The Michael Vick Law

Michael Vick, a known dog fighter, bought a puppy and was allowed to. This sickens me to my stomach, and it can be so easily fixed:

Make a law that would make it illegal for someone convicted of any animal cruelty offence (whether just beating them or fighting them) to purchase or adopt an animal, especially the one that they were convicted of abusing.

This is a mind-numbingly simple solution that will solve all kinds of problems: there is no chance that the convict will be able to legally obtain an animal that s/he could abuse, the convict learns responsibility for their actions, and the media will not be in an uproar when a dog fighter strolls out the door of a shelter with a brand-new puppy.

Of course there are still problems: the life of a fighting dog may not be glamorous, but certainly it would be better than one getting euthanized? Wrong. Fighting dogs are taken young, and so any family would be eager to take it and give it a loving home. Instead, its tail and ears are docked without anesthesia and it is taught how to be aggressive. If the animal is "saved" from the dog fighting, it may be too aggressive to trust humans and will have to be euthanized then.

And then there's the uproar from the pro-dog fighters. Vick actually got support for training dogs to basically kill each other. Apparently dog fighting is like hunting. In the latter, humans go out into the woods for pure sport and attempt to show their skill by killing an animal that is plentiful and wild. The meat is usually either eaten directly or given to someone to eat, and the skin can be used for clothing or economical purposes through taxidermy. (I'm not endorsing hunting, mind you. I'm sure that will be a lengthy rant soon). In the former, a puppy is taken and trained to kill anything its sight. One day when it grows up it will face something bigger and stronger and will be killed. The body is thrown away and another dog is raised for the same fate. Sounds exactly the same to me.

Another argument for dog fighting is that it's a dog fighter's business if he wants to pit two canines against each other for money. But the thing is, when it involves another living thing and the difference between life and death, it isn't his business anymore. It becomes a case of right and wrong. If he got it from a specific shelter, it becomes the business of a shelter when they learn that somebody is using one of their animals for malevolent purposes. It becomes the problem of those that the dog comes into contact with during the brutal training process. Bottom line, it's not just his business if he wants to raise animals to kill.

Yet another argument is that dogs fighting will happen. Yes, but there is a difference between two feral dogs who have never known humans fighting each other over a scrap of meat and a dog with a home being beaten into submission and learning to hate and attack living things. In the former, the dog knows that this is the way of life and how they will live. In the latter, they were forcibly made to believe that at a young age.

These arguments are inherently flawed and show a lack of respect for all forms of life. If we simply add the law above, everything would be better.

(P.S. How's that for a lengthy rant?)