Imagine if you were raised for one reason and one reason only, to fight. From the minute you were born, your life path was decided for you. Every day you are forced to train through an endless cycle of tread mills and practice fights. You live in your own filth and wear a chain around your neck with links weighing eight pounds each which are supposed to make you stronger. Your parent makes you aggressive, beats you, angers you, and gives you the want to kill other people. In the practice fights you are told to kill your weaker opponent who was pulled off the streets, taken possibly from their family. You fight them, you kill them. You train more, you kill more and blood stains your skin and your teeth.
One night you are put into a square shaped pit with high walls and forced to fight another opponent, however, this one has had training similar to yours. People on the outside of the ring cheer and yell with money in their hands. The adrenaline starts to pump, your heart rate goes up, and you bare your teeth. You go at each other scratching, biting and doing anything just to kill each other. Both you and your opponent are bleeding. Each bite or scratch hurts more and more. You start to get drowsy. Blood spatters the ground and the walls, a combination of yours and your opponents. Your opponent lunges forward and grabs your neck in his mouth and knocks you down. You are too weak from blood loss. The opponent’s parent pulls the opponent away with a smile on his face and a big wad of cash in his pocket. Your parents walk up to you, a scowl lays across their face. They check you over, shake their head and drag you off to the back of the building. You lay there in pain. One parent pulls out a gun and says, “You’re of no use to me anymore.” He pulls the trigger and puts a round through your skull.
The scenario that was just described is all too real, occurring almost every day around the world. However, the fighters are not human; they are dogs. Dog fighting is a major problem in America and in the world today. It is not possible to say exactly how many people are involved in dog fighting, either as a trainer or spectator, but from evidence collected and people who have been captured, the numbers are estimated to be in the tens of thousands (Dog Fighting FAQ). People involved in dog fighting are not connected to a single group. Their backgrounds vary, and they can be poor, middle class or upper class and this activity is not specific to any single race. But what is it that makes these people that participate in dog fights do what they do? By looking at this issue through two different ethical theories and comparing the arguments of both sides, one can begin to deconstruct this problem and see if there is any reason that dog fighting is ethical or unethical.
