Hog/dog rodeo like porn, says prosecutor
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:
COFFEYVILLE, Alabama–The legality of so-called “hog/dog
rodeo” in Alabama will be tested soon as result of arrests made on
February 21, 2004 by Clarke County Sheriff Jack Day.
Hog/dog rodeo, practiced chiefly in the rural South,
consists of setting pit bull terriers against purportedly feral pigs
in an enclosed arena. The dog who corners and holds a pig fastest is
the winner.
Hog/dog rodeo was openly promoted in both Alabama and Florida
until May 1994, when then-Florida attorney general Mike Butterworth
ruled in response to videos of dogs mauling pigs at a site in Hardee
County that the practice violates the state anti-cruelty law.
That left Alabama, where the most prominent hog/dog venue
of several openly operating is reputedly that of H&H Kennels owner
Johnny Hayes, near Coffeyville.
Coffeyville police chief Frankie Crawford and Clarke County
Democrat editor Jim Cox had both repeatedly denounced hog/dog rodeo
and drunken parking lot violence that often went with it, but to no
avail until a February 12, 2004 investigative report by Mike Rush of
NBC-12 in Mobile.
Shown video similar to the footage that ended open hog/dog
rodeo in Florida, Clarke County District Attorney Bobby Keahey told
Rush that he had never prosecuted Hayes and others involved because
Sheriff Day had never arrested them.
Day, however, told Rush that in 2001 he sent a deputy to
ask Keahey if hog/dog rodeo promoters and participants could be
prosecuted for cruelty, and was told that they were “not unlawful.”
The next Saturday, wrote Mobile Register reporter Karen
Tolkkinene, “While country music played, Johnny Hayes was allowed
to preside over a pig chase for kids, as well as a hog-catch for pit
bulls. After, he was allowed to announce the winners. Then he was
led away in handcuffs” by Day and Assistant District Attorney Stephen
K. Winters “and charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty.”
“Cruelty is like pornography,” Winters told Tolkkinene. “You
know it when you see it.”
