Warning: extremely graphic, those who are sensitive may not want to read.
The life and death of a fighting dog
By Marie Szaniszlo
Sunday, August 5, 2007 - Updated: 09:59 AM EST
It begins like this: You are born to a dog who was bred with her head and torso strapped down on a “rape stand,” and sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on whether your parents were “champions.”
Once you are weened from your mother, you live in a kennel the size of a closet or are chained to a doghouse and left standing in your own feces through unforgiving summer heat and cold so bitter you appear to be having convulsions.
When you are 1 or 2 years old, your owner puts you through several “rolls,” five- to 10-minute fights with another dog, to give you your first taste of blood.
The rolls eventually are replaced by hour-long “game tests,” an intense weeding-out process to determine whether you and other “prospects” are willing to fight - even if parts of your body have been bitten off, your legs have been broken and your face has been permanently disfigured.
For “practice,” your owner may give you a neighborhood cat or a dog from the local pound to kill. But you never, ever bite your owner or another person unless you are prepared to be beaten to death.
Your owner sets the date of your first professional fight months in advance. During that time, he gives you steroids to beef you up, and puts you through a “keep,” an intense exercise regimen that includes running while chained on treadmills to burn fat and build your stamina.
To sharpen your agility, your owner makes you follow him around, jumping up to reach a rawhide he dangles from a “flirt pole.” To strengthen your jaw and neck muscles, he hangs a spring pole from a tree with some object attached to the end of it and makes you jump up and grab hold of it without letting go.
The day of your first fight arrives, and your owner gives you amphetamines to make you “crazy in the pit.” Owners from around the country show up by invitation only. Some are gangbangers in muscle shirts and baggy jeans; others are businessmen wearing three-piece suits. They gather around a 14-by-14-foot pit with 2-foot high walls.
By the time the fight is over, the walls will be splattered with your opponent#%92s blood and yours.
After calling out your sex and weight and how much money you are going to fight for, your owner and your opponent#%92s owner wash each of you down to show that no one has cheated by embedding poison or glass in your coats. A referee orders each of you to a corner, and you both have 10 to 20 seconds to make a “scratch,” a beeline for the opponent, or be disqualified.
During the fight, the odds change, and the owners and their friends are shouting, calling out bets with one another. By then, your owner has taught you that your life depends on making the scratch and winning. So you and your opponent attack, mauling each other until one of you is either dead or so eviscerated that you are no longer able to make the scratch.
If you lose, either you limp home, or your owner, humiliated and having lost up to several thousand dollars, lets you bleed to death, hangs you, shoots you, beats you to death, impales you on a fence, wets you down and then electrocutes you or burns you alive.
If you win, you live to fight another dog, or get to limp home and recover from your wounds without a veterinarian#%92s care, and brace yourself for the next fight, and the next, and the next, until you are no longer able to make the scratch and are mauled to death by another dog - or you#%92re executed by your owner.