Thursday, February 19, 2009

Pants on Fire

John Goodwin of the HSUS on why the Wilkes Co dogs had to die even though the Vick dogs proved that bust dogs could be evaluated and placed with rescue groups accordingly:

Those particular fighting dogs in Wilkes County, NC were very, very different than the Vick dogs. Whereas Michael Vick was a pro football player that fought dogs as a hobby, the breeder of these dogs was a globally recognized professional dogfighter. Vick was not a good breeder, and he lost most of his fights. His dogs were a poor representation of true fighting dogs.

John Goodwin, meet Wayne Pacelle, your boss at the HSUS.  He was on record quite a bit when the Vick dogs were seized, calling for their destruction:

Pacelle said, "If the current set of facts is not disputed, that they were killing off the less aggressive animals and keeping alive the best, most aggressive fighters, then it does not make sense to keep these animals alive."

Indeed, that set of facts was not disputed.  Not even by Mr. Goodwin himself:

John Goodwin of the Humane Society said the manner in which losing or unwilling dogs were killed was especially troubling.

Pacelle made the media rounds, advocating for the death of the Vick dogs:

"Officials from our organization have examined some of these dogs and, generally speaking, they are some of the most aggressively trained pit bulls in the country," Wayne Pacelle, the president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "Hundreds of thousands of less-violent pit bulls, who are better candidates to be rehabilitated, are being put down. The fate of these dogs will be up to the government, but we have recommended to them, and believe, they will be eventually put down."

Pacelle said the Humane Society normally advocated that fighting dogs be put down shortly after being seized.

So which is it HSUS?  Was Vick some wannabe dog fighter whose dogs just didn't have it in them to fight?  Or were his dogs violent killing machines programmed to destroy?  It seems like you want to characterize them as the latter when trying to justify why they should be killed but as the former when you've been proven wrong and want to justify why another group of bust dogs should be killed.

Some things just don't go together.  Like Humane and Society when talking about the need for immediate, secretive killing of bust dogs while simultaneously using them to raise cash.  Every dog deserves a fair evaluation.

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