Pit bull impounded in Sevierville. (WBIR)
When the Humane Society of the U.S. sends the media release
SEVIERVILLE, Tennessee––When are 50 pit bulls seized from an alleged fighting dog breeding kennel in rural Tennessee not pit bulls?
When the Humane Society of the U.S. helps with the bust, writes the press release about it, and distributes it to media nationwide, while pushing the repeal of an Aurora, Colorado ordinance meant to ensure that people who keep pit bulls keep them out of trouble.
Bannered WBIR-TV of Knoxville, “50 pit bulls seized from suspected dog fighting operation.”
Elaborated the WBIR staff account, “Mark Heatherly, 47, of Sevierville, was charged with two counts of dog fighting, with additional charges pending. His wife, Kimberly Heatherly, 45, and son, Jacob R. Heatherly, are charged with conspiracy to commit dog fighting. All three are also charged with possession of marijuana and hydrocodone. The 50 dogs who were seized range in age from four weeks to mid-teens. Some of them have scars that are consistent with dog fighting. The sheriff’s department described them as American pit bulls.”
Affirmed WRCB-TV of Chattanooga, “50 dogs taken, 3 charged in Sevier pit bull raid.”
Agreed Associated Press, “East Tennessee authorities have removed dozens of pit bulls from a breeding operation and arrested three people.”
HSUS omitted the words “pit bull”
But the words “pit bull” never appeared in the HSUS account. The HSUS version ignored the sheriff’s department identification of the dogs, while quoting Sheriff Ron Seals’ appreciation of HSUS help with the bust.
Said the HSUS release, “HSUS brought its mobile crime lab and assisted law enforcement in identifying and documenting evidence, as well as coordinating the rescue effort. Blount County SPCA also assisted in handling and documenting the dogs. PetSmart Charities provided necessary supplies and enrichment items for the dogs. HSUS removed the dogs from the property pending final disposition of this case.”
The alleged fighting pit bulls are to be “evaluated for potential placement with HSUS Dogfighting Rescue Coalition placement partners,” HSUS said.
Bust came two weeks before Aurora vote
The Sevierville raid came two weeks before the November 4, 2014 general elections nationwide.
Among the local ballot measures receiving the most national attention will be whether Aurora, Colorado will keep a 2005 ordinance which requires keepers of pit bulls to carry at least $100,000 in liability insurance; requires that pit bulls be confined within securely fenced and locked yards when allowed outdoors on the owner’s property; and be muzzled and on a four-foot leash when off the owner’s property. The ordinance also prohibited bringing new pit bulls into Aurora after January 1, 2006.
The Aurora ordinance was passed five months after a pit bull mauled Xavier Benavidez, 11, in an unprovoked attack. Just a week after the passage of the Aurora ordinance, 10-year-old Gregg Jones was mauled by three of his family’s own pit bulls. Two of the three dogs were not licensed in compliance with the ordinance.
Aurora results
There has not been a disfiguring dog attack in Aurora since then, but elsewhere around the U.S., more than 4,000 pit bulls have killed 212 people and disfigured more than 2,500. Pit bulls are about 5% of the U.S. dog population. All other dogs combined have killed 127 people and disfigured 980.
“Since the ban has been in place, pit bull bites are down 73%,” Aurora Animal Care Division spokesperson Cheryl Conway told Aurora Sentinel staff writer Rachel Sapin in March 2014.
The Aurora ordinance has also drastically reduced dog impoundments and killing of impounded dogs at the Aurora Animal Shelter.
“According to city documents,” Sapin wrote, “before the ordinance was enacted in 2005, up to 70% of kennels in the Aurora Animal Shelter were occupied by pit bulls with pending court disposition dates or with no known owner. That number is now only 10% to 20% of kennels.
Said Conway, “There hasn’t been a human mauling in many years. Complaints and requests related to pit bulls are down 50%. Euthanasia of pit bull dogs is down 93%. Those few who are put down are primarily those that come in as strays, whose owners don’t come to claim them.”
HSUS supports repeal
Despite the success of the Aurora ordinance, HSUS Colorado state director Jacqueline Pyun in a February 7, 2014 letter to the Aurora City Council joined organizations called ColoRADogs and Coloradans for Breed Neutral Dog Laws Inc. in declaring war on the breed-specific aspects that have made it successful.
