NEW YORK -- One of the most barbaric forms of animal cruelty has an underbelly which for years has remained literally hidden in darkness: “Trunking” is dog fighting’s ugly secret.
“It’s just that taboo,” Tio Hardiman, a Chicago-based, dog fighting consultant to the Humane Society of the United States.
Capt. Steve Shatkin of the New Jersey SPCA described trunking to Pet Pulse at the state’s headquarters in New Brunswick.
“Two dogs will be thrown, literally, into the trunk of a car like this,” Shatkin said, pointing to a mid-sized car in NJSPCA’s parking lot. “(The) trunk is closed, and the operators either drive around for a set period of time, or just leave them in there with the trunk closed."
“And after a certain time, open the trunk, and the best man left is standing. And it’s a bloody mess in there, and that’s how they declare a winner.”
The carcass of the defeated dog is typically tossed to the side of the road, says Hardiman, who also is a pit bull advocate.
“Once in a while I’ve seen it, OK?” Hardiman said. “I know some guys may have put some dogs in a trunk. They fought, and then the next thing you know they turned the music up real loud -- for about 15 minutes, maybe 30 minutes.
“And then you open up the trunk, one of the dogs might be dead, the other one might be mangled up.”
Across the country, Pet Pulse conducted numerous interviews with officers in animal control and law enforcement specializing in animal cruelty cases. Due to the nature of trunking, relatively few had even handled a trunking case first-hand.
For some dog fighters, trunking is a chosen method because it is so difficult for police to detect, in fact nearly impossible, authorities say. Typically it can neither be seen nor heard.
Read the rest here, along with a video:
http://www.zootoo.com/petnews/hidden...trunkingisdogf