Once limited to the rural South, dogfighting sees a cultural shift

A dog that had been fought and abandoned in Oakland, Ca. in 2006. The dog was recovered by The Humane Society of the United States. (Humane society of the united states photos )

By Bill Burke
The Virginian-Pilot

Hardly a day goes by in his Gaithersburg, Md., office without John Goodwin receiving a phone call or e-mail about his most popular subject: Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.

Some, like the man who called June 1, are confidential informants passing along tidbits about Vick to Goodwin, the top dog in the Humane Society’s campaign to wipe out animal fighting in the United States.

Shortly after Vick’s Surry County house was raided and evidence of a suspected dogfighting operation was found there in April, Goodwin added the NFL star to a massive data­base he oversees.

The 20,000 names it contains include a rogue’s gallery of the nation’s most notorious known and suspected dog fighters:

David Tant, a 300-pound bear of a man and one of the world’s most prolific breeders of fighting dogs, serving a 30-year sentence in South Carolina, among the stiffest ever imposed for the crime. One of the “directional mines” he planted to keep people away from his dogs injured a land surveyor.

“Fat Bill” Reynolds of western Virginia, convicted in 2001 of transmitting images of fighting dogs across state lines and sentenced to 30 months after Tant testified against him before a federal grand jury.

He has served his time and is now back on Goodwin’s radar.

Louisiana’s Floyd Boudreaux, one of the patriarchs of the blood sport, who has played cat-and-mouse with investigators for decades and is reported to have once traded his grand champion dog, Blind Billy, for a house.

The cast of suspects is a mongrel mix, including legendary dogmen such as Mountain Man and the Gambler, professional athletes, rap music performers and Alane Koki, a patent-holding cancer researcher in North Carolina.

Those familiar with dogfighting say it has undergone a cultural shift in recent years. A pursuit once practiced chiefly in the rural South has moved to the mean streets of the ’hood. Today dogfighting can be found in rural Southwest Virginia as well as in housing projects in Newport News.

The Internet has enabled dogfighting to get an international foothold, with its practitioners often communicating in code, frequently changing Web sites, and posting “fictional” accounts such as this one, involving a grand champion fighter named Mayday:

“It was Mayday’s easiest fight. He used Big Red like a punching bag. He mopped the floor with him. People watching wanted to change his name to PAYDAY. … Others were calling him KILLING MACHINE. … It ended with Mayday SCREAMING in the corner. He was just getting started. He wanted another hour …”

Enforcers like Goodwin – the Humane Society’s deputy manager of animal fighting – describe a brutal business in which dogs that lack the killer instinct are often shot or electrocuted, then tossed in a trash bin or buried in a bone yard.

“We don’t want that type of barbaric activity going on in South Carolina,” said Mark Plowden, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office, which created a dog fighting task force in 2004 that has snared Tant and others.

“It’s clear that when you have dog fighting, drugs and gambling and other criminal subcultures follow,” Plowden said. “We want to drive it out of South Carolina. If it shows up in other states, that’s their problem, not ours anymore.”

Today, North Carolina is said to be one of the nation’s most active dog fighting venues. Virginia, say those inside and outside the fighting game, gets the overflow.

When agents raided Bill Reynolds’ property near Martinsville in September 2000, part of the evidence they seized was a treadmill with the inscription: “Custom Made for Fat Bill by the Gambler, 8-24-00. Happy Birthday.”

“Fat Bill” and the Gambler, legendary figures in the shadowy realm of dogfighting, have earned the distinction of “dogmen” – professionals in the blood spectacle.

The term is part of a clandestine covenant many use to avoid prosecution for an activity that was once a misdemeanor in all states but is now a felony everywhere but Wyoming and Idaho. The fight itself is called a “show,” and dogs with superior fighting traits are said to have “gameness.”

True dogmen “are like the Yankees or the Red Sox – major league players,” said a local former pit-bull breeder who is knowledgeable about dogfighting and spoke on the condition that he not be named. “The guys on the local level, they’re more like the Tides or Tidewater Sharks – bush-leaguers.”

The local breeder said he has met Vick but declined to comment on what, if anything, he knows about Vick’s connection to dogfighting activities. He did say, however, that Vick “was taken advantage of by friends and acquaintances.” He also knew Reynolds, who was sentenced by a federal judge in Roanoke to 30 months in prison in 2001.

Along with the treadmill, authorities seized from Reynolds’ trailer in rural Virginia syringes, steroids – which are often used to pump up fighting dogs – and copies of underground dogfighting magazines, one of which, the American Gamedog Times, Reynolds was said to have published.

Treadmills are often used to train fighting dogs; “bait animals” such as cats are sometimes placed in cages just out of range of the charging dog, which is rewarded by getting to feast on the cat after the training session.

At the time of his arrest, Reynolds operated a now-defunct Web site that sold videos of pit-bull fighting with titles such as “The Art of Victory,” “Snooty and Crunch” and “Bronson and Header.”

When Reynolds was sentenced in August 2001, federal Judge Samuel Wilson remarked from the bench on Reynolds’ “insensitivity to life.” Before Wilson issued the sentence, “Fat Bill” said, “Everything just kind of snowballed and got out of hand. I’m so sorry.”

