It was a horrifying sight. The dog's bloated body was spotted off a pier behind a Newport News, Virginia, boatyard. The young black-and-white female pit bull had apparently drowned, as indicated by her clenched teeth and protruding tongue. But most chilling was that she likely hadn't wound up in the water by accident: Tied to her red-and-black harness was an 11-pound weight that looked like the head of a sledgehammer. This dog was almost certainly thrown into the water and left to struggle for air until she could struggle no more.

Since the dog's body was found in the hometown of Michael Vick's "Bad Newz Kennels," where dogfighting and pit bull abuse are still serious problems, we can't help but fear the worst: that she was bred, trained, and/or used for fighting; either wasn't "game," lost a fight, or got sick; and was meant to "retire" at the bottom of the James River.

As we learned from the Michael Vick case, unwanted "fighting dogs" are often killed in the most horrific ways. Vick and his cohorts admitted to hanging, shooting, electrocuting, drowning, and slamming to the ground dogs who didn't "perform" well.

While we may never know if this dog was used for fighting, we do know that someone did not want her body to be found. A necropsy report indicates that she suffered a shattered rib, probably inflicted by the heavy weight when she was thrown into the water. She had recently given birth and may have experienced complications.

We are offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for this heinous crime.

What You Can Do

If you ever suspect anyone of participating in dogfighting, alert authorities immediately. Dogfighting is a felony in all 50 states and is often associated with other serious crimes, including domestic violence, gang activity, and illegal drugs, firearms, and gambling. Signs of dogfighting include the presence of multiple pit bulls chained up in a backyard and paraphernalia such as treadmills and heavy logging chains.

Update: Well, that was fast! Shortly after Mary Matalin sent a personal appeal on PETA's behalf urging lawmakers to shelve bills intended to prevent undercover investigations of factory farms, legislators in Arkansas have scrapped their proposed "ag-gag" measures.

Now, let's keep the momentum going—if you live in California, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, or Vermont, please tell your state legislators to drop "ag-gag" bills and protect animals, consumers, and free speech.

The following was originally posted on March 28, 2013:

Republican strategist Mary Matalin and her husband, Democratic consultant James Carville, differ on most political issues—but when it comes to legislative attempts to block undercover investigators from PETA and other organizations from revealing how animals suffer on factory farms, the couple stands united in opposition to "ag-gag" bills.

To that end, Matalin filmed a PETA appeal and sent it to Republican legislators—the primary sponsors of these measures—in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Vermont, highlighting the importance of PETA's undercover work in prosecuting abusers and stopping institutionalized cruelty. After she introduces a video clip about a case that revealed routine beatings and even the sexual abuse of pigs on a Midwestern factory farm and which led to criminal convictions, Matalin states, "A meat-trade magazine called the case a 'wake-up call' for the industry. Unfortunately, factory farms keep hitting the snooze button, and instead of fixing the problems, they're trying to blame the messenger."

What You Can Do

Thanks to the support of concerned citizens, "ag-gag" bills have already been killed in several states, but we can't rest until all lawmakers stop trying to shield lawbreakers. Please join PETA, Mary Matalin, James Carville, Bob Barker, Cloris Leachman, Katherine Heigl, and many other figures from both sides of the aisle in urging legislators to protect consumers' right to know the truth about factory farms. If you live in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, or Vermont, please take action. 

A source close to John Cuneo, the owner of infamous circus supplier Hawthorn Corporation, has leaked information to PETA that we hope will convince the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to revoke Hawthorn's exhibitor license permanently and to seek criminal charges against Cuneo as well as Lance Ramos, an unlicensed exhibitor who has repeatedly abused and neglected exotic animals and who, according to the whistleblower's testimony, was unlawfully hired by Hawthorn.

iStockphoto.com/NEALITPMCCLIMON 

Hawthorn breeds tigers and leases them to circuses around the world. It has provided Shrine circuses, Cole Bros. Circus, Jordan World Circus, George Carden Circus, Hanneford Circus, and Tarzan Zerbini Circus with tigers. The whistleblower gave PETA firsthand information about pervasive abuse and neglect of animals and apparent violations of federal law, including the following:

• During a training session, Ramos heavily whipped tigers, often in their faces, and jabbed them with wooden rods.
• Tigers were denied veterinary care for open, bleeding wounds and gashes on their foreheads on at least two occasions.
• Tigers are routinely kept in small transport cages in which they pace constantly and are let out only for performances.
• Hawthorn routinely fails to clean urine-soaked concrete floors in tigers' enclosures and leaves out fly-infested raw meat intended for the tigers to eat.
• Even in near-freezing temperatures, tigers were left outside with no protection from the elements.
• Hawthorn does not keep accurate records of tigers' births and deaths, and Cuneo purposefully fails to update the USDA with other requisite information.

These allegations are just the latest in Hawthorn's long, sordid history of cruelty to animals. Please join PETA in asking the USDA to take the appropriate disciplinary action, including revoking Hawthorn's license to exhibit animals.

