BAYING for blood, a group of young men watch two vicious dogs tearing each other apart – as one man yells in the ear of his prize fighter.
The harrowing footage, shot in Northern Ireland, helped expose the vile, sadistic leaders of one of Europe’s largest dog fighting networks.
A BBC documentary lifts the lid on the cruel underworld of dog fighting[/caption]
Trained to kill, dogs are placed into custom-made pits and forced to rip each other from limb to limb until one broken dog refuses to fight anymore.
These dogs that are bred and trained for battle to satisfy their cruel owners’ thirst for blood suffer horrific levels of cruelty and abuse that have left investigators mentally scarred for life.
A BBC investigation, which airs tonight, uncovered a huge network of illegal blood sports stretching from County Antrim to Amsterdam and tracked down fighting kennels all over the UK – from a busy housing estate to the grounds of a ruined stately home.
A simple mis-click from one member of a top-secret online dog fighting forum exposed the brutal reality of today’s underground dog fighting industry.
One former dog fighter turned whistle-blower says: “Once the dogs get turned loose it gets very intense. It is basically two dogs ripping each other apart.
“I’ve seen a dog almost eat the chest of another dog straight off the bone. I’ve seen them bite and actually break legs, do a lot of damage.”
Forensic veterinary expert David Martin says: “There is an enormous amount of abuse and cruelty at every stage. The dogs suffer at every step of the way.
“Most of them will be pitbull or pitbull cross. They will be extremely well-muscled, quite lean and look very athletic.
“So because the dog is genetically from fighting stock it is naturally aggressive towards other dogs, then through your training programme you are going to train your dog to build on that aggression.”
Although they have been a banned breed in the UK for several years, David Martin has treated a number of pitbulls rescued from dog fighters.
“We took a dog from a fighting kennel to a veterinary practice for assessment,” he recalls. “We cleared the vet practice and made sure there were no other dogs this dog could see.
“The dog came into the waiting room and saw a picture of a dog on the wall and lunged across to get to the picture and shredded it.
“The level of aggression and desire to fight other dogs can’t be underestimated. They are effectively fighting to the death. They rarely do fight to the death, but some dogs will die in the pit.
“They fight until one of the dogs will no longer come forward to fight again.”
The League Against Cruel Sports received more than 600 reports of dog fighting since 2024, with those reports increasing by more than 50 per cent in the past two years.
However, it says the number of dog fights taking place in the UK is impossible to quantify – the secrecy of the fights means far more are taking place than get reported.
Twisted dog fighters
This obsession with secrecy means dog fighters hide in encrypted messaging groups on dark corners of the internet.
But the twisted dog-fighters have a fatal weakness – they like to boast.
It was that weakness that enabled the authorities to uncover a secretive online network of international dog fighters, forcing dogs to fight to the death for their owners’ own amusement.
Former counter terror police officer Russ Middleton, who is now head of intelligence for the League Against Cruel Sports, stumbled across a dog-fighting forum that had been mistakenly left open for anyone to see.
Evil Phillip Harris Ali (left) and Stephen Brown (right) were members of a dog-fighting ring[/caption]
Three dogs being kept in kennels in the garden of Phillip Harris Ali[/caption]
Eight-year-old bull terrier Jane was one of 19 dogs seized in the RSPCA’s Operation Ghoul to intercept Phillip Ali’s dog fighting ring[/caption]
One dog fighter’s IT mix-up had accidentally revealed an entire network to the authorities.
It even detailed a host of brutal fights organised by members of the forum filled with graphic detail written as ‘match reports’.
“I can’t really put into words actually, it was just golden,” says Russ.
“There was a whole range of different dogfighters in there, all collaborating, chatting, sharing videos. It gave us a real insight into the global perspective of dogfighting.”
I’ve seen a dog almost eat the chest of another dog straight off the bone
Whistle blower
The leak revealed videos of the fights with commentaries, which made for horrific reading.
Comments included: “Maggie bleeding heavily for a short while”, “Jose has a deep grip on the neck and is working it, never lets go,” and “Opens up a decent hole in Brock’s face, causing plenty of blood.”
