One year ago today, authorities raided Michael Vick’s property in Virginia, gathering evidence that led to his imprisonment on charges related to dogfighting. Although The Humane Society of the United States has battled animal fighting for more than fifty years, your actions last summer and into this year have helped us make great strides in bringing more animal fighters to justice.

These are just a few of the many milestones we’ve already reached in 2008.

- Raids on dogfighting operations increased from 27 between January and April last year to more than 67 raids to date in 2008 — more than doubling the number of reported arrests for this crime.
- Wyoming and Idaho made dogfighting a felony offense — and these two states had been the last holdouts with weak penalties for fighting crimes. Lawmakers in Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Oregon, and Virginia also passed stronger laws against dogfighting, as part of a wave of 26 states considering legislation to increase penalties.
- Our program granting awards to people helping us bust animal fighters, made possible by the Ware Foundation and our donors, precipitated dogfighting raids in half a dozen states. We paid out 20 rewards and have several pending. The cases range from a Texan who reported on his neighbor and his six scarred pit bulls to major busts with dozens of animals confiscated.
- In February, we worked with the Pima County sheriff to bust two of the nation’s most notorious dogfighting kingpins, Pat Patricks and T.L. Williams, in Arizona. Officials seized more than 150 dogs and arrested six people.
- Our press conferences announcing the reward program — held with five state attorneys general, the Chicago Police Department and the Los Angeles County district attorney — have shined a bright spotlight on dogfighting. We plan more conferences with attorneys general in three additional states.
- We trained more than 700 law enforcement officers on animal fighting and produced a new video about dogfighting. Tens of thousands of our rewards posters are helping ferret out animal fighters across the country.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of dogs are exploited by dogfighters and countless vulnerable animals suffer hunger, thirst, malicious wounding, and death.

I’m proud to report this progress, and I thank you for helping to make it all possible.