Now free, Reynolds was contacted by a reporter recently and asked whether he would give an interview. He said he found the idea “intriguing” but did not return follow-up phone calls.

Tant was among those who testified before the federal grand jury that indicted Reynolds. His South Carolina attorney, Michael Bosnak, says Tant was granted immunity from prosecution for his cooperation in the Reynolds case.

Dogs go at it in staged fights in places like Afghanistan (pictured) and Serbia … and North Carolina and Virginia.

But that did not stop members of a new South Carolina state animal-fighting task force from bringing charges after a raid on Tant’s property in 2004.

That April, a land surveyor was injured by birdshot fired by a booby trap Tant had planted on his property to keep intruders away.

Investigators confiscated from T ant’s property 47 dogs, cattle prods, treadmills, five more armed booby traps and a framed photo of Tant’s grand champion Yellow, whose pedigree is one of the most revered – and expensive – in the world of dogmen. Offspring of Yellow, who died in 1994, can fetch several thousand dollars each.

Mayday was one of them. After he died in 2002, this tribute appeared online:

“Like we speak of the Tombstone, the Eli, the Yellow blood, so too will we and the generations after us … speak of the great and dominating MAYDAY blood. May he live … forever.”

The Internet has revolutionized the way dogmen do business, making it easier for members of the secret society to find and learn from one another.

Mark Kumpf, formerly Norfolk’s senior humane officer and now the director of the Montgomery County, Ohio, Animal Resource Center, noted a parallel with another class of social pariahs.

“The Internet has brought two groups to prominence, and that’s the pedophiles and the dogfighters,” he said.

Through the Internet, dogfighters research how to treat injuries, pick up training techniques and discuss tactics, Kumpf said. The newest craze, he said, is to broadcast fights on the Web so people can bet on them offshore.

The stakes are rising in what is now a half-billion-dollar industry as animal-rights groups turn up the heat on prosecutors and the number of task forces increases.

In August, a suspected dogfighter in Texas bled to death after he was shot by intruders who apparently intended to torture him into revealing where he had hidden $100,000 wagered in a high-stakes dog match.

In Ohio earlier this year, 28 people were indicted in state and federal court after an inquiry by state investigators and a federal task force.

And earlier this month, the feds, apparently concerned that local investigators were dragging their feet, intervened in the investigation into the suspected operation at Vick’s house. No charges have been filed.

Those who post on Web sites in the United States, where enforcement is growing, often include disclaimers noting that the sponsors do not encourage or condone dogfighting. They also state that any accounts of fights are fictional.

But those who maintain Web sites in countries where dogfighting is not criminalized often make no effort to conceal their purpose.

“Hallo and Welcome to all lovers of fighting dogs!” exclaims the Balkan Boys Kennel based in Serbia. The site posts the “Cajun rules” for dogfighting, which are the pre-eminent set of regulations among today’s dogmen.

The rules were promulgated in the 1950s by Lafayette, La., Police Chief G.A. “Gaboon” Trahan, who hosted dogfights that drew attendees from all over the South long before animal activists demonized the activity and legislatures criminalized it.

To hear “Chopper Dan” Brouseaux, another Lafayette native son, tell it, dogfighting is as ingrained in the Southern culture as NASCAR and has been around much longer.

“Cajuns and black people have been fighting dogs for 200 years,” said Brouseaux, a dog breeder and former merchant seaman who said he has never been involved in the activity.

Still, Brouseaux, 60, remembers the day that the events were a Saturday ritual “that would draw 50 to 100 people, and there would be guys selling popcorn and chewing gum.”

He sells his dogs as “Staffordshire terriers” rather than pit bull terriers on the advice of his lawyer, he says.

He lives not far from Floyd Boudreaux, now 72 and regarded by some as the “godfather” of dogfighting. Despite Boudreaux’s notoriety, authorities have had difficulty prosecuting him, Brouseaux said.

During one raid, “they killed all his dogs while he was in jail over the weekend,” Brouseaux said. “They massacred them. I was ashamed to be an American.”

The Humane Society’s Goodwin bristles at those who romanticize dogfighting, saying, “Law enforcement is realizing it’s a real community problem, intertwined with other crimes” such as drugs and gambling.

He cited one raid that turned up an electrocution device in a garage that had been used to kill dogs.

A yard in Louisiana where dogs were seized in 2005. Today, North Carolina is said to be one of the nation’s most active dogfighting venues – and Virginia gets the overflow.

Another law effort in Newton, Mass., turned up dogs with broken legs and one whose tongue had been ripped out.

Pit bulls have become iconic in the rap and hip-hop music culture. Missy Elliott and

rapper DMX feature the animals on album covers, and an unedited version of rapper Jay-Z’s video “99 Problems” features footage of dogs preparing to fight in a pit as spectators watch.

Dogfighting has also caught on within some gang cultures, where “there is less revulsion to violence,” Goodwin said.

