and the potential to be a killing machine. Enter the pit bull. Then enter Michael Vick.

This guy and his friends admittedly purchased a location and owned a kennel specifically for these dogs. They trained them and put them through the wringers to hone in on their killing skills, and that does suck. But when you get right down to it, where do you draw the line between Michael Vick's dastardly ploy that winds up with winners and losers and potential death for any of these pit bulls - and the government's seizing of the pit bulls after locking up Vick and the others, creating a ticking clock for all of these animals to be simply put to death.

That's right - they're all destined to die.

Truth of the matter is, there's nothing anyone can do. They've tried notifying anyone they can of people who left their dogs at the kennel or sold their dogs to Vick and his cohorts. The dogs are sitting in shelters right now. The window to claim them was over a few days ago, 30 days after their initial seizure in late July. They're now currently owned by the federal government, and it's going to be a federal judge's decision that deems whether these animals live or die. Well, I mean live longer than if the judge demands euthanasia. Which is highly likely.

Even PETA - those douchebags who always pray for animal peace and welfare and then perform terrorist acts against businesses to "make a point" - says they're going to die. And PETA should know - over 90% of the animals "rescued" by this organization are killed and their carcasses are thrown into a walk-in freezer until they can be disposed of.

Says Daphna Nachminovitch, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "There's no dispute over who owns the dogs. Obviously this is not going to be a process where someone steps forward and says, 'This is my dog, can I have her back, please?' These dogs are a ticking time bomb. Rehabilitating fighting dogs is not in the cards. It's widely accepted that euthanasia is the most humane thing for them."

And that's PETA talking!

The damage has been done. The dogs are now "damaged goods" and nobody's going to be able to take care of them. They're too aggressive (beyond the aggressive nature of the breed in general) to be taken in as pets. It's bad enough to watch a family adopt a pit bull, knowing their violent tendencies, but to adopt one that's already been TRAINED TO KILL? I don't think so.

So they're going to die anyway. Whether they stayed at Bad Newz Kennels and fought to the death as valiantly as possible until the bitter loss of defeat ended their career and life - or were kept in a fenced cell for 30 days until a judge banged a gavel and they were injected with a lethal cocktail and died quickly and without a fight - they will be dying soon.

So what's the lesson in this? Do we regulate the breeding of these animals so there are less of this aggressive breed around to have people train them and fight them in the underground dogfights that simply cannot be stopped? (Let's face it, even the police have no idea how to stop the dogfights from going on because they almost ALWAYS find out AFTER the fights and the damage has been done and nobody is arrested because it's too late to find anyone.) Do we try and up the ante and make the penalties harsher for these crimes that so rarely get caught - just to satiate the public when a rare arrest is actually made? Do we just kill all the members of PETA? (Sorry, that's just for my benefit, so one of these rhetorical questions rings out as "yes" for me.)

Truth is - I have no idea. Which isn't that horrible of a thing. But it's the fact that the government has no idea either. And we still can't even decide if it should BE the government's decision to make. After all, we are the humans and they are the beasts - that gives us the right to own them and eat them, so why not let us fight them? And why not let us eat them, no matter what the beast? When you look at the delicacies of THIS country, let alone those of other countries (rat buffet, anyone?) - don't you get the impression that if it's made of meat, we can eat it?

That's my solution, anyway. I've heard the saying, "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." Well, mine's more of an "Eat 'em all and let the Intestines sort 'em out!" kind of plan.

Bob Barker led an amazing career of telling us to spay or neuter our pets to help control the pet overpopulation problem. I say that it's a lot more humane to kill 'em and grill 'em than it is to chop off their testicles and let 'em STILL wander the streets. We solve the pet overpopulation problem, and we provide meat to the impoverished, at home and overseas. We've already domesticated them and learned to breed them as well - isn't it a matter of time before they join the rest of the domesticated/bred animal kingdom like cows and pigs and sheep?

Now, before you go painting me as Cruella de Ville with a lovely Dalmation coat, it's just an idea. A crazy and seemingly insensitive one, true - but can you really argue that it's worse than rescuing over 50 dogs from a cruel underground dogfighting circuit and telling us that the only thing we can do for these dogs is to KILL THEM? At least in my version, a poor family can have Pit Bull Fajitas or something...

I'm open to hear other ideas - go for it. Tell me how YOU think we should stop what cannot be stopped - and then at the end of the day find something positive to do about it in the end. Because you can't stop the dogfighting. And you can barely attempt to stop the breeding of the dogs themselves. And you can't stop the killing of animals that can't be adopted even though you "rescued" them.

So what do we do? Leave a comment. Let me know YOUR ideas. Together, maybe we can do something...

(The article with the deadline and PETA bitch)
(A website with a friendly reminder that animal cruelty is bad - in case somehow we forget that)