Bred to Die

From good ol’ boys to macho gangs, the horror of dogfighting keeps spreading.

A Depressingly Familiar Sight

Editor's note: Visit the Humane Society's website for the latest news and information about dogfighting.

The call last January to the Newton, New Hampshire, police department sounded depressingly familiar. A local animal control officer reported that a man hired to clean dog pens at a home in a pricey development along Williamine Drive had discovered something that chilled him: dogs with deep scrapes and gashes.

Sgt. Richard Owens didn't want to take any chances. He arrived at the house with two dozen lawmen, most of them armed with semiautomatics. They split into two teams. One knocked at the front door, while Owens led the second group to a large Quonset hut in the woods behind the house. Tethered to poles outside the hut were six pit bull terriers, each wearing a thick lumber chain. Merely lifting their heads was a workout for the dogs' neck muscles -- which was the point. Inside the hut, the policemen saw rows of cages, each housing a single pit bull terrier. Many were badly scarred. One was missing part of its tongue; another wobbled on twisted front legs, apparently from broken bones that had been poorly set.

Next to the Quonset hut was a two-story garage. As Owens climbed the stairs, he noticed blood trails on the steps. He entered a large room with an arena, 14 feet square, that was rimmed by two-foot plywood walls -- and splattered with more blood. This was the gladiator pit, the place where dogs were turned loose to clash in gruesome fights.

"It was a stomach-churning sight," Owens remembers.

The dogs were rushed away to animal shelters, and their owner, Christopher DeVito, wound up sentenced to state prison for two to five years. That's the good news. More sobering is the fact that for every DeVito arrested, thousands of others take part in this savage blood sport with little risk from the law.

Eric Sakach, West Coast regional director for the Humane Society of the United States, says dogfighting is "exploding," and estimates there are some 40,000 "fanciers" or "doggers" as the players call themselves.

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