If you're like most parents planning a weekend outing for your family, you might take your little ones camping, to an amusement park, maybe a baseball game...

Not so for many parents in rural Louisiana. Or Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and a handful of other states where feral pigs roam....



(ed note - for maximum effect, open a new browser window and listen to this as you read on. Trust me.)

A weekend highlight for some families in these areas is the so-called "hog dog rodeo". If you miss the homemade tin signs - "Hog Dog Rodeo Tonight! Turn here" - posted on trees along dirt roads, you can still find one of these events. Just listen for the squeals of terror and pain from the pigs and cheers from the audience of parents and children.



Hog dogging (AKA) hawg dawgin', hog baiting, hog dog "rodeos": They're all terms for a bloodsport known as hog-dog fighting. An owner leads his trained pit bull, leopard dog or black mouth cur into an enclosed pen. The dog lunges and pulls so hard on the leash that she soon stands erect on her hind legs, her face fixed in a snarl. Her guttural growl erases any doubt that she is unsure of her purpose.

At the other end of the ring, the "handler" shoves a feral hog through a chute into the pen. He will use a cattle prod if the hog, who has faced these dogs before, hesitates. And just in case the hog had any notion of trying to defend himself, the handler has already taken the precaution of removing his tusks with bolt cutters.

The pit bull’s owner removes her leash. Before you can count to three-one-thousand, the dog tackles the hog in a cloud of dust. His jaws tear into the hog’s flesh, maybe ripping the snout, tail, or an ear. The hog expresses pain and fear through loud squeals that echo off the pen's tin walls. The crowd is pleased; the dog pins the hog to the ground in a mere seven seconds. As with a wrestling pin, the mandatory three seconds elapse, and the operator declares the dog victorious. Adults and children cheer for the fast, powerful dog.



However, the dog’s jaws remain attached to the hog’s flesh. After what must seem like an eternity to the hog,
people casually make their way over to end the match. If the hog struggles, the handler may give him a sharp boot to the head, then dig his heel into the hog’s chest to still him. He then uses a long, wooden blade called a breakstick to pry the dog's jaws from the hog. It can take up to a minute to release the dog’s grip while the hog continues to writhe in terror.

After the proud owner leads his dog away, the handler may pour apple vinegar into the hog’s wounds. The vinegar supposedly helps the wounds develop scabs so that the hog can be mauled again in a few days.

If enough children attend the hog dog fight, the operator will encourage a game of "catch the pig." In this delightful
"kid-friendly" event, the handler tapes the hog’s snout closed and encourages children to chase the terrified animal around the pen. At one event, secretly videotaped by Alabama’s NBC-15 station, the announcer remarked that the hog suffered a broken leg, something that failed to dissuade the children from trying to tackle the hobbled animal.



At the end of the night, the organizer tallies his profits from admission and dog entry fees. And the owners with the fastest dogs leave with trophies and hundreds of dollars in prize money.

Hog dog fights are hardly new; they've likely been around for more than 25 years, regularly occuring in at least ten states - Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas.

Hog dog fighting stems from hog hunting, a pastime in which hunters use dogs to find, chase, corner and catch the hogs. When hunting feral hogs, dogs fall generally into two camps: "bay" dogs who only corner the hog, and "catch" dogs who actually clamp onto the feral hogs with their jaws. The latter dogs present a danger not only to the hog, but also to themselves, since wild hog still have powerful tusks. Traditional hog hunting first spurred "trials" in which dogs competed against each other to catch and corner hogs. Uncle Earl’s Hog Dog Trials in Winnfield, Louisiana, has been an annual event since 1995, and is now billed as the "Super Bowl of Hog Dog Baying." There are even
youth scholarships for the event.

While hog dog trials try to package themselves as respectable entertainment, they are often little more than glorified hog dog fights, similiar to other bloodsports like dogfighting, bullfighting and cockfighting.



Hog dog fights have historically remained just under the radar, but that is changing.

In December 2004, authorities in three states arrested the country's leading promoters of hog dog fighting, including the president and secretary of the International Catchdog Association, a South Carolina-based group suspected of organizing, certifying, and videotaping hog dog events. Earlier that year, authorities raided the Alabama home of Johnny Hayes after an NBC affiliate in Mobile broadcast an undercover video of hog dog fighting on his property. Hayes was later arrested and convicted on charges of animal cruelty

In between those two arrests, Louisiana Rep. Warren Triche introduced a bill to ban hog dog fighting in the Sportman's Paradise (excluding hog hunting), which passed and went into effect in August 2004. Animal welfare advocates around the state united in support of the law (even if hog dog fans have also tried to reverse it).

Alabama State Representative Thomas Jackson introduced a bill that passed the house in April, which, if passed, will ban organizing or conducting a hog dog fight, training an animal for such an activity, and even purchasing a ticket to a hog dog event. Likewise, Tennessee's legislature has introduced a bill that will take a bite out of hog dog fighting. The attorneys general in Texas and Florida have also delivered opinions stating that hog dog fights violate their cruelty laws, and Mississippi, like Alabama before it, will be the next state to test that theory when it prosecutes one Frankie Wheat on charges of operating a hog
dog fight.

Click here to get involved.