Many seem to be unaware of the scope of dogfighting in America and assume that Michael Vick was "the" dogfighter. Dogfighting was huge before Vick was ever born and is every bit as big now as it was after he was sent to prison. Michael Vick was maybe one millionth of the dogfighting problem in this country.
Dogfighting goes on in every community in America. There is no exception. Look at your local shelters and ask them how many pit bulls they get in. Pit bulls have become the dominant shelter dog. Why? Is it because they're the ideal pet? No. It's because to many poor people, and some not so poor people, pit bulls are a cheaper version of a thoroughbred race horse. Get the "right" dog and you can become rich from that dog. For every one that ends up in a shelter, probably ten end up killed and in dumpsters, or chopped up to feed their other pit bulls.
Buyers will study the fight history and bloodlines of the dam and sire of a batch of puppies and then try to pick a winner out of the litter. They'll then train the pup from a very young age to kill, typically using captured wild animals. (A problem that's become so endemic that a local hardware store now refuses to carry the Have-A-Hart traps after learning how many they'd sold were being used to capture wild animals to train fighting dogs.) If you get the "right" dog and he wins all his fights, you can retire him, stud him out and sell his puppies for a thousand or more each. If he's really superior then the price per pup goes way higher..It's not uncommon for a hundred or more puppies to come from each stud each year. A hundred puppies at a thousand dollars a pup is a hundred thousand, tax free, largely untraceable dollars since it's a cash business. And that dog can stay at stud, churning out pups for years. Getting the "right" dog is like winning the lottery.
That's why dogfighting is a big problem in this country. It's a big money business that anyone can get into for a relatively small investment. Even if you can't afford a dog with good bloodlines, you can buy a lesser dog cheap and convince yourself that you can train it to be better than the rest because others have. You'll find pit bull factories on nearly every block of some poor neighborhoods. These dogs aren't being bred to be companion animals. They're being bred for fighting. They're being sold for fighting and there's no lack of buyers. This is the real world and this is what's going on right now all across the country and around the world.
Michael Vick was a speck of dust compared to the scope of the real problem and unlike pretty much everyone else involved, Vick is now committed to doing whatever he can to end dofighting. He's spent thousands of hours of his time talking to kids to get the message out not to follow the path he took. He's spent a ton of his own money to get that message out. He can't undo what he's done, no one can, but he's doing everything possible to atone for what he's done. Hating Michael Vick and focusing on his past does nothing to end the real problem of dogfighting in this country. He was just one very small part of a vastly bigger problem.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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