by Roy Exum
posted February 3, 2008
 Roy Exum |
In one of sport’s most nauseating revelations, you’ll remember that Michael Vick, once the most highly-paid player in the National Football League, was convicted of fighting dogs after federal agents seized 47 pit bulls at his Bad Newz Kennels in Smithfield, Va.
You’ll also remember that the despicable Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison, and is now at Leavenworth in a move some whisper will get him an early out so he can return even sooner to the cozy cuddle of the NFL huddle.
But to millions of Americans, it was further tragedy that the abused animals would be put down, euthanized, which is what is normally done in federal cases, and when the Humane Society and PETA led an effort to save the dogs, the thug Michael Vick quickly offered up $928,073 of his own money to “save the dogs.”
His lawyers, of course, urged him to perpetuate the animals’ care because, in doing so, he might get out of prison even earlier and that much money is “chump change” compared to what he can make on any given Sunday afternoon.
So while the former Falcon is hopefully as uncomfortable and as miserable as a thug in prison can possibly be, NY Times writer Juliet Macur did a fabulous job Saturday telling us the dogs that Michael and his fellow vermin once brutalized are today finding there are people who “aren’t that way.”
In Juliet’s story, she takes us to a 3,700-acre dog sanctuary in an unknown place called Kanab, Utah., where a staff of phenomenal professionals are tenderly and gently working with the dogs to get their sanity back.
Sadly, she tells us of one named Georgia that was used for forced breeding and how Michael and his lovelies pried out every one of the dog’s teeth so she wouldn’t be able to bite. They say she often barks at nothing and almost rubs her nose raw she is so obsessive with her play toys, but that now she loves to cuddle and jump into her new friends’ laps.
We also learn that all but one of the dogs now in Utah wears a green collar, signaling they are safe to be around strangers, and that the one still so very angry and wearing the red collar, is still warm and safe and well-fed.
It has been both said and repeatedly proven that pit bulls are actually a gentle breed, but that once they are trained to please the kind of vermin who would fight and maim an animal to satisfy a sick thrill, they are not only mean but deadly.
About 10 of the more aggressive dogs, the ones Michael and his comical sidekicks put ground glass in their coats and filed their teeth into sharp points and tortured with electric shocks, are now at the Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pitbulls sanctuary, which is better known by the initials, BAD RAP.
There it is said it will not be a hurried process, and that some like the prize-winning Lucas – said to be Michael’s favorite - will never be able to go into society. These dogs were forced to watch as other animals at Bad Newz Kennels were savagely beaten, starved and torn to pieces, but now are cautiously allowing mankind to atone for its horrendous display of bloodsport.
Not long ago I was talking to a dog trainer about the thug Michael Vick and how I will never forget that it was the NFL star himself who often “body slammed” dogs that would lose fights or weren’t properly aggressive. The trainer looked at me sadly and said that chances are good some of those dogs will never recover from the scars, not on their shoulders and faces but deep inside their psyche.
“A dog wants to please a master more than anything in the world. The challenge facing the people who are rehabbing abused animals is replacing the master,” he said, “The worse a master is, the harder it is for the animal to overcome.”
So it comes as “good newz” that the dogs who were once tethered to buried car axles in the freezing rain and abused so terribly by the thug Michael Vick and his “Bad Newz” cronies, are alive and as well as they can be on this Super Sunday.
And that nobody – not even the highest paid man in the NFL - is ever going to hurt them again.
royexum@aol.com
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