[verizon]

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

the color of dog fighting

There was some chat on the Net today about a Today Show piece that highlighted a program to end dog fighting. The report was peppered with formula clips of dogs engaged in bloody battles mixed in with young black guys who've changed their ways. It was a schizophrenic five minutes as far as the dogs were concerned: dogs acting scary, dogs climbing agility equipment, more dogs acting scary, finished with a cute dog who wowed the show hosts with cute tricks.

The report raised eyebrows from people who've been watching this campaign work its marketing pitch on the general public. (Yes - of course the campaign is marketed. Every well-funded campaign is marketed.) We noted the audible silence of our colleagues as well as the predictable shock and horror reactions from the public: "Dog fighting is so so mean and someone needs to stop those thuggy people from doing it." Right - Okay.

But let me tellya my fine white friends: Young black guys in select neighborhoods in select cities are - proportionately - not a particularly big threat to the state of pit bulls in this country. And as far as we've noted in our work with municipalities near and far, dog fighting is not nearly the epidemic it's been made out to be. It's out there, it's awful and we want authorities to stop it - but it's not a so-called epidemic, worthy of juxtaposing violent images of dogs being slaughtered next to the faces of repentant young black men on the Today Show.

America believes differently though. Last weekend a student reporter came to our shelter-based training class, hungry to write a report on dog fighting. He chatted excitably about the epidemic that's everywhere. Did we have any former fighters we could point out to him? His buddy stood by with a camera, ready to grab images. I scanned the 40 or so dogs doing drills in front of us and did a quick inventory. Hmm. Not today. Maybe next week. "How about that one with the scratches on his face?" "Yeah - he's a Dogo Argentino and there's no telling what scuffle he got into." Explaining, "Dings on dog's faces don't necessarily point to organized dog fighting - or street fighting for that matter." I think I disappointed him, but frankly, we're like most cities with shelters crowded full of dogs who've simply lost their homes for a variety of unfortunate reasons.

No doubt there are way too many unemployed urban youth with too much time on their hands embracing the gore sport. However, historically dog fighters in this country have been - and quite literally still are - snowball white.

The bad guys can be counted as white high school science teachers, white female dog trainers, and even white humane investigators exposed on video for all to see. They're dotted around the country in pockets here and there, they're organized, and they're getting caught - as they should.


The difference is, only one color of dog fighter is being coached on how to show compassion to animals and paraded on the Today Show.

Overstating the problem of dog fighting, directing it at young black youths and flashing America with images of dogs engaged in battle might work from a marketing perspective, but it can actually work against the cause by deepening fear and stereotypes. This is especially true in communities that have BSL. From a big picture perspective, the larger threat to the dogs is much more insidious and mainstream than the guy in the ghetto: It's the unforgivable prejudice that forces families to surrender their dogs to a shelter because no property owner will rent to them -- even to a hero dog. It's the obstinate librarian in an affluent suburb of San Francisco who believes children should be shielded from short squatty dogs with fat heads. It's a city attorney who's leading others to believe that dog fighters are actually funding the fight to end a BSL-massacre in Denver

End Dog Fighting - of course. But a broader battle call should be to End the Ignorance before it infects policy makers in your town and sends untold numbers of dogs who've never been near a dog fight to their untimely deaths.



Posted by Donna at 9:25 PM

BAD RAP Blog: the color of dog fighting

[ftpsoft]

APPLAUSE!
Well spoken...well-written,and right on point.Thank You.

[Blahhhshsh]

Or we could just make dogfighting legal and have standards of care for the dogs including their upkeep and medical needs.

[lidya-sggf]

Even better MJ.

[twiffatticy]

Another sensationalistic race-themed unneeded piece of yellow journalism.

[tsaaapla]

Or we could just make dogfighting legal and have standards of care for the dogs including their upkeep and medical needs.

YOU MUST BE A DOG FIGHTER!

...

[Enfonebew]

Again the race card, i thought most of or not all of the great dog men were WHITE

[Blahhhshsh]

YOU MUST BE A DOG FIGHTER!

