So I just watched a clip from the Michael Vick interview on Piers Morgan last night where he talked about when he first saw dogfighting as a young child. (You can watch it at the end of this post.)

This opinion piece is not about how evil Michael Vick is. I’ve written those before. Everyone has had years to write about the horrible things they wished would befall Vick. Check out the comments below, I’m sure there will be some doozy’s down there.

No, this is about looking into the abyss and seeing nothing back. Or I should say, seeing into the eyes of a dogfighter and seeing a complete lack of empathy.

That’s what I see when I watch Vick talk about dogfighting. A face totally devoid of emotion. And though he is an adult and I blame him for every single rotten, cruel thing he’s ever done to dogs, I look past that in search of an answer. That’s just how I am. How do we solve this dogfighting problem?

And he answered it in the segment I’m posting here.

As a child, he learned that strange dogs were meant to be feared.

If you’ve ever met me in person and the conversation turned to the dogfighting epidemic, I always had this one story that I’d tell.

When I first adopted Max, I lived in a ritzy, well-to-do town in New Jersey called South Orange. I didn’t have much money, but I learned early that renting allowed you to live almost anywhere you wanted.

My apartment was on the border with Orange, New Jersey. Now anyone that lives in Jersey will tell you that Orange is one tough town. When someone in South Orange was robbed or their car was stolen, the perpetrator was almost always spotted running back to Orange.

Every day, I would take Max out for a long walk. I would circle my apartment and when I walked down South Orange streets the neighboring children would yell, “PUPPY!” and come running up to meet and pet Max.

But when I walked down streets in Orange, the children would 100 percent of the time, run in fear to the other side of the street. And we are talking Max here! Not a big, muscular tough-looking dog, but the hound in the Dog Files Logo.

Now, of course I’m sure this isn’t with all kids from tough towns, but as I said, no child in that town ever came up to pet Max. And I lived there for three years.

Years later, when I started the Dog Files and was working on the Pit Proud Dog Files Episode, it dawned on me. Those kids that ran in fear of Max were the perfect candidates to be future dog fighting. They lived in a world where they were taught that dogs were something to fear. That you always stay away from them. They are NOT your friends, they are monsters.

And fear always leads to a lack of empathy. What is EMPATHY? Well the dictionary says it’s, “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.”

It’s having feelings for another person or animal or object. And when you have a lack of it towards dogs, it allows you to view them like they are just an object with no feelings to be used as one pleases.

I repeat, the first stage of a dogfighter begins with a lack of empathy for dogs as a child.

So what can be done? Well, although that answer is way too long for one article, I think we must institute animal awareness/empathy classes in schools. What the ‘Just Say No.’ and ‘Mothers Against Drunk Driving’ campaigns did in their respective decades we need to do with Animal Cruelty.

But if you took one thing away from this post, I’d hope you’d keep what I told you in the back of your mind. And whenever you can, let kids know how great dogs are, that they are here to be loved, cared for and respected. One child at a time is the only way we’ll defeat dogfighting, neglect and cruelty.

And if we can’t get their own parents to do it (and I really hope we can) we must do it ourselves for the sake of the hounds. After all, their future safety and happiness is in our hands!

What can YOU do to help children understand and appreciate dogs and animals in general?

Thanks!
Kenn Bell
Dog Files Creator