kick him to the curb...

[IFjane]

http://www.vickletthedogsout.com/?Click=2

[jillm]

from cuteoverload.com

[GLC1968]

The authorities recently caught some 21-year old with 15 pit bulls bred and raised for dog fighting in our county. Now the county animal shelter has to hold all 15 dangerous (some of which are diseased/sick) dogs and keep them seperated from the adoptable dogs because they are evidence. To do this, some of the adoptable dogs had to be put down.

According to the news, these 15 dogs are not people agressive...just horribly dog agressive. They are breaking through their cages to get to each other and the volunteers at the shelter are having a doozy of a time keeping them from killing each other.

Yesterday, DH and I got the bright idea to take both this 21-year old and Vick...put them in dog costumes, cover them with dog pee...and then lock them in a cage with these dogs. Think that's fair punishment?

[IFjane]

excellent idea, GLC! Call the judge!

[wannaduacentury]

I can't believe this.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/08/20/vick/index.html

From the article: "Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank told the NFL Network Monday he could not speculate on Vick's future as a Falcon...

"From a personal standpoint, he's doing the right thing," Blank said. "That's been my counsel to him some while ago, and publicly as well, to get this behind him as quickly as he can."

Vick's attorneys had been negotiating with National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell's office about Vick's career with the Atlanta Falcons before he agreed to any deal, the sources said."

Why let him "put it behind him as quickly as he can?" Why negotiate with the NFL about his career? IMHO he negotiated his own contract when he tortured those poor dogs!

As a Ga person, I'm tired of the whole thing. He made poor decisions for his life and business ventures, he has to pay the penalty- which would probably not be as severe as it should b/c he's a celebrity. Jenn

[Geonz]

Few crimes repulse me more than cruelty to animals. Abuse of children the disabled or elderly, violence against our most vulnerable is the most despicable to me.

Football's a violent sport, and some will argue it attracts and rewards a violent athlete.

I think it was NFL great Rosie Greer's hobby was needlepoint and you'd never guess that to see him on the field. Generally you don't get to that level of play without some anger management problems.

Often athletes have been protected all along; the traffic ticket that gets fixed, the grade that gets changed, a little legal problems that just goes away...they may feel that nothing can touch them.

Maybe if it effects the sponsors things will change but as long as there's money in it there will be another Michael Vick after him.

I've been thnking this, too... lots of excitement over making this example - but it's popping one pimple on a field of boils.

[IFjane]

As a Ga person, I'm tired of the whole thing. He made poor decisions for his life and business ventures, he has to pay the penalty- which would probably not be as severe as it should b/c he's a celebrity. Jenn

I'm sure you are tired of it, Jenn. As a VA resident with family who graduated from VaTech, I am tired of it as well. But I am also infuriated and ashamed and want an example made of him - not only for his fellow NFL players, but for the team owners and fans, too. We talk and talk about doping in cycling - cyclists are cut no breaks (nor should they be if they are guilty). I only want the same standards for crimes in other sports - especially sports that attract such a large number of fans.

[Lise]

My sister sent me this article from the Chicago Tribune. I really appreciated it, coming from a male sports writer.

(My idea of justice for M. Vicks is that he be sentenced to share his cell with injured animals that he must care for and nurse back to health. Let him listen to them cry all night and look into their eyes. Then, when they're well, and he's come to love them, off they go, and he gets more injured pups. This might truly rehabilitate him. Who knows. We can all dream.)

The greater outrage
We are more aghast at Michael Vick's crimes against animals than athletes' crimes against women. And that is criminal.
Rick Morrissey | In the wake of the news
August 22, 2007
I like my dog, a basset hound, a lot. He's probably 10 pounds overweight, sleeps most of the time, barks at the mail carrier, waters fire hydrants and, given the chance, buries things for safekeeping. He's a big lump of a cliché.

So when I read and heard about some of the dogfighting atrocities Michael Vick is associated with, it turned my stomach.

But the convulsive reaction to the Vick case has made it obvious we've lost our sense of proportion.
Dogs are defenseless, and we humans are quick to protect the defenseless. It is one of our better qualities.

But a woman in the hands of a 230-pound elite athlete is more or less defenseless, too, and I can't remember any case of domestic abuse, sexual assault or murder involving an NFL player that sparked this kind of public outrage.

The O.J. Simpson saga? Perhaps.

But what's interesting is the different public response to the two crimes. At the time of the Simpson trial, most people were more concerned with his innocence or guilt than they were with the butchered bodies of the two people who were stabbed to death.

This case is different.