...

Strangely, I am too squeemish to even watch the dogfighting videos online at youtube and such. Yet I have no issues with watching humans get made into hamburger doing stupid stunts or in zombie movies.

It just really irks me that we humans selectively and intentionally bred dogs to want to fight and yet if we let them do so for profit or to continue game lines it is illegal here.

We claim to be dog lovers, yet fighting dogs are kept hidden away and cannot enjoy a normal life or be treated for wounds openly because the law forces their owners to hide them or go to jail and makes it illegal for vets to treat them or risk losing their licenses and going to jail.

Since people will participate in the sport anyways, as animal fighting has been going on for literally centuries and shows no signs of dying out, the least we can do is allow injured dogs to be treated by veterinary professionals and mandate standards of care and keeping.

Not to mention the whole property rights issue.

Seriously, when will this country grow up?

We have a multi-billion dollar "war" on drugs, yet people have been using drugs for religious and recreational purposes for literally millenia and are showing no signs of stopping.

We have laws making it criminal for teens to have sex with each other, yet teens have been doing it since the beginning of time.

We have laws prohibiting gay relations, yet we have had gay members of our species since we became a species.

We need to accept and decriminalize human nature and if we feel we must legislate it then we can do so in a way that makes natural human behaviors safer.

Hunting is a great example. Not everyone approves of hunting and in some places hunted animals were becoming endangered. So we, as a society, regulated the practice and made it saner and safer.

*sigh* All these laws regulating any and everything and yet people are still free to be freakin idiots.

[tsaaapla]

We claim to be dog lovers, yet fighting dogs are kept hidden away and cannot enjoy a normal life or be treated for wounds openly because the law forces their owners to hide them or go to jail and makes it illegal for vets to treat them or risk losing their licenses and going to jail.

At least once a week I explain this to someone... 1/2 the time, their response is, "YOU MUST BE A DOGFIGHTER!"

...I don't even own an APBT, I must be fighting my 9 month old Doberman...

Anyways, people demonize things in the media (Pit Bulls, Pit Bull fighting) without even bothering to learn about it, so as long as the NEWS is around, people won't change.

People refuse to think that the people who practice matching dogs might actually care for their pets... This was an interesting read for me:
BAD RAP Blog: Let's do the time warp: The funeral of 'Spot'

I'm not trying to promote matching dogs but I agree that you're 100% right that regulation is key instead of a ban...

[twiffatticy]

Strangely, I am too squeemish to even watch the dogfighting videos online at youtube and such. Yet I have no issues with watching humans get made into hamburger doing stupid stunts or in zombie movies.

It just really irks me that we humans selectively and intentionally bred dogs to want to fight and yet if we let them do so for profit or to continue game lines it is illegal here.

We claim to be dog lovers, yet fighting dogs are kept hidden away and cannot enjoy a normal life or be treated for wounds openly because the law forces their owners to hide them or go to jail and makes it illegal for vets to treat them or risk losing their licenses and going to jail.

Since people will participate in the sport anyways, as animal fighting has been going on for literally centuries and shows no signs of dying out, the least we can do is allow injured dogs to be treated by veterinary professionals and mandate standards of care and keeping.

Not to mention the whole property rights issue.

Seriously, when will this country grow up?

We have a multi-billion dollar "war" on drugs, yet people have been using drugs for religious and recreational purposes for literally millenia and are showing no signs of stopping.

We have laws making it criminal for teens to have sex with each other, yet teens have been doing it since the beginning of time.

We have laws prohibiting gay relations, yet we have had gay members of our species since we became a species.

We need to accept and decriminalize human nature and if we feel we must legislate it then we can do so in a way that makes natural human behaviors safer.

Hunting is a great example. Not everyone approves of hunting and in some places hunted animals were becoming endangered. So we, as a society, regulated the practice and made it saner and safer.

*sigh* All these laws regulating any and everything and yet people are still free to be freakin idiots.