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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
Earl Armstrong’s ignorance in his sickening defense of Michael Vick and dog fighting in general would have Martin Luther King, Jr. spinning in his grave. This is not a black and white issue, it’s an issue of right and wrong. Armstrong alleges that dog fighting is a “part of the black male machismo” and part of their culture, and therefore justified. It most certainly is not. Forcing a dog to kill another dog and become overly aggressive is against its nature. Dogs fight naturally to establish pack order and territory like wild wolves, but by training a dog to kill, it loses its natural instinct to stop and makes a normally wonderful domesticated animal into a dangerous killer.
It’s abuse. And to compare euthanasia to death in a dogfight is like equating a morphine overdose to crucifixion. Euthanasia is a combination of an anesthetic that stops the heart and lungs and a painkiller that only takes seconds to quickly and painlessly die. Most dogs don’t even realize what has happened to them. Dog fighting is a slow death that starts from the dog’s birth from being inbred to be more aggressive, to starved, to baited (forced to attack a cat, small animal or another dog to instill the kill drive) to when it is murdered in the ring, or destroyed by the sadistic methods employed by Michael Vick.
And spaying and neutering is, for the love of all that is holy, not cruel. It is a method of population control to prevent the birth of unwanted dogs that will be later euthanized or abused. Even PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) urges all people to get their pets spayed or neutered, and it has been proven to extend their lives. And animal control officers don’t “hunt” stray animals, they catch them so they can be adopted out to other people as pets. The Humane Society and Denver Dumb Friends League even fosters out feral animals so they have a better chance of getting a permanent family.
If what Armstrong says is true and dog fighting is “normal” for black communities, then the definition is meant to change. Two hundred years ago it was “normal” for a person to own another human being. Forty years ago it was “normal” to make a black person use a different bathroom. Culture and “normal” is meant to change, especially in the case of such a blatant act of cruelty.
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