or Angry Birds on the computers.
Earlier she’d thought, well, fine, Shane’s not on her team this time so it’s time to act like him. WWSLD. What Would Shane Lafluco Do? He’d go Google something, that’s what he’d do.
So, Atlanta went and Googled.
Search term: “Bait dog.”
She started reading and sliding down that slippery slope and now she sits, queasy.
Atlanta’s learned more about the subject than she cares to admit in just a half-hour’s worth of time.
Bait dogs. Like Tressa said, meant to teach the other dogs—the fighters—to grow bloodthirsty, to go for the weaker animal, to go for the kill. Teaches the bigger dog confidence. Teaches them how to be mean. If they don’t go for the bait, they get hurt. Prodded. Poked. Shocked. Punished.
Little dogs make good bait dogs. Puppies, too. And cats or any other small animal.
Folks like Bodie and Bird steal the dogs from people’s front lawns and backyards. Others answer ads in the paper—free to a good home. Puppy mills sometimes sell unsold dogs for just this purpose.
Seems too that some fighter dogs end up as bait dogs. A fighter loses a fight, gets mauled, sometimes the owner kills the dog. Other times he uses him as prey. Fighter dog won’t go for a bait dog, he might end up as bait, instead.
Sometimes they bet on bait dog fights. How long will the bait dog survive? Will the fighter take the bait? Blood and money. Other times it’s just training, no bets, no audience.
They use tools.
There’s the cat-pole, where they tie the bait animal to a pole or tree, let the fighter chase the bait animal around and around until it claims its prize.
Or a bait-cage, where they stick the bait animal in a heavy gauge cage which dangles from above—they make the bait dog bleed and let the thirsty enraged fighter come up from beneath and bite the cage. Like a shark. They see how long the fighter can hang on. Meant to test and strengthen their jaws.
Then you have the flirt-pole, where someone ties the bait animal to a pole held in the hands—they move the battered bait animal left and right, always keeping it out of the fighter dog’s reach. Helps to train the beast’s agility.
In one instance Atlanta reads about, the fighters covered the bait dog in possum blood, let the bigger dog chase the littler dog down. Let him tear it apart way another dog might tear at a chew toy—removing its stuffing, biting off its muzzle. Looking for its squeaker.
Nobody feeds the bait dogs. They don’t treat them like living creatures. They treat them like means to a very final end. Or like toys. Or like the name suggests: live bait.
Most bait dogs die in the pen. Some don’t. Those that don’t just get used again and again until they’re spent up or dead. They’re dumped after the fact. Left in ditches. Drowned in ponds. Thrown in a hole somewhere.
Those rare few that get found, still alive, either die from their wounds or are put to death by shelters who don’t know what to do with them and don’t have the money to devote to their care and rehabilitation.
Bait dogs are just about the lowliest form of creature on earth.
Used and abused and left to die.
Atlanta stifles a sob. Chokes it back. Toughens up.
* * *
Back home, she calls Jenny.
She says to Jenny, “I found out who stole your dog.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s more than one.”
“Tell me.”
“I… don’t know if they’re the ones that hurt the dog.”
“Please just tell me.”
And so she tells her. She leaves out the details of the chase but gives her the broad strokes: Bodie and Bird Haycock, with their pig girlfriend Tressa Kucharski, stole Sailor and—she has a hard time telling Jenny this and her voice cracks but Jenny just says it again, “Tell me”—sold the dog to serve as bait for a dog fighting ring. She doesn’t go into detail. Doesn’t explain what that means for Sailor’s last couple days on earth, with the rope burns around his neck indicating how he was hanged so that other dogs could have at him.
“Oh.”
That’s what Jenny says. Oh. It’s not a dismissive “oh.” It’s a post-traumatic “oh.” The “oh” of someone just told that they’re broke, or their family is dead, or that the bombs will soon begin to fall.
One word because she must not have any others right now. One word because, what else can you say?
“I’m sorry,” Atlanta says.
“I want you to get even with them.”
“What?”
“I want