Some call it sport; it's not sporting, it's animal abuse
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published August 1, 2004
BROOKSVILLE - The pit bullterriers are lined up in 14 cages at the kennel of Hernando County Animal Services. As I walk down the row, each dog comes to the front, whimpering with excitement, tail wagging, begging for attention.
I kneel to each in turn and murmur a soft word. They are black, brown, tan, tawny. They are handsome animals, with big soulful eyes and sweet faces. Most eagerly lick my hands and my face through the chain-link fence.
Funny thing about pit bulls, which get so much bad press. They have been bred for centuries to be deadly aggressive toward other dogs. But by and large, they love us. As a rule they don't even make good watchdogs - too friendly.
Am I saying they are not dangerous? Of course not. They can be very dangerous. They can kill little kids or even grownups if something sets them off. They are not dog-park dogs. But if you do your end of the job right, they are sweet and loving and obedient.
"Can I pet this one?" I ask Jim Varn, who is on his final day before retiring as the county's animal services supervisor. I point to a dirty-white and spotted female up on her hind legs, forepaws on the fence, crying for me.
"No," he shakes his head. "I'm not going to get fired on my last day."
These 14 dogs were seized from an empty mobile home on July 2 by Hernando sheriff's deputies, acting on an anonymous tip. They had been used for illegal dog fighting - scarred legs, torn ears, faces lacerated. Some had open, festering wounds. Their living conditions were disgusting. The slop left as their food was covered with maggots.
Here is what will happen to them. At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, the county will present its findings in a court hearing. The county will almost certainly win custody.
Then it will euthanize them.
There is no other way for the county. A pit bull trained for fighting can never be adopted out, no matter how friendly it seems. Even if the adopter signed a full legal waiver, if that dog ever got loose, or hurt anyone, the county would be on the hook legally.
"If it was a puppy, that would be one thing," Varn told me. "I just adopted one out today. We are not anti-pit bull. I was raised with the breed.
"But these dogs, you never know what they are going to do. They act people-friendly today, but what happens tomorrow? Somebody takes the wrong posture toward them. Somebody screams or something. They're just not stable animals."
The Lakeland man who trained them to fight (no charges have been filed yet) has condemned them to this fate. The only consolation is they will not spend the rest of a short and miserable life in terrifying, brutal combat before dying in pain.
Until now, my prejudice has been that dog-fighting is a pastime with strictly redneck appeal.
But Varn said there are different kinds of fighting, and it's getting worse. Tough kids out on the street, drug-dealer types, walk around with dogs on a chain, and when two owners get together, they fight them on the spot.
At the other extreme, there's a level of sophistication beyond anything the public knows about. Varn says there are magazines, printed programs with statistics, advertisements for training aids. (One popular way to train a dog is to tie the dog to one end of a rotating arm, and then attach a cage with a terrified cat at the other end.)
It is notoriously hard to uncover and prosecute these cases. Varn says: "You've just about got to catch them in the act."
There are several active pit bull rescue groups in the United States, and they universally condemn fighting as a barbaric abuse. The closest one is in South Florida. If you're interested, check out these Web sites for starters: www.pbrc.netwww.realpitbull.comwww.outofthepits.org Maybe the case of these 14 animals could serve to raise our awareness. All of us can tell our lawmakers and our law enforcement that we want zero tolerance. All of us can make it clear that this is an activity that no decent person will accept from another human being.
At least, those were the things I told myself in consolation, as I walked down the row of eager faces. Here is what I murmured to each dog in turn, holding out my hand to be licked: "I'm sorry."