Update: The New Mexico legislature adjourned without voting on the proposed "ag-gag" bill, effectively killing it for this year. Four other states are still considering making it a crime to record video on farms, so residents of Nebraska, Arkansas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania should let their legislators know that they oppose these unconstitutional bills.  

The following was originally published on March 14, 2013:

Not content to stop after his successful campaign to get Wyoming's "ag gag" bill thrown out, Bob Barker has set his sights on the other proposed "ag gag" bills in New Mexico, Nebraska, Arkansas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

© StarMaxInc.com

As a longtime animal advocate and vegetarian, Bob knows that by making it illegal to record video on factory farms, such measures would threaten efforts to document workers' abuse of animals and to provide evidence that authorities need to win cruelty convictions. The lifelong Republican has written to fellow members of the GOP to let them know why the Grand Old Party needs to give these bills the old heave-ho. In a letter to state legislators, Bob wrote:

Bob's name certainly carries a lot of weight, but animals who are suffering on factory farms need all the help they can get. People who live in states where "ag gag" bills are currently on the floor should let their legislators know that they support the constitutional rights of whistleblowers to expose abuse.

After all, animal abusers—not whistleblowers—are the ones who should be treated like criminals.

In my first year working at a grossly substandard animal shelter in Maryland, I forced myself to go in early to euthanize dogs by holding them in my arms and gently helping them escape an uncaring world without trauma or pain and to spare them from being stabbed haphazardly—while they were fully conscious, terrified and aware—in the general vicinity of their hearts with needles blunt from reuse and left to thrash on the floor until they finally died by the callous people who would arrive later to do the job.

I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion—aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can't afford euthanasia, for instance—as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers.

Diamond was suffering from a painful facial tumor that was slowly eating away at his face

Sasha had a severely infected bite wound.

It's easy to point the finger at those who are forced to do the "dirty work" caused by a throwaway society's casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals—even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn't have enough heart or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at us, but we are against all needless killing: for hamburgers, fur collars, dissection, sport hunting, the works. PETA handled far more animals than 2,069 in 2012. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats and work very hard to persuade people to spay and neuter their animals and to commit to a lifetime of care and respect for them. We go so far as to transport animals to and from our spay/neuter clinics, where they are spayed or neutered and given vet care, often for free! Since 2001, PETA's low- to no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. And on a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign.

Big Girl was still alive when a field worker found her

If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing" their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.

Every day, PETA's fieldworkers help abused and neglected dogs—many of them pit bulls nowadays and many of them forced to live their lives on chains heavy enough to tow an 18-wheeler—by providing them with food; clean water; lightweight tie-outs; deworming medicine; flea, tick, and fly-strike prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw bedding; and love.

What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we gained custody of, named Asia, looked like a skeleton covered with skin when PETA released her from the 15-pound chain she had been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.

The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters). Most of the animals we house, rescue, find homes for, or put out of their misery come from miserable conditions, which often lead to successful prosecution and the banning of animal abusers from ever owning or abusing animals again.

Santana had facial injuries so serious that his right eye was swollen shut and his jaw was ripped and hanging

This dog was suffering from advanced cancer

As long as animals are still purposely bred and people aren't spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a "shelter of last resort," where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.

Please, if you care about animals, help prevent more of them from being born only to end up chained and left to waste away in people's back yards, suffering on mean streets where people kick at them or shoo them away like garbage, tortured at the hands of animal abusers, or, alas, euthanized in animal shelters for lack of a good home. If you want to save lives, always have your animals spayed or neutered.

See more about how PETA saves animals.

Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk

Update: Bob Barker has also written to Indiana legislators urging them to vote no on S.B. 373. The measure already has a strong Democratic opponent in Sen. Mark Stoops, so Barker, a lifelong Republican, hopes to unite lawmakers on both sides of the aisle against this unconstitutional bill.

The following was originally published on March 4, 2013:

Indiana's proposed "ag gag" bill made it through the Senate and has landed in the House. But multiplatinum musician Tony Kanal is calling on the state, where he spent time as a child, to do the right thing and squash this very wrong bill. Indiana Sen. Mark Stoops is joining Tony in speaking out against the bill, having likened it to his trip to Communist-era Romania, in which he was prohibited from taking photos. Says Sen. Stoops, "This is an attack on our 1^st Amendment rights and another example of Big Government protecting industry at the expense of the public's welfare."

Like other "ag gag" bills, Indiana's version, Senate Bill (S.B.) 373, would make it illegal for people to film on factory farms. S.B. 373 would allow whistleblowers some protection if they handed over their video to authorities within 48 hours of capturing it. But this is a thinly veiled attempt to garner more support for the bill. 

As PETA has witnessed time and again in our undercover investigations, it is crucial that investigators be able to prove that the abuse they documented was pervasive and systematic, rather than an isolated incident, in order to get the abusers convicted. In both our West Virginia Aviagen turkeys and Iowa Hormel supplier pig factory farm cases, investigators reported abuse to their supervisors, who failed to stop the abuse and, in some cases, took part in it themselves. Only with extensive video evidence was PETA able to get the abusers charged and convicted (and the abuse stopped), a point that Tony made in his letter to Speaker of the House Brian Bosma.

