Tio educates youth about dog fighting
By Cathy Scott, Best Friends Animal SocietyTio Hardiman is fighting for the underdog -- literally. He has hit the streets, meeting teens who raise dogs for fighting and educating youth that animals have feelings too.
“Dogs are the underdog, because they can’t speak for themselves,” said Tio, director of gang mediation and community organizing for the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention’s Cease Fire program. For the last six months, he has been intervening in animal violence.
“These are living, breathing animals,” he said. “I tell kids, ‘You should treat your dogs as you want to be treated.’ I’m trying to get them on the right track, thinking the right way.”
Tio has traveled to 35 states, counseling teenagers in areas where gangs are prevalent, including Compton, California, which is famous for its street thugs.
Chicago’s Westside, however, is no different. It has its share of street-wise gang members.
And that’s fine with Tio. He was raised on the south end of the Westside and is familiar with the turf.
“I grew up in a real rough area, in the projects,” he said. “I had what you might call humble beginnings.”
Because of those humble beginnings, he can relate to today’s youth and the gang-bangers who keep dogs as status symbols and often graduate to training them to fight with other dogs. “I work on violence interruption, keeping guys from killing each other.”
Often the violence is extended toward animals. “They think animals are meant to be abused,” he said.
So it was a natural step to intervene in animal abuse, he explained.
While the animal intervention began six months ago, Tio has been implementing it even longer. A year and a half ago, he ran across a group of teenagers, about 17 years and older, about to fight their dogs on a Jackson Boulevard street corner on the west side of town.
“They had young pit bulls with them, about a year old, still babies,” Tio said.
He got out of his car and walked up to the group.
“I noticed there was one older dog who would have easily taken advantage of the younger ones, because he was more developed,” Tio said. “I had to use reverse psychology on these guys. I told them they could injure the dogs and they’d never be able to recover.”
At first, they told him, “Nah, these dogs were born to fight.”
But Tio was able to convince them otherwise.
“They took the dogs inside the house, and they let (the fight) go,” he said. “At least for that moment, I was able to intervene.”
Many kids get a Pit Bull or Rottweiler because it’s a macho thing to do. “It’s a status thing,” Tio explained. “The next level is about the money. In Chicago, you have guys who own high-priced dogs. They fight them because it’s high stakes.”
Many of the kids are desensitized to the dogs’ feelings.
“If a dog loses a fight, they throw him aside, leave him in a garage where he’s tied up without food, and he withers away and dies. Or they leave him in a back yard without treatment for his injuries, and he suffers.”
Tio’s job, he said, is to change the kind of thinking that causes that behavior.
“We want to stop the mindset and the violence with animals,” he said. “I’ve reached out to 30 or 40 young men who own pit bulls. On any given day, we’ll have someone come along and we’re able to talk him out of putting his dog in a fight.”
Since animal abuse intervention is a relatively new program, which appears to be the first of its kind, organizers will assess it in six months to see what the success rate is.
In the meantime, Tio plans to convince the tough teens of Chicago’s Westside that certain breeds are not born to fight.
“Most of the guys on the street think pit bulls were born to be aggressive and born to kill,” Tio said. “We have to change their thinking.
“We have to do regular follow-ups with these guys. It’s a lot of work. We want the thinking to stick.”
Pictured, Tio Hardiman during a recent visit to Best Friends and wiith Animal Expert Sherry Woodard, working with a pit bull mix named Rio.