Though HSUS has left the local campaigning to the local organizations, HSUS has continued to back the repeal effort. Acknowledged ColoRADogs in a recent Facebook posting, “HSUS has been such a great support for us! Our local rep, Jacquelyn is awesome!”
Second big Tennessee bust in 2014
Scene from the Davis bust.
Meanwhile back in Tennessee, the Sevierville bust was the second Tennessee dogfighting case in seven months to attract national notice. A federal grand jury on August 25, 2014 indicted Michael A. Davis, 34, on 30 charges in connection with the first case, 27 of them felonies.
Summarized WKRN-TV of Nashville, “Davis was first arrested on April 12, 2014 in connection with a large-scale heroin and cocaine trafficking bust. Dogs and evidence of dog fighting were discovered at his home during his arrest. Authorities executed search warrants on the residence 10 days later and ultimately seized 38 dogs. Many of the dogs had scars and open wounds.”
Also seized from the Davis premises were “treadmills and other items typically used to train dogs to fight, 
including syringes likely used to give the animals injections,” WKRN reported. “Over $234,000 in cash was also found in a bag in the woods behind the home. Police believe it was connected to the drug case.”
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
(Geoff Geiger photo)
The Sevierville case brought the total number of alleged fighting pit bulls impounded by U.S. law enforcement in 2014 to at least 390, the second lowest tally in at least 15 years.
Only 145 alleged fighting pit bulls are known to have been impounded in 2012, but the average since 2000 has been more than 1,000, with peak totals of circa 1,600 in both 2002 and 2009.
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The people need to know how extraordinarily dangerous it is to own, promote and keep pit bulls, which are not domesticated companion animals but domesticated fighting dogs. The work you all are doing to get the word out is just what the doctor ordered.
Thank You
I’ve long been a backer of the HSUS, because in many issues I think they have the right idea and the right approach–from making inroads with the religious communities to appealing to small-town values by taking a measured and reasonable approach.
However, since they’ve got into the pit bull business I just don’t know what they’re doing. I still have older HSUS materials in which they state that former fighting dogs should not be adopted into private homes. I don’t know who’s been getting to them or paying them but I suspect I’m not the only person who is both alarmed and disappointed. This pit bull free-for-all is not only hurting people and other pets, but thousands of pit bulls. HSUS, why?
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Thank you for writing this column. Several months ago Wayne Pacelle wrote a blog post congratulating himself and the HSUS for the “rescue” of a large number of pit bulls from a dog fighter. He was proud that the HSUS would be participating in placing these “dogs” as pets. Comments were allowed so I asked if the dogs would be microchipped and tested for babesia, would animal control in the receiving cities be notified of the dog’s history, would the prospective new owners and their neighbors be notified of the dog’s history, would the HSUS accept financial responsibility for any attacks by the “dogs”? The answer from Wayne was crickets.
There was a response from a pleasant young woman who stated her title was “Senior Reputation Manager” for the HSUS (who knew there was a job category like this?). She did not know the answers to my questions but promised to get the information. The information was never provided, crickets.
Pit bull advocacy repeats endlessly “its all in how you raise ’em” and by that standard pit bulls seized from dog fighting operations are the worst of the worst, game bred, pit trained and tested. Sad cases to be sure, these dogs should have never been born but they are as dangerous as hand grenades with the pins pulled. To put these “dogs” in American communities shows shameful.disregard for human safety and for the safety of peaceful peaceful pets and livestock.
this does not surprise me. WAYNE PACELLE now marches to the AFF beat, “there is no such thing as a pit bull.” the HSUS receives $50K from JANE BERKEY every year and has ever since PACELLE made a deal with that devil.
http://cravendesires.blogspot.com/2010/08/hu-extreme-makeover.html
I’m probably far from alone in my sneaking suspicion that a lot of Americans prefer violent dogs and violent people to peaceful animals and people. Why is this? “It’s complicated” would be my best guess.
The deep irony is that many more animal advocates have protested the “Hoofin’ It” mess than will ever even hear about this, but this pit bull policy is killing thousands more animals–both pit bulls and other pets–than Hoofin’ It ever did.
