More analysis of Verizon commercial in the larger context of how badly pitbulls are abused

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In a recent Verizon commercial, a man sneaks into a junkyard to retrieve his cell phone. Two pit bulls, their ears cut in a "fighting crop," bark at the man and lunge against their heavy chains to attack him, baring their teeth and snapping their jaws just inches from the man's face. Pit bulls are the most abused dogs in dogdom, and commercials like this don't help. Because of their "macho" image and impressive strength, pit bulls are the breed of choice for thugs, gangs, drug dealers and dogfighters.

These people aren't looking to bond with "man's best friend;" they seek out the dogs to use as a living weapon to look "tough," intimidate others, guard their property or make them money by winning fights. Every week, PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department handles cases involving pit bulls who have been kept outside on chains that weigh half their bodyweight, given only a plastic barrel (or nothing at all) for shelter from the freezing cold, left to suffer life-threatening injuries from dogfights and infections that swell to the size of grapefruits, and fed barely enough to survive.

One pit bull we rescued, named Music, looked like a bag of bones, shivering, severely dehydrated, covered with scars and scabs, his ears shredded from fights and driven mad from living on a chain his entire life.

In another case, our staffers found a chained pit bull who appeared dead--motionless, emaciated and being eaten by maggots--but was still barely clinging to life, chained next to another pit bull who was suffering from a prolapsed vagina.

In December 2006, one of PETA's cruelty caseworkers, investigating a call from a concerned Bertie County, North Carolina, citizen, found three pit bulls--each tethered to a doghouse--dead at the end of their heavy chains. The dogs looked like skeletons draped with skin. They had no food, no way to keep warm in the freezing cold, and no chance of survival. It had taken weeks for them to die.

The dogs' owner claimed that he was in the business of breeding and selling pit bulls and showed no remorse for these dogs' agonizing deaths, casually telling our caseworker that "dogs die every day."

As Michael Vick's dogfighting case showed, pit bulls who are used for dogfighting are routinely chained to buried car axles, left with untreated injuries, forced to run on treadmills and, in the case of females, strapped down with their heads immobilized in a "rape stand" while male dogs mount them. They are forced to tear each other to shreds in the ring, and dogs that aren't aggressive enough are often killed by being electrocuted, drowned or shot. Such abuse--especially chaining--can make even a friendly dog more likely to bite.

Chained dogs are nearly three times as likely to attack as dogs who are not tethered, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study. Another study found that more than a fourth of fatal dog attacks are by chained dogs. According to the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, intensive confinement and lack of socialization can cause dogs to become frustrated and overly protective of their little patch of ground, turning them into fear biters.

Dogs are fight-or-flight animals, and chaining them leaves them with only one option--fight. When pit bulls, with their massive jaw strength and tenacity, choose the "fight" option, the results are often tragic.

On July 22, 3-year-old Tony Evans Jr. of Jackson, Mississippi, died after wandering too close to a chained pit bull named Blue Eyes, who, according to his owner, was not a "pet" and was kept constantly chained as a "guard dog." Blue Eyes clamped down on Tony's neck and upper torso, killing him, before dragging the boy's dead body into his doghouse.

We can all do something to help stop this cycle of abuse and tragedy. Speak out against negative depictions of pit bulls in advertisements, music videos and other media that perpetuate the image of pit bulls as fighting machines. Support spay/neuter laws, which help prevent more pit bulls from being born only to end up in the hands of people who are going to exploit them. And work to ban the cruel, dangerous practice of chaining dogs in your community.

Officials in California, Texas, Connecticut and the more than 115 local jurisdictions around the country that have restricted or banned chaining report a lower number of dog bites and fewer cruelty cases since these laws passed. Together, we can bring about the day when pit bulls are treated with the respect and compassion that they deserve.

Daphna Nachminovitch is the vice president of PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.HelpingAnimals.com.

Submitter: Stephen Fox

Submitters Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Submitters Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev