I will admit that I am way behind here. I don’t ever watch the news, I read it. But normally, articles centered on athletes, I tend to ignore, which is what I did when I say Michael Vick on yahoo news yesterday. I assumed it was another athlete getting caught on steroids. I had no idea how serious this was.

For those of you who don’t know, Michael Vick has been indicted by a federal grand jury for “his alleged role in a dog fighting venture that operated from a Virgina property owned by the Atlanta Falcons quaterback”. Apparently he’s been involved in dog fighting since 2001, when he bought property to start the Bad Newz Kennels.  This is where he bought pit bull puppies, trained them to fight, and hosted dog fighting events, with purses as high as $26000.00. The details are gory. At least 8 dogs that didn’t perform well or lost matches were executed by various means, including, drowning, hanging and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground. One they electrocuted.

Does anyone else find this utterly despicable? I cried when I heard the news today. How can there still be people in this world who would do these things to animals? Aren’t dogs supposed to be man’s best friend? But you train them to be killer dogs and set them against one another and they fight until they can’t any more or one of them dies. And then the one that loses the fight, you torture to death?  And people watch this shit? These puppies are loving and trusting and they twisted it into something horrible and disgusting.

Don’t they always say that kids who torture animals end up being serial killers? So what will happen to these sick bastards?  I believe that if Vick gets charged he will face up to one year in prison. One year!!! One year for a man who worked this nasty little scheme, this illegal scheme for almost 6 years.

Dog fighting is illegal in all 50 states, it is a felony in 49 states (what’s up Idaho?) But in most states it’s only a misdemeanor for being a spectator at a dog fight. But we can change that. Here is  a list of the state laws for dog fighting.  And here is more information about dog fighting from the Humane Society of the US. Write to your legislators and tell them that it should be a felony to watch dog fighting. These people support a criminal activity and it’s their participation that still makes this “sport” profitable.

At least I have one consolation. Nike and Reebok took away their endorsement deals this week.