Dogfighting Quotes

“It took a moment for the rats to discover they were trapped in the pit. Some ran around the edge, looking for a way out; others jumped up, trying without success to get a grip on the sheer sides; others formed themselves into a heap. For a few seconds the dog had it all his own way, and killed a dozen or more.

Then the rats turned, all at once, as if they had heard a signal.

They began to fly at the dog, biting his legs, his haunches and his short tail. Some got on his back and bit his neck and ears, and one sank its sharp little teeth into his lower lip and clung on, swinging from his lethal jaws, until he howled with rage and slammed it against the ground, and at last it released his bleeding flesh.

The dog kept turning around in dizzying circles and caught rat after rat, killing them all; but there were always more behind him. Half the rats were dead when he began to tire. The people who had bet on thirty-six, and got long odds, now tore up their slips; but those who had bet on lower numbers cheered louder.

The dog was bleeding from twenty or thirty bites, and the ground became slippery with his blood and the moist corpses of the dead rats. Still he swung his great head; still he cracked their brittle spines in his terrible mouth; but he moved a little less quickly, and his feet were not so sure on the slimy earth. Now, Micky thought, it starts to get interesting.

Sensing the dog's fatigue, the rats became bolder. When he had one in his jaws, another would spring for his throat. They ran between his legs and under his belly and leaped at the soft parts of his hide. One particularly big creature dug its teeth into his hind leg and refused to let go. He turned to snap at it but another rat distracted him by leaping on his snout. Then the leg seemed to give way the rat must have severed a tendon, Micky thought-and suddenly the dog was limping.”
― Ken Follett, A Dangerous Fortune