I just got done reading in T&R about the USC assistants' mistreating of dogs -- FROM FOURTEEN YEARS AGO!  This is just ridiculous, one star athlete is taken to federal court for his heinous crimes and now every reporter or gossipmonger thinks that we as a nation want to be reminded of this type of behavior.  Guess what . . . we DON'T!  From reading the remarks on anything involving Vick and his legal issues, it's pretty clear that we as fans are tired of hearing about the topic of dogs and cruelty.  It happens everyday, countless times, and only the pea-brain PETA people really take notice.

I grew up on a ranch and we had dogs that we used for rounding up cattle and horses.  We had to train these dogs to do what we said and how ferociously we wanted it done.  If our dogs stepped out of line, well they were punished.  I'm not talking about shaking a finger at them and giving them a dirty look, a "time-out" if you will.  We made sure that our dogs understood that they did wrong and were punished by a few good whacks over the head or if something really bad happened, a swift kick.  None of this was over-excessive, we didn't lay the boot ten times or even give our all, and never did we punish for nothing, but we did hit our dogs.  IS this wrong?  No.  Dogs aren't the smartest of animals and can't comprehend most of what people try and get across to them, but a little pain is a powerful motivator.  After we punished them, it was never done again, ever.  Our dogs learned and that was that.  Police dogs are trained by using the chain around their neck and it ain't nice.

Back to my point.  If the media is going to go so far out of their way, fourteen years, to stir the pot, it shows that they don't really care about the animals but just the story itself.  Bring up something brand new, media, something that actually happened in the past YEAR and something that the person was CONVICTED for.  Bringing up old news is worthless and shows lack of inspiration for the job.