Talk:Dog fighting in the United States

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This new article is a split off of the dog fighting article. Vaoverland 12:39, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Merge

This article should be merged with the dog fighting article because this one only focuses on one area, while the other one focuses on dog fighting in general. 75.40.51.15 20:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Disagree The reason we split it off is because other registered editors felt there was too much U.S. content in the dog fighting article, and in the U.S., it has become a major issue recently, and the volume of content is appropriate. Mark in Historic Triangle 18:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article takes a highly negative view of people who breed and test game dogs. Some positive quotes should be included and not just sob-sters from various "humane" societies (that just euthanise every game dog they can get their hands on).Dog men have greatly contributed to the development of this sport, breeding dogs with real fight and game. 24.60.163.16 08:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

So by this logic should an article on pedophilia or rape offer views from the "positive" aspects of these two issues? Sometimes something is just despicable.Bokatoh 20:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
and that shows just how biased YOU are. There is no comparison between dogfighting and pedophilia or rape and to suggest such is ludicrous. One has to do with animals and the others with children and humans, just as a first rebuttal. As a second, perhaps one could compare bestiality to rape or pedophilia since that is at least at first blush a sexually defined matter, but even then you're cross species identifying.
There is however a possible correlation to horse racing, dog racing or hunting dogs and those I'm sure you can admit have both negative and positive implications. The Humane Society wants to do away with all hunting and dog racing, and PeTA believes no one should be allowed to have a pet. So maybe you can see there is gray shading to animal use/ownership? Leave it to an AR to overdramatize and humanize an animal issue.

[edit] Ellie Lawrenson and Rottweilers

I've deleted that entire paragraph as it pertained to England and this is an article about dog fighting in the U.S. Go ahead and put it back if you want, I'll simply delete it again and again. Find and example in the U.S. and don't reference other attacks in which the dogs were not trained for fighting (e.g. the Rottweilers in the now deleted paragraph were for guarding).Bokatoh 17:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, according to recent news articles there appears to be little evidence the dog was used in dog fighting.Bokatoh 18:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Here is an article noting that there was no evidence the dog was used in fighting.Bokatoh 18:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Here is an article about Cadey-Lee Deacon. Note the dogs are described as guard dogs, not dogs used in fighting pits. This is an important distinction, IMO, as dogs used in fighting pits usually have to be human submissive lest they turn on their handlers and the referee. Finally, I have yet to find any reference that the dogs were used in dog fighting.Bokatoh 18:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Children, Dofighting Desensitization

I'm not sure this should be in the article,

Even seasoned law enforcement agents are consistently appalled by the atrocities that they encounter before, during, and after dog fights, children in those communities are routinely exposed to the unfathomable violence that is inherent within the blood sport and become conditioned to believe that the violence is normal. Those children are systematically desensitized to the suffering, and ultimately become criminalized.

While the link does tell us where the above views came from there is nothing in that article that supports this assertion--i.e. it is just the authors beliefs. They might be true, then again they may not be true. In fact, in following the links and citations we find this article which actually presents a more balanced view.Bokatoh 23:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] American Samoa

Should it be noted somewhere that dog fighting is perfectly legal in American Samoa? I'm not sure if it's practiced or not, but they don't have any law against it.--Tim Thomason 23:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Needs less 2007, more history

It seems to me that this article contains way too much detail about happenings of one year--2007 - - and way too little history. Even the intro was mostly about the Vick case and I cut that down a bit. I did not cut the main body of the 2007 material but maybe the editor who wrote it could? All that detail IMO reads more like a weekly magazine article than an encyclopedia article.

I did add a bit more history but mostly just from the same Michigan report. Perhaps someone with more knowledge about the history of U.S. dogfighting could fill this out? The article says it was legal since colonial times which to me seemed to imply it was going on, or why mention it? but the referenced document's short section on history did not mention this and gives the early 1800s as the birth of dog fighting in America. I'm sure it was going on some before this- - but apparently got much bigger after 1817? the implication of the Michigan paper is that the import of the Staff is what led to this. (? True? There must be more aspects of this history to tell, no? Like about development of American Pitbull.... ) Wichienmaat 12:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Animal welfare comments

I deleted the adjetive "self-styled" before animal welfare orgs... because to me that sounded like an implication that "animal welfare" was some fairly recent and limited term I also cut the parenthetical remark "(commonly known as Humainiacs)" because I thought 1) although perhaps one could include that in an article about such orgs, it is not needed in another article in which they are mentioned. Wichienmaat 12:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Comment

This isn't an encyclopedic entry, this is nothing more than a spin job put on here by Animal Rights Activists. A good third of this entry is about Michael Vick and would be more appropriate on a page about him, if anywhere. Another third is recent news stories; these ARs already have a site to post all that, it's called petabuse.com. If this was really about "Dogfighting in the US" it would discuss the entire HISTORY of the sport, not just take convenient shots at recent events due to the current political climate regarding this matter and have such a biased tone. I'm not at all surprised though, the HSUS has over a million dollars this year to push this agenda and this sort of thing helps them garner more money. I've found many wikipedia entries to be nothing more than fluff skewed to fit some editor's or another's personal objectives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.245.48.185 (talk) 19:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 21

number of times the word "Vick" is mentioned in this article.....