I’ve been in animal welfare and rescue work for 35 years, but no longer donate to any humane societies or animal shelters, since they all seem to be adopting out pit bulls as “family pets”. I operate independently now, rescuing animals through my own small, private rescue instead (we rescue small animals, not dogs or cats.)
Humane societies are so corrupt nowadays especially ASCPA.. Overbreeding pitbulls causes so much hell for people, pets, and pitbulls and makes the dog fighters crimes too easy to hide.
One can argue — as the Dutch Society for Protection of Animals does — that it’s not the job of a ‘humane’ society to take care of human health and safety. What is most disappointing about Wayne Pacelle’s and the HSUS’s pit bull position is the indifference it shows to animal suffering.
At this point, we all know that most ‘humane’ societies now give only lip service to preventing animal suffering unless the animal is a pit bull type dog. But Pacelle is now betraying the fact that he and the HSUS don’t even care — not really — about pit bull health and welfare.
Pacelle and the HSUS know as well as we do that voluntary free sterilization programs are hardly used by pit bull owners. They know that ‘education’ hasn’t improved the fate of the pit bull in now going on forty years. By fighting breed specific mandatory sterilization laws, the HSUS knows it is in fact encouraging the continued breeding of specifically pit bulls of which the majority will end up as food for shelter incinerators or land fills. By fighting bans on pit bulls, which always include grandfather clauses for already existing pit bulls, Pacelle and the HSUS must know they are enabling dogfighters to continue creating the pit bull misery dogfighting involves.
Perhaps Pacelle’s worry is that breed specific legislation really puts an end to dogfighting. This would deny Pacelle the opportunity to profile himself as as a hero by occasionally rescuing a few pit bulls from the activity he, himself, is working to perpetuate.
In many ways, this behavior is similar to Munchausen-by-proxy. Let’s first make them ill, then we can gain lots of attention by playing the concerned parent who works so hard to save them.
Even if a ‘humane’ society isn’t concerned about human health and safety, and even if that ‘humane’ society has abandoned all animals except pit bulls, that ‘humane’ society should still fully support breed specific legislation because of the relief it gives to the pit bulls themselves. If Pacelle and the HSUS are going to let even pit bulls down this way, they might as well disband the organization — because there is no animal left whose health and welfare its existence benefits, not even pit bull type dogs.
I think that “humane” organizations behave more like ruthless corporations worried about their bottom line than non-profits with a philosophical mission. The national embrace of a simplistic “no kill” philosophy, pushed by extremists that leverage social media to attack organizations that refuse to “save them all”, has drained resources from worthy organizations which try to do right by the animals and society. At the same time, suffering sells….donors open their wallets when a sad story about an abused dog is publicized.
Dogfighting busts and pit bull cruelty cases have become cash cows for humane organizations, so why work to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? The obvious solution to ending dogfighting would be mandatory spay/neuter laws for fighting breeds, yet while animal welfare organizations give lip service to the horrors of dog fighting, they damn well know there is no way to stop it short of making it impossible to breed more fighting dogs.
Considering the vast amounts of resources humane organizations spend dealing with the “pit bull problem”, solving it may leave them without a major source of fundraising .
I have stopped donating to any of the big name “humane” operations. Mostly because they now push maulers on everyone, push cruel TNR, and are zealously pushing SLOW kill to the harm of every animal involved. But also because they are giving huge money to pits, and politics that stomp on peoples rights not to live with pits, while letting small animal rescues languish, and fight, with zero help.
I volunteer with a ferret rescue, and they don’t get a single dollar from either the city (who still send them all ferrets relinquished to city shelters), nor ANY humane society. They would rather ferrets suffer than throw them even a tiny bit of money. I guess if they were pits, they would get the cash, but ferrets? No one other than ferret people seem to care about these sweet little, social, loving, animals. It is painful to see the resources going to killers, instead of sweet and adoptable critters. It is like seeing an innocent child left homeless, so the cash can go to buying a murderer a mansion.
The city shelter here (now run by a HS) refuses to take in any but the most perfect, healthy, adoptable, dogs and cats- and only if you PAY them to take the pet in! But they spend unending time and money on “stray” MAULERS, housing them forever, advertising them in papers, and doing insane amounts of “behavioral training” for mouthy” pits so they can be adopted into homes…..pits they pick up as “strays” because their owners dump them near the shelter to avoid the fees.
