Dogfighters should be caged like fighting dogs

Dogfighting is despicable. It is not a sport.

Breeding dogs to tear at each other’s throats, training them to fight to the death, keeping them stacked in crates in basements, abusing them in the worst possible ways is the sick blood activity of weak people.

An Albuquerque man, Robert Arellano, 62, was arrested last week in a multi-state dogfighting sting. So were an Illinois man, an Indiana man and five men and one woman in New Jersey. The defendants in the federal sting are accused of participating in a dogfighting ring in which pit bull-type dogs were set up for matches.

Sixty-six dogs were rescued, including 14 dogs confiscated from Arellano’s Albuquerque home. Arellano, a breeder who listed some 80 dog pedigrees on an online site devoted to dogfighting, had earlier shipped at least two other dogs to New Jersey, where they were later rescued, according to criminal complaints.

He is charged with violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

In New Mexico, thanks largely to the efforts of Animal Protection of New Mexico, it’s a fourth-degree felony “to cause, sponsor, arrange, hold or participate in a fight between dogs or cocks for the purpose of monetary gain or entertainment.”

Participation includes being present at a dog fight without attempting to interfere with or stop it, or owning or equipping one of the participating dogs with knowledge of the contest. Violators face 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The federal sting is the first thrust in a coordinated initiative to go after dogfighting, according to Assistant Attorney General John Cruden of the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

“Dog fighting is truly an organized criminal activity, as well as a deplorable trade in the suffering of animals,” he said in a statement.

If these nine people are ultimately convicted, it would be only fitting that they spend serious time locked up in cells — cages, like the dogs.

— Albuquerque Journal