A tidy ranch in a subdivision just southeast of Gastonia shows no signs of dogfighting, but a national animal welfare group says it’s home to one of a dozen or so known publications that promote the grisly, illegal sport.
It is — or was — home to the Pit Bull Advertiser, a homemade catalog sold over the Internet. Pages and pages of advertisements for “game dogs,” treadmills and breeding stands, it’s yours for only $10 plus shipping and handling.
David Green, the man behind the catalog, is quick to say he’s stopping its publication because it’s losing money. He insists he doesn’t like dogfighting and believes The Humane Society of the United States’ John Goodwin is wrong in linking the Pit Bull Advertiser to dogfighting.
“He needs to get his facts straight,” Green says. “Everything that was put in the Advertiser — basically you could pull it up and see it anywhere [online] … This is not an underground type of deal.”
Goodwin, manager of animal fighting issues for the advocacy group, knows of about a dozen such magazines or catalogs in the United States. Any publication that promotes dogfighting is illegal, he said, and isn’t constitutionally protected speech.
“If you have a magazine that is filled with advertisements that are helping people further illegal animal fighting, then that is illegal,” says Goodwin. “The Supreme Court has already said that commercial speech that is furthering criminal activity is not First Amendment-protected.”
The recent indictment of NFL star Michael Vick has thrust dogfighting into national spotlight. Vick, who has pleaded not guilty, has lost legions of fans and roused the ire of animal advocates, who say most people have no idea that dogfighting — whether highly organized or street-level — happens in their communities.
The consequences of dogfighting have been evident in the Charlotte area. In 2005, a badly mutilated pit bull was left for dead along Wilkinson Boulevard between Charlotte and Gastonia. He was saved and rehabilitated. And in January, pit bulls were seized from a Union County home because of dogfighting allegations. Each of those dogs were placed in caring homes and are being rehabilitated, says a woman from the Pity 4 Us rescue group.
Many pit bulls suffer an even more shameful fate. Melissa Knicely-Berry, spokeswoman for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Control, says 2,075 pit bulls were brought to the shelter last year — just more than 12 percent of all dogs received. Of those, 55 dog went to animal rescues. Twenty-nine died while in the shelter, either from illness or previous cruelty and neglect. The rest were euthanized.
While animal control doesn’t have statistics on the percentage of its pit bulls that have been fought, Knicely-Berry says staffers do see scars and other signs of fighting. (Disclosure: This writer volunteers at animal control adoption fairs and spay/neuter clinics.) “Because it’s a very underground type of thing, it’s hard for us as animal control to investigate it … because our officers are civilian officers, and they don’t carry firearms,” she says.
That underground is more accessible than ever, with dogfighting information traded on Web sites and Internet forums. You can buy fighting dogs, get training advice and swap stories. Such sites sometimes refer to animal welfare and animal rights advocate as “Humaniacs.”
The sites also often carry disclaimers, such as this one included on sites mentioning the Pit Bull Advertiser: “The publisher of this booklet does not condone to [sic] any cruelty to animals, promotion of dog fighting and/or any other activities deemed illegal by the U.S. Dept. of Justice and all state and local jurisdictions.” Such disclaimers are legally meaningless in the face of evidence otherwise, says Goodwin.
In recent days, Green’s site has been altered to omit mention of the “treadmills, swim tanks, jennys, catmills, etc.” that it carried just a few days ago. Such equipment is used to train dogs for “gameness” or fighting ability.
“That’s just what people sell,” says Green. “People do [use] these equipment to actually exercise their dog.”
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a catmill or jenny “resembles a miniature horse walker, in which a dog is harnessed to a projecting spoke. A small bait animal is attached to the leading spoke to entice the dog. A variation is a single projecting pole, to which the dog is harnessed.”
One magazine, the Performance APBT (for American Pit Bull Terrier) operated out of North Carolina before its publisher moved to Florida, Goodwin says. Another publication, the Journal, came out of Hillsborough but now seems to be defunct.
While magazines promoting dogfighting are illegal, they have been relatively low priority for law enforcement. “There’s just a whole lot of people out there to pick from, and logic tells us that if [prosecutors] are going to do an animal fighting case, they’re going to try to pick the best targets to make the biggest impact,” Goodwin says.
Since the Vick case broke, several people who distribute these magazines and catalogs have been named in newspapers, including The Virginian-Pilot (where the Pit Bull Advertiser was first named) and others in Florida.
“That sort of attention isn’t something they want, because they’re involved in furthering a crime that is a felony in 48 states,” Goodwin says. “People that are promoting felony crimes don’t like the attention they get when their names are in the newspaper.”
As of late last week, Green’s Web site still listed the Pit Bull Advertiser for sale. He says the advertising catalog was started to “educate some of the fellow dogmen … and let them understand, you know, that you don’t put these kind of dogs in just anybody’s hands.”
“Most people don’t want it sent out [to their homes],” he says. “I don’t blame them.”
This article appears in Aug 1-7, 2007.
