I'm not here to pass judgement on Michael Vick, the quarterback from the Atlanta Falcons, recently indicted on a variety of issues related to dog-fighting.
I'm here to express shock, outrage and grief for this inhuman activity. And I'm here to give a solution to those who feel compelled to provide this "sport" to others and to those who watch, enjoy, gamble on and in any other way involve themselves here.
First of all, I have a dog. I've had several over my lifetime. My dogs have been very, very close friends of mine. When you see videos of these dogs going after each other over and over again, you can NOT miss the fear in their eyes. They are fearful of dying. They are fearful of more pain.
I guess you can breed a dog to do just about anything, but it's not what THEY want. They want to serve their master. Give them regular feedings, a place to sleep, and they'll go out of their way, day in and day out, to make YOU happy they're around.
I actually cried when I saw some of these videos. Perhaps a certain segment of society would consider me weak because I can't take a "good dog fight." Maybe so. But here's another possibility: a certain segment of society may have lost sight of their own personal dignity. And that may have happened for them so long ago, they don't even know that it happened.
Breeding dogs to fight is cruel. It's not only cruel to the dogs, it's cruel to the people associated with the activity. Each and every one of us has a time track. This time track goes back quite a bit. On this time track are various acts of cruelty: acts we received, acts we dished out, acts we observed others dishing out and even acts of cruelty we inflict on ourselves.
When you get into a cruel activity in present time, you "re-stimulate" acts of cruelty from the past. The mind just works a certain way. Not because I say so, because it just does. When you pile on more and more of a harmful act, you just make less and less of yourself and it's gets harder to turn it around.
Fortunately there is a solution. I wrote a post a few months back, "Where Does All the Irrational Stuff Come From?" Give that a read and you'll find some very helpful information.
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