Though dogfighting remains primarily a Southern phenomenon, the center of gravity in recent years apparently has shifted eastward. Today, if there’s a dogfighting capital in the United States, it may be North Carolina.

One of several magazines that provide services for pit-bull fanciers, the Pit Bull Advertiser, is published in Gastonia. It features ads for more than 20 North Carolina-based kennels, offering dogs for sale, stud services and a variety of products, including canine treadmills.

The magazine features kennels with names such as Outlaw, Rampage and Lockjaw, and characteristics of some of the featured dogs like Blondie, with “ability, style and one of those mouths that would break you into pieces.”

Another advertiser is Tom Garner of Hillsborough, N.C., who Goodwin insists is a patriarch of dogfighting in America. His name is contained in Goodwin’s database.

Garner, convicted of dogfighting in the mid-1980s, insists he breeds dogs and sells only puppies these days – none for fighting. If buyers use them for illegal purposes, Garner says, there’s nothing he can do to stop them.

His prize dogs included legendary grand champions Chinaman and Spike. “I still have frozen semen off of Spike and have made some breedings that have produced some excellent offspring,” Garner notes on his kennel Web site.

Garner’s name came up earlier this year when Orange County, N.C., officials created a task force to study the legality of tethering dogs. Garner failed in his effort to be named to the committee, but one of its members was Alane Koki, who purportedly has ties to Garner’s dog-breeding operation.

Koki, a published scientist and cancer researcher, is perhaps one of the most unusual alleged dogfighters on Goodwin’s list. After an independent weekly newspaper in the Raleigh area published stories about her links to Garner – she reportedly operated a kennel called Thundermaker Bulldogs – she resigned from the committee while denying any wrongdoing.

Dogfighting in North Carolina can now be found from the coastal flatlands to the mountainous west, say Goodwin and others who monitor the activity. The state’s vast expanses of piney wilderness are a lure for dogmen, some of them forced out of South Carolina in recent years.

Others have traveled to the Tar Heel State, where until a few years ago dogfighting was a misdemeanor, from Virginia, where it has long been a felony.

A dog recovered in California in 2006. Dogfighting is a felony in all statesexcept Wyoming and Idaho.

One of them is the local breeder who knows what it’s like to gather with other men late at night on a moonlit landing strip, in a wooded clearing or in an abandoned warehouse, with thousands of dollars riding on thick-chested beasts named Lil Hitler, Crunch and So Evil.

The fight is euphemistically called a “show,” according to the local breeder, who said the rearing of a competitive dog can take up to two years.

Potential champion dogs are the product of cross-breeding between animals that often have champion pedigrees. Aggressive dogs are identified early on as “prospects” and receive special treatment. At 8 or 9 months, a less-aggressive littermate is placed in front of the chained prospect “to see how aggressive he is.”

The first competition, called a “roll,” usually takes place at about 15 months when two prospects are allowed to “have at it” for about 10 minutes, the breeder said.

“You want to see how your dog – I’ll call him Joe – takes the pressure,” he said. “Certain dogs go for certain areas. Yellow, he went for the head and chest. You like to see that.”

The prospect is put “back on chain” until it is about 19 months old, when a second practice session is held, lasting up to an hour.

If Joe looks good, he’s ready for “the show.”

Four or five backers ante up a few hundred dollars apiece for a “first time out” dog, the breeder said. The prospect is now “open to the world.” A pot of about $3,500 is typical. A “show” is scheduled, and a judge chooses the location.

An intensive six-week training routine follows, and the dog is said to be in “the keep.” He is fed a lean, nutritional diet – some trainers have secret diets – and works out on a treadmill every day.

Many dogs in training often swim in a pool. The circular above-ground pool discovered at the house owned by Vick was typical of those used for getting fighting dogs into shape, the breeder said. One hour on the treadmill and two in the pool is a common regimen.

Trainers often try to gain advantages by injecting dogs with steroids or sharpening the animal s’ teeth. Some even shave the dog’s fur and mix roach killer with its food, hoping the bitter taste of the new fur will repel a foe.

“The show” takes place at a secluded location in a makeshift wooden pit about 2½ to 3 feet high and 8 feet square, often with a dirt or carpeted floor for traction. A dog that fails to make weight may forfeit, forcing its owner to surrender an amount equal to half the purse.

Before the match, the dogs are washed, each by his foe’s owner, to ensure that the animal’s fur has not been coated with poison. The handlers sometimes use Everclear, a brand of grain alcohol, to wash, and milk to rinse.

The dogs are taken to their respective corners and released after the command of “face your dogs” by the judge. The competition continues until one animal retreats or is injured so severely it is unable to continue.

The first victory for a fighting dog is the beginning of his “campaign,” which can result in a champion (three victories) or a grand champion (five victories with no losses).

After his campaign, a champion dog can command sizable stud fees. Mayday earned $100,000 a year for his services, the breeder said.

“I look at it a lot like boxing,” said the local breeder. “You’ve got your power fighters and your finesse fighters, your power dogs and your finesse dogs. And they can make their owners a whole lot of money.”

Staff writers Dave Forster and Ed Miller contributed to this report.

bill.burke@pilotonline.com