Animal lovers take to Twitter to talk about Michael Vick's comments about future dog ownership

Michael Vick said in a recent interview that he wants to have a pet dog and hopes to get one someday, in part because his children "miss having one, and that's the hardest thing: telling them that we can't have one because of my actions."

Many animal lovers were outraged by Vick's comments, in which he described himself as having "love and ... passion for animals" and said he felt that owning a dog "would be a big step for me in the rehabilitation process." Here's a sampling of what the folks on Twitter have been saying:

If you're on Twitter, join the animal-friendly discussion with us by following @LATunleashed.

Comments

[Kristine Coleman]

NO WAY, NO WAY!!!! Michael Vick should still be in Jail. What he has done is no less than Capital Murder in the very worst way.

PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW HIM TO HAVE A PET! If he feels he needs help in his rehabilation, then he should be hospitalized!!!!

[Bob]

Lets see how he continues with his speaking with others about how he was wrong and this should not happen. Then maybe think about getting a dog, but after 5 yrs after his probation is up. I dont think he will continue speaking out about it once his probation is up.
But personally NO WAY........

[Eric Mills]

Guess we should be grateful that Charles Manson doesn't have a good jump shot, else he'd be out of jail and playing point guard for the Lakers.

Vick should never be allowed near ANY animals for the rest of his unnatural life.

[Yliana Franco]

He barehandedly killed and electrocuted @ least 9 helpless dogs who didn't perform well!!! He was responsible for funding the death and torture of many more innocent dogs. Um, no he shouldn't be allowed to ever own a dog. He's a monster.

[Boss B]

You white people have issues.

[L.A. Voter]

Really, "Boss," what are the "issues" involved in believing a man who killed dogs shouldn't be allowed to have pets anymore?

Much as I would like to believe you are simply a white race-baiter, if you are in fact black you should realize that no true animal lover gives a damn what color Michael Vick is. We care that a 29 year-old millionaire, out of all the options he had to get his kicks, chose, for fun, to kill dogs by strangling, drowning, electrocuting and slamming them repeatedly into the ground. That's the kind of man Michael Vick is, and that kind of person doesn't change.

Killing dogs is not an issue of black versus white, it's an issue of cruel and evil versus humane. It's a mystery to me why any black person would try to make dog-killing (which, face facts, Michael Vick admitted to) a racial issue. From a logical standpoint, that's saying being black and killing dogs have anything to do with each other. If he admitted killing children would you still insist the only reason we despise him is because he's black?

I don't believe being black, or growing up in Newport News, means you have no choice but to torture and kill dogs -- and the facts will bear me out. Michael Vick is a human man and he chose, of his own free will, out of millions of options, to brutally kill dogs, over and over again, over a period of many years. He chose to hide his involvement and, when he was caught, he chose to deny responsibility and try to throw the blame on his friends -- other black men. Why any black person would want to defend him, or act like what he did had anything to do with his being black absolutely eludes me. It's not like you see white people saying, "You're only picking on Charles Manson because he's white!" You don't see Mexican people defending Richard Ramirez because he's Mexican-American.

A bad guy is a bad guy, regardless of color. Michael Vick is a bad guy. If you can't admit that, the issue isn't race, it's lack of a moral compass.

[thomas morris]

then the police shouldn't have dog because they used to sick the on black woman and children!!! u guys are losers

[L.A. Voter]

Thomas, please name for me the U.S. police force that has, for the purposes of racial intimidation, sicced a dog on a black woman or child in this decade, or this century, for that matter.

No one is denying that racist police back in the day used dogs to threaten or attack black people. But other people's wrongs do not excuse Michael Vick's killing of dogs in this century. Michael Vick was born in 1980 and, far from having been attacked by police dogs, his story, if you choose to believe the word of Michael Vick, is that police in his neighborhood actually condoned dog fighting, which is one of the reasons, he says, why he thought it was okay (although interestingly, even though he says he thought it was okay he still concealed his involvement at the time and denied his involvement and blamed other black men, including relatives, when he finally got caught).

Vick's version places police as role models, not victimizers. And face facts, Michael Vick was never anybody's victim. HE was the victimizer, the torturer, the killer. HIS history is a guy whose talent for football was discovered when he was a kid, so he always knew he had the potential for a great, wealthy life. He got an education, he got a great-paying job that made him a millionaire in his twenties. And what did he do with it? He decided to build a business on the bodies of dogs he killed. And he nearly got away with it because Virginia's Commonwealth Attorney didn't want to prosecute a high-profile, famous-for-football black man.

There are victims in this world, but Michael Vick is not one, not by a long shot. The only victims in this story are the dogs he killed, over and over again.