Just as bad off are the feral or stray cats in a slow kill city. Here, they will pay for a little S/N, but then make you put the poor cats right back out to die in nature, as if they are wild animals. How very humane! The ONLY group I know of that is anti slow-kill and TNR, and is pro-BSL is PETA. But they lost me when the announced they were going to put up a porn website, that would include their animal propaganda (because the abuse of women is A-OK!)
WHY are pits so important, that every other animal comes in a far distant second? I agree with Jamaka, that we must just prefer killer animals. It makes sense, given the way we treat humans, that we would worship ultra predator dogs.
Repealing the ban in Aurora just means that the dog fighters will move in and set up. It also means that euthanasia at the shelters will climb to the moon.
Best Friends Animal Society is also there too in that town telling people that fighting dogs make good pets and will be great to live with other dogs and cats after they get some secret magic evaluation and training.
You are a know nothing idiot that should keep there ignorant comments to their self if they don’t know anything about what they are talking about. Do your self a favor if your smart enought to read and go buy the book “the lost dogs”. It people like you that make this wonderful breed suffer and die in shelters just as much as the pieces of garbage that force them to fight
The people who have caused the deaths of more than 1.5 million pit bulls in U.S. animal shelters since 2000 are the people who breed them, keep the pit bull sterilization rate at less than a third of that for all other dog breeds combined, keep them in a negligent manner, surrender them to shelters at the rate of one pit bull in three per year, and engage in aggressive promotional mendacity about pit bulls to try to maintain the markets for breeders and adopters of pits who have already quite predictably flunked out of one or several homes.
Branwyn Finch, mandatory spay neuter laws are fought by the AKC and other breed groups who pour millions of dollars into lobbying legislators to oppose them. They have been the primary obstacle to spay neuter laws.. Opposing spay neuter laws is one of the primary function’s of AKC’s legislative activity.
The AKC also remains the primary opponent to pit bull regulation, and has spent more money and effort on that over the years than all the humane groups combined.
AKC breeders are prevalent in most of the pit bull advocacy groups, even the ones who claim they are rescue groups.
I don’t know who you consider extremists pushing no kill, but the breeding community has controlled no kill for some time and is primarily responsible for pushing it into animal control and shelters. Many of the no kill shelter directors are AKC breeders themselves or connected to them.
The breeders actually are “ruthless corporations worried about their bottom line” and have been eternally. AKC poses as a non profit too, and so do all the other breeder groups and clubs, when they lobby against pit bull regulation.. Pit bulls are part of that bottom line, and shared opposition to regulation has brought mainstream breeders into alliances with dog fighters many times..
Contrary to much advocacy hype and common belief, there is no such thing as a “mandatory spay/neuter law” in the United States, because — as various courts have held — such a law would violate the Ninth Amendment, which reserves as rights of the people, not subject to regulation, any right that they possessed independent of regulation in 1786. This can only be changed by constitutional amendment. Ninth Amendment rights have only been amended twice, to abolish slavery and to institute Prohibition.
U.S. courts up to the Supreme Court have, however, repeatedly found that it is constitutional to prohibit and/or regulate possession of a type of animal, because this was already done, long before 1786. Thus it is possible for San Francisco to mandate sterilization of pit bulls, and for Denver to prohibit possession of pit bulls.
The so-called “mandatory spay/neuter laws” in effect in many cities and the state of Rhode Island are actually just conventional differential licensing ordinances, with extra-wide differentials, meaning that people with intact animals pay more for a license.
The introduction of differential licensing in the 1970s was initially very successful in helping to promote sterilization of pets, but differential licensing rapidly became less effective after the rate of sterilization came to exceed the rate of licensing. Currently more than 80% of the dogs in the U.S. are sterilized, exclusive of pit bulls, of whom barely 20% are sterilized. Licensing rates, by contrast, rarely exceed 25%.
In the early 1990s several cities prominently increased their fees for licensing intact dogs, in the mistaken belief that this would increase sterilization compliance. By 2000 the results were unequivocal: widening the licensing differentials merely increased the rates of noncompliance with licensing, did not increase sterilization rates, did not reduce backyard breeding, did not lower shelter killing, and did not increase revenue for animal control agencies, because the cost of enforcement exceeded the returns.