David Martin, who reviewed the reports, said: “There’s a lot of detail – arterial bleeding, there are broken legs, there are serious deep wounds, potentially opening their abdomens up so intestines can come out. They are really severe, nasty injuries.”
Barbaric training
BBC reporter Patrick Fee posed as a dog fighter to infiltrate the dark corners of the web where the sadistic organisers hide.
For months, Patrick took part in dog fighting forums which revealed barbaric training videos of dogs being forced to run on treadmills, being subjected to DIY ‘vet’ treatment and full videos of brutal dog fights.
His investigation found several UK-based dog fighting kennels – some hiding in unlikely places.
In one case, the owner of a dog who had recently killed its opponent in the pit had a kennel nestled in a busy housing estate in County Armagh populated by families and their pets.
One site that sparked alarm was Boneyard Kennels, which appeared to have dozens of dogs winning fight after fight, with videos uncovered claiming dogs to be champion fighters.
Patrick and his team discovered that Boneyard Kennels had been buying frozen semen from a prolific dog fighting operation in the US to breed even deadlier dogs here in the UK.
And they discovered that the alleged dog-fighting kingpin behind Boneyard was running his operation from inside the grounds of the Shane’s Castle stately home estate in County Antrim.
A new BBC investigation exposed one of Europe’s biggest dog fighting rings[/caption]
The BBC identified the man behind Boneyard Kennels as David Patterson, a mixed-martial arts coach from County Antrim.
His father Matthew Patterson was involved in one of the first dangerous dogs prosecutions ever to take place in Northern Ireland.
In 1993 pitbulls were seized along with dog fighting material from Matthew Patterson’s home.
Also seized in that raid was a photo album owned by David Patterson which contained pictures of dog fights.
David Patterson told the BBC that he denied participating in dog fighting and said he is not a member of any international dog fighting network. He denied buying semen from the US.
He said he often looks after dogs for other people and is interested in human and animal fitness.
Shane’s Castle Estates told BBC News NI that it is opposed to dog fighting and was shocked to hear that a dog fighter was operating within its grounds.
It said, if it had known, this would have been stopped.
The BBC also claimed Craig Kitson, an associate of Patterson’s, was a member of the dog fighting network – operating under the alias Spongebob.
He had previously been lambasted for posting a sick video of himself biting the ear of his dead dog, whose muzzle was taped.
He denied being involved in dog fights.
The BBC also spoke to Zoltan Borbe, known by the alias NFK Kennels, who was filmed boasting about his fighting dogs, saying he had “one grand champion female”, meaning she had won over five fights.
Borbe sent videos of the black pit bull he was selling, a two-year-old pit bull named Ruby, but later claimed he made up her fighting credentials in order to sell her.
She has been placed at a rescue centre in the Netherlands which aims to rehabilitate high-risk dogs.
A dog pit in France, in a picture taken from Ali’s phone[/caption]
But the gangs identified in the BBC documentary are far from alone.
Millions of pounds a year in bets are placed on dog fights across the world. And the more fights a dog wins, the more it increases in values. So as well as being a source of sick amusement, dog fighting is also a lucrative money spinner for those involved.
Last year, members of a dog-fighting ring from Essex were jailed after illegal bouts were organised across Europe.
Phillip Harris Ali, 67, of Chigwell, was known in the dog fighting world as Dr Death.
He was jailed along with Stephen Albert Brown, 57, of Chigwell, and Billy Leadley, 38, who had a dog fighting pit at his home in Takeley.
Dogs had been chained to treadmills, kept in dirty conditions and were caged in isolation.
Vet David Martin says a dog fight could be happening around the corner from any family home.
“Dog fighting is always there,” he says. “It is much more common than people think, it hasn’t died out, sadly it isn’t part of the history books. It is going on in probably every major town and city in the UK.”
Spotlight. Dog Fighting; Exposed is on BBC Two tonight at 9pm and is available on iPlayer.