It's hard to get rid of the image of dogs being drowned or electrocuted or beaten to death. Whether Vick was personally involved in those activities or not doesn't really matter. He is going to plead guilty to charges involving a dogfighting operation apparently run out of one of his properties. Whether his hands were actually around a dog's neck is beside the point. His fingerprints are all over this case.

But if an NFL player beats the hell out of his wife or girlfriend these days, it's greeted with a practiced shrug. It happens so often, we're almost numb to it.

Media coverage has played a huge role in the Vick case. Take one of the NFL's most prominent players and show visceral file footage of pit bulls chewing each other to pieces. What do you have? Something that stabs people right in their hearts.

The networks didn't run file tape of a gun being fired into a woman after Carolina wide receiver Rae Carruth conspired to murder his pregnant girlfriend. Nonetheless, a jury found him guilty in 2001, and he's serving a 19- to 23-year prison term. If there was public indignation to rival the Vick dog charges, I missed it.

In February, Tennessee cornerback Pacman Jones was involved in an incident at a Las Vegas strip club that led to the shooting of three people, including a guard who is now paralyzed from the waist down. Do our feelings of outrage and sympathy extend to the people who absorbed those bullets? I don't think so. Certainly not the way they do to the slain dogs. We're too busy being aghast at Jones' behavior and, more broadly, at the behavior of the legion of unruly NFL players.

As sure as a football field is 100 yards long, Jones will play again. The league has suspended him for a year because of the Vegas incident and a string of additional problems with the law. Yet we hear rumblings that Vick's career might be over. His crime is so heinous, we're told, that he might have forfeited his right to play in the NFL again.

In the mid-1990s, Nebraska star Lawrence Phillips pleaded no contest to trespassing and assault after allegedly beating his girlfriend, who said he dragged her by her hair down three flights of stairs. It was the beginning of a long stretch of criminal trouble involving Phillips. This did not stop the Rams from making him a first-round draft pick, nor did it stop the Dolphins and the 49ers from giving him chance after chance to carry the football again.

Abuse your dog, and people howl. Smack around your girlfriend or face charges of sexually assaulting a woman and people shake their heads and roll their eyes. And they'll eventually cheer you again. If you don't believe that, pay attention the next time Kobe Bryant rolls through town.

The public reaction to Bryant's troubles—he reached a settlement with a woman he was charged with sexually assaulting—wasn't nearly as loud and angry as the reaction to Vick.

This case has legs, four of them, and we're finding out it makes a huge difference in the court of public opinion.

No doubt Vick needs to spend some time behind bars, and no doubt he shouldn't play football for a while. He's the face of what's wrong with the NFL. What he did was vile.

Let's be clear: It's not that the response to Vick's alleged crimes is overboard; it's that the response to athletes' crimes against women is underwhelming. We might want to ask ourselves why that is.

A little perspective, please—especially the next time a player attacks a woman. Another incident should be happening any day now.

rmorrissey@tribune.com

[Trek420]

from cuteoverload.com

I heard that there's a move to donate Michael Vic jerseys, tea cozies, throw pillows....to animal shelters for the pets to sleep on.

Great news about pits here

www.badrap.org/rescue/index.cfm

[Lise]

Ummmm....tea cozies?!?

Has anybody here been watching The Dog Whisperer on the Nat'l Geographic Channel? I have a complete and total crush on Cesar Milan. http://www.cesarmillaninc.com/

He takes scared dogs with disordered behavior and helps them be calm and balanced. He teaches people how to properly lead their dogs. I looooove him!

I'd like Michael Vicks to be sentenced to clean up after Cesar's pack for ...oh... the rest of his life.

[Zen]

I have a complete and total crush on Cesar Milan. http://www.cesarmillaninc.com/

Caesar could easily get me to be calm/submissive

[LBTC]

Lise, heckuvan article. I had not heard of most of these incidents - I think they made the sports news, which I completely ignore, especially if they're talking about football. How sad for those women and their families.

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~

[Lise]

Caesar could easily get me to be calm/submissive

Tell me about it! We're going away this weekend and will miss Friday's episodes. I've decided not to whine about this to my beloved BF, who already knows (or at least suspects ) how big a crush I have on Cesar.

Lise, heckuvan article. I had not heard of most of these incidents - I think they made the sports news, which I completely ignore, especially if they're talking about football. How sad for those women and their families.

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~

Yeah. Isn't that something? Great article.

[Trek420]

Ummmm....tea cozies?!?

Sure, NFL marketing has football themed everything, why not tea cozies?

Ya know, so there's blood dope, EPO .... but professional cyclists are looking pretty good. I've never heard of one doing anything like this.

[Fredwina]

I saw this reading my "hometown" paper:
http://www.semissourian.com/story/1248556.html