Finally Free by Michael Vick, Tony Dungy

seemed like there were usually spectators.
    I could go into more detail, but I don’t want to teach people how to run a dogfight. I don’t want to glorify it. But I will tell you that I know too much about it, and it’s something I wish I’d never learned.

    When I was young, I witnessed dogfighting so much that I didn’t think it was wrong. But as I grew older, I knew it wasn’t right. We would hear about dogfighting operations getting busted. For instance, there was a dogfighting ring that was busted in Chesapeake, Virginia. But I also heard it was mainly a drug-related bust. A lot of guys in the dogfighting game were drug dealers—it was the way they were able to afford their dogs. So, when they were raided for drugs, the authorities found dogs, or vice versa, and either way it seemed like the drug bust routinely made bigger news and received more attention.
    So I knew you could get in trouble over dogfighting, but I neverheard of anyone being convicted of a felony because of it, or going to jail or being prosecuted. I figured, It ain’t that bad. It’s wrong for the dogs, but this is what these dogs like to do. This is why they’re bred. That was my train of thought—that they’re bred to fight.
    I was so wrong.
    My associates and I were so confident we’d never be caught that we ignored some obvious tip-offs. For instance, one of the neighbors near the property on Moonlight Road came over about fifteen days before the raid and told the guys there, “Listen, state police came by and wanted to put a video surveillance camera on my property. They wanted to see all the traffic coming in and out of your house. They want to know what’s going on.” People were hearing a lot of rumors, but we didn’t take that as a sign that we were in trouble.
    I was not told about the neighbor’s visit until it was too late. The other guys just brushed the neighbor off. If I had known that, I would have shut down the operation. It was too close to home.
    This, I think, provides a clear picture of the situation I was in—how I failed to lead the people around me.

    Just a few days before the raid and that phone call, I was out at the property with Quanis and some other guys. What happened out there that day was bad, really bad.
    We had gone out and gotten rid of a lot of dogs. It’s a day I would like to forget. But I can’t. It will always haunt me. It was a day I wasn’t even supposed to be there. It was the day I said to myself, This is it. I’m not dealing with this anymore. I had actually already bought some horses and was getting into show horses. I was ready to move on.
    That was the day my conscience began speaking to me about the seriousness of the crimes I was committing. I remember looking at a dog and saying, “I wonder if one day I’ll be punished for this.” But I said, “You know what? It hasn’t happened since we got started in 2001, and look at my life now. Naw, I’m all right.”
    Everyone in dogfighting was doing the same thing: killing their dogs and getting rid of them when they lost. I had seen guys take the dogs right out of the fighting box and— bam —shoot them in the head.
    In January 2010, new documents emerged from the dogfighting investigation that my codefendants and I—among other things—allegedly killed dogs with shovels, but that’s not true. Nonetheless, I understand that the killings were, and still are, sickening.

    Needless to say, I was paralyzed after the phone call I received on the golf course a few days later. I guess I can’t say I should have been surprised; I just let my arrogance blind me from the truth of my life, and my ability to lie hid the truth from many around me.
    I had kept that world private for six years, which is amazing considering the sophistication of NFL security, where former FBI agents and the like are hired to keep a close watch over the