For Vick and Pit Bulls, TAWK is Not Enough

When the Philadelphia Eagles announced their TAWK initiative (Treating Animals with Kindness), the team representatives tried to downplay why the program was created, saying it's "not unlike efforts made on behalf of the environment, breast cancer, and literacy." As if anyone is going to believe it's a coincidence that a team named for an animal begins its animal awareness program less than a year after signing the country's most famous dog fighter.

As part of the program, the Eagles will give away $500,000 in grants to animal welfare organizations. The first three grants went to the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, the Humane Society of Berks County, and the Humane Society of the United States for programs related to animal cruelty, dog fighting, spay and neuter, and responsible animal adoption. Those $50,000 grants will mean a lot to the local organizations who are chosen as recipients, but for the Eagles, it's a token gesture. After all, the entire grant program is only worth about half of what Vick was ordered to pay for the care of his confiscated dogs.

The Eagles may not have mentioned their quarterback, but when HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle took the podium as one of the grant recipients, he was sure to mention how pleased he was to continue to work with Vick. This was after he spoke of "the scourge of dog fighting" and how "kids who go down this road are going down a dead end street ... to fight dogs just for the pleasure of watching them kill each other not only is awful for them, but it must deaden the human spirit." Imagine what it does to someone who not only watched the dogs fight, but trained them, bankrolled them, and brutally killed them himself.

And exactly how is a "dead end street" defined: playing sports for multiple millions of dollars a year? No one is fooled by Michael Vick's unconvincing claims of remorse, and HSUS insisting that he's a role model doesn't make him one. The same week that HSUS put out a press release about their new poster child, saying Vick "lost everything," Philadelphia Weekly published an article about the post-Vick explosion of dog fighting in the city, and how kids see him as idol -- not for learning compassion toward animals, but as inspiration for getting involved in dog fighting as young as nine years old.

Vick may have technically "paid  his debt to society" (though the jail sentences for animal cruelty never feel adequate for the crime), but that doesn't mean he deserves the privilege of being a professional football player and so-called role model. He's more than welcome to earn a livelihood, but an NFL salary is a long way from scraping by on living wage. He goes into cities to speak to "at-risk youth" about dog fighting, and those kids know that he's being paid more money in his first year out of prison than some of them will see in a lifetime. Now he's telling people he'd like to have dogs again, hoping someday the judge will lift the ban that keeps him from having them now. I certainly wouldn't adopt one of my pit bulls to him.

If he really wanted to help, Vick would fall off the public radar and anonymously donate his salary to pit bull rescue and advocacy groups. At least the Eagles were sensitive enough not to include Vick as one of the team members playing with pit bulls in the TAWK public service announcements.

Photo credit: nineball2727