As Michael Vick plummets from celebrity to our national symbol of animal cruelty, there is an unsettling question unanswered in all of the press coverage. Was he uniquely brutal or merely a spectacular outlier for canine atrocities we allow every day?
Spoiler alert for any overlords reading--wait---who are we kidding? Overlords? Reading? Hahahahahaha!!11!1!! We crack us up.
OK, spoiler alert for anyone reading this to an overlord: FHB is about the inhumanity of greyhound exploitation. Michael Vick is an inhumane monster. We're going to put them together. This is not going to turn out well for you.
You can go down last month's 18-page federal indictment against Vick and his codefendants and see plenty of snippets such as these: "train and breed . . . for. . . competitions"; "destroying or otherwise disposing of dogs not selected to stay"; "executed at least one dog that did not perform well"; "executed at least two dogs that did not perform well"; "Vick possessed. . . approximately 54 American Pit Bull Terriers, some of which had scars and injuries."
Of course, you can apply the same phrases or similar ones to greyhound racing.
Man. And the overlords used to think they had it bad when people would see them coming and cross over to the other side of the street.
Yet dog tracks operate in about a quarter of our states.
So if the overlords are like Michael Vick, are the people that go to the races like Michael Vick wannabes? Just asking.
The California-based Greyhound Protection League estimates that in the two decades from 1986-2005, 606,633 dogs from the industry were killed: 184,604 puppies judged to be inferior for racing and 421,129 after their "careers" ended, usually by 4 years old.
Man. Must have taken a lot of Michael Vicks to get rid of that many dogs. Who says the overlords aren't hard working?
The Greyhound Racing Association and industry defenders deny there was ever any mass abuse. They say that 90 percent of greyhounds are either adopted or kept alive for breeding. But over the years, there have been dreadful stories, such as the man in Alabama who was arrested in 2002 for slaughtering up to 3,000 used-up or losing dogs from the Florida tracks over a 10-year span.
Yeah, but at least that guy wasn't Michael Vick.
Throughout the 1990s, there were several news reports of mass killings, dog abandonments, and squalid kennel conditions. One trainer said that alleged dog electrocutions at one Idaho track were akin to Auschwitz.
Come on now, Michael Vick had to learn inventory control procedures someplace, right?
There is no difference between this and what Vick did, other than that dogfighting is illegal and greyhound racing remains legal in many states. Yeah, well, we're working on that, right Annie?
Annie takes the toys and carries them around the house. She plays Frisbee and ball inside and outside with foster family. When she’s in the mood she will go after it, other times she won’t and she will look at you, as if to say, “don’t bother me with that.” Annie would do well with a working family with well mannered children, 8 and up. She is good with other dogs and would be fine as an only dog. For more information about this dog, and other rescued racing greyhounds looking for homes, go here. If you don't know about the plight of racing greyhounds go here.
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