Column

What dogs can teach us about humanity

By SUE CARLTON, Times Columnist
Published August 31, 2007

A colleague tells this story about a newspaper where she once worked.

A bunch of editors were sitting around talking about the day's news, as editors do. No one seemed particularly emotional about a story for the next day's paper on the double suicide of a mother and daughter.

Then somebody mentioned that the family's dogs also were given sleeping pills, and they died too.

That got reaction: outrage, dismay, concern, questions, the gamut.

And I get it.

Years ago, a man committed suicide by jumping off the Sunshine Skyway bridge. His dog went over, too. It wasn't clear if the man carried the dog or the dog followed him.

By some cosmic intervention, the dog survived to be picked up by a passing fisherman in a boat. Still, I remember this brief flare of anger - actual anger, at this poor despondent man - because of the dog.

I know people who can handle the worst news - murders, rapes and the infinite variety of meanness human beings inflict upon each other. But for some of us, stories about animal cruelty carry extra weight. Is this because animals are vulnerable and dependent, and we've pretty much given up on humans? Maybe so.

We are justifiably angry at Michael Vick, the suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback who shattered his own life and possibly his career with his dogfighting enterprise.

The pure brutality of what Vick, 27, finally admitted to doing comes through even in the dry legalese of the "summary of the facts" court document he signed.

Dogs trained to fight. Dogs viciously attacking each other so people could bet on them. Dogs bleeding and injured. Dogs violently killed by humans because they did not fight well enough.

Maybe it's the level of cruelty, or the utter lack of concern for their suffering - or worse, the idea that people might have enjoyed that suffering - that puts some of us over the top.

And I have particular trouble with the argument that this is a cultural thing. Culture is not the universal mulligan, and if the culture is cruelty, it's time to evolve.

The truth is, Michael Vick could have driven drunk and killed someone, could have beaten a girlfriend, could have committed other serious crimes, and many of us would not be this angry. It has nothing to do with valuing dogs over people, though I can think of cases in which an argument could be made.

Maybe it comes down to this: We hold people responsible for what they do to other people - say, knocking each other senseless in a boxing ring, a "sport" that will never make sense to me.

Sometimes, we blame the victim of a crime - why didn't she just leave?

But these dogs had no choice. For some of us, it's hard to imagine anything lower than using them for blood sport.

After he pleaded guilty this week, Vick faced the cameras.

He said he was sorry. He said he alone was responsible. He said he needed to grow up.

He even called dog fighting "a terrible thing."

Maybe it was calculated, since he's staring at as much as five years in prison.

Maybe it's too little, too late.

But for the first time, Michael Vick looked scared, and sorry.

You know how he looked? All too human.

[Last modified August 31, 2007, 00:28:30]