If you live in Indiana, please urge your representative to vote "No" on S.B. 373.

Because if factory farms have nothing to hide, why are they pushing so hard to make videotaping illegal? 

Whether the new month is coming in like a lion or a lamb, March 1 is National Pig Day, which, according to its cofounder, has been set aside "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place" as a smart and social animal. George Clooney and his dear departed companion pig would agree.

And while there are plenty of great ways to celebrate our curly-tailed pals, none of them involves eating pork. Pigs raised and killed for meat spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy warehouses under the constant stress of intense confinement and are denied everything that is natural and important to them before being violently slaughtered.

Now, some folks would like you to believe that you can have your (nonfakin') bacon and a clear conscience, too—but that's a bigger load of, um, manure than even a factory farm generates. Long story short: There is no such thing as "humane meat."

But here's PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk to explain that (and read a cute poem):

The good news is that March is also the month for the annual observance of Meatout, so there's no better time than right now to kick the cruelty habit in favor of healthy and humane vegan foods—and PETA can help you get started! 

Update: PETA has now confirmed that the USDA has not one but two open investigations into AWA violations by the Hawthorn Corporation: one prompted by PETA's complaint regarding Hawthorn's use of Lance Ramos (see below) to unlawfully exhibit tigers in violation of the USDA's revocation of Ramos' license and the other arising from a separate case in Florida. Please urge the agency to follow the lead of governments around the world in defending animals against abuse by circuses and exhibitors by permanently revoking Hawthorn's license.

Originally posted on February 8th, 2013: 

© www.sxx.hu/me4sakura 

A History of Horrors

As PETA has learned from years of working to free animals from Hawthorn's cruel clutches, calling Hawthorn "notorious" is actually putting it rather mildly. The exotic-animal exhibitor's reprehensible history of AWA violations include USDA citations issued on more than 60 occasions for Hawthorn's many failures to provide animals with proper veterinary care, nutrition, safe or sanitary enclosures, safe or humane handling practices, exercise, and adequate space.

The USDA's previous enforcement actions against Hawthorn have entailed multiple license suspensions, more than a quarter of a million dollars in penalties, and confiscation or ordered surrender of at least 17 exotic animals. None of these actions have done anything to ensure even adequate treatment of the animals Hawthorn forces to perform.

Law Without Justice?

The USDA has recognized that continuing to fail to adhere to minimum standards of sanitation and feeding—both of which are chronic problems for Hawthorn—are violations for which an AWA license should be revoked. Yet the USDA appears to be granting Hawthorn preferential treatment by repeatedly renewing its license.

Someone whose license was permanently revoked is animal trainer Lance Ramos (aka "Lancelot Kollman") after AWA citations for, among other cruelty, using physical abuse as a "training tool" on exotic cats to the point that at least one of them died and denying adequate veterinary care to an elephant so severely emaciated that he was a full ton underweight when the USDA confiscated him. Despite this, Hawthorn brought Ramos on board to train and exhibit tigers, and PETA has provided evidence to the USDA that he recently illegally exhibited the big cats with a Shrine circus and Showfolks Circus. 

What You Can Do

Every day that Hawthorn remains licensed is a day that animals are suffering. Please send a polite e-mail to USDA General Counsel Ramona Romero urging the agency to revoke Hawthorn's license immediately and permanently disqualify its employees and agents from obtaining a USDA license.

Every year, people who exploit chickens and reduce them to bits in a bucket gather at the International Poultry Expo to congratulate each other on making money at it. So this year, PETA sent a flock of "birds" to suggest that attendees give a cluck about chickens:

Banging on pots and pans and shouting, "We are not nuggets!" the chickens got everyone's attention. A surprisingly large number of attendees accepted the demonstrators' leaflets and listened to explanations of how chickens suffer on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, including being mutilated and drugged, having their throats slit while still alive, and often being scalded to death. 

It was an educational expo indeed.

The Black Friday shoppers who were standing in line at midnight to score deals on video games weren't necessarily parents of teenage boys. Some of them might have been pig guardians.

It's true: Pigs love a good video game. Surprised? Then try this one on for size: Pigs can answer to their names within a week of being born. Yep. That skill takes people, what, two years to master?

Pigs are super-smart. In fact, they're classified as the fourth-smartest animal on the planet—ahead of cats and dogs (who haven't the foggiest idea what a Wii is).

And here are some other things that you may not know about pigs:

• They enjoy listening to music.
• They "Eskimo kiss" like humans by rubbing their noses together.
• The intense bond between mother pigs and their babies is just as strong as that between human parents and their children.
• Pigs are chatterboxes, and their wide range of grunts, squeaks, snarls, and snorts all have distinct meanings.
• Just like human beings, they have widely varied personalities: Pigs can be shy or outgoing, serious or playful.
• Piglets play like human children: chasing each other, pretend fighting, squealing, and playing with toys.

Pigs can also suffer from depression, as many on factory farms do. And they don't want to be slaughtered and turned into a centerpiece. This holiday season, serve a hearty and delicious Field Roast and save a pig from your table.

You may just wind up with a new favorite gaming partner.