ATLANTA — The Atlanta Humane Society said they are receiving donations from across the country — and you’ll never guess what people are sending.

More than a dozen Michael Vick jerseys have been sent to AHS, and they are putting them to good use.

“When I first saw them, I was kind of shocked. I was like, ‘Why do they have Vick jerseys here,’ said Julie Sentner.

Vick is innocent until proven guilty, but his association when men pleading guilty to federal dog fighting charges makes the number 7 jersey an unexpected find at the Atlanta Humane Society.

“At first we were like, ‘I wonder what we’re going to use this for,” said P.J. Smith with AHS.

And the jerseys kept coming. About a dozen or so jerseys were sent from people wanting to make good from a bad situation. In fact, the Humane Society is getting flooded with e-mails about Vick.

So what are volunteers doing with the jerseys?

“We discovered like any donation we get, any shirt or towel, we put it to good use here at Atlanta Humane Society. We’re always using things to clean kennels, use for bedding and stuff like that,” said Smith.

Did she say cleaning kennels?

“We’re not showing any favoritism to these jerseys, they go into our general rotation of towels,” Smith said.

One dog is using his Vick jersey as a pillow.

“As long as they’re being used for good, then that’s great. If they’re using them to make dogs more comfortable or to clean up after them, then that’s fine,” said Sentner.

Of course, the Vick jerseys being donated mean a lot more to the people than to the puppies — they’re just loving all the attention.

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This is my favorite part:

This dog at the Atlanta Humane Society is enjoying his bed, which is a Vick jersey donated by an upset fan.

I had no idea about Amazon.com’s sale of animal fighting videos, training books, and magazine subscriptions. I got a letter from the Humane Society of the United States alerting me to the stance they’re taking on this. They defend their right to profit on such materials as a freedom of speech issue. Never mind that there’s a federal law against this.

“the federal Animal Welfare Act expressly and specifically prohibits use of the U.S. mail service for “promoting” or “in any other manner furthering” animal fighting.” This link takes you the HSUS article about Amazon. Please be warned there are a couple of disturbing pictures in the article. It’s a valuable read, but I don’t want anyone to be shocked. There’s a link in the article to send a letter Jeff Bezos the boss of Amazon.com. Here it is: Take action against Amazon.com.

I tried to do a little research to get both sides of the story. Amazon has nothing on their site, no news release about the lawsuit or their position or anything. The best I could come up with is this news release on an Elephant Sanctuary site. The article contains the text of a letter sent to the Sanctuary from Amazon.com in response to their protest.

It’s not as if it’s difficult to find this crap on Amazon, either. I did one single search on “Animal fighting” and it came up with many hits.

It is true. They’re selling this stuff. I’m boycotting Amazon.com until they change their stance on this.

Dog fighting. Animal fighting. No way to express how seriously much it pisses me off that people use animals in such a barbaric way. That there are segments of our society that condone vicious, cruelty to animals. Not only condone it, but promote it and practice it and get their jollies from it and make money off of it. Seriously. Pisses. Me. Off.

When the Michael Vick story broke I was so angry. I spent several hours looking up phone numbers and email addresses for every one I could think of to send protest letters and calls to. I believe it was the angry outpouring of people disgusted by this that caused Nike, Rebok and a couple of trading card companies to back away from Vick for the time being.

Here’s something else you can do if you feel so inclined.

You can make a donation the Humane Society to end animal fighting here.