The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption

by Jim Gorant

  Several of the officials didn’t see the upside of keeping any of the dogs alive. No one really expected these dogs to be spared and there was no political risk to following precedent. There was no way to know for sure how the dogs would fare. If just one of them failed, it could be a huge liability issue for the government. Headline writers and talk show hosts would have no mercy on anyone responsible for freeing a fighting dog that then went on to attack someone. Compassion and empathy were laudable instincts, but this situation called for pragmatism and responsibility, they argued. On the other side, some of the agents spoke about past cases, where they’d seen good dogs die without ever getting a chance because of a “destroy all evidence” policy; it would be encouraging to try something else.

  Dr. Z suggested that if the government was going to attempt to save the dogs, it would be wise to hire one person to oversee the process. The DOJ and USDA had already received calls and letters from rescue groups and sanctuaries offering to help. This person would need to devise a formal application process, screen the applicants, and oversee the actual disbursement of the dogs. The officials asked Zawistowski to recommend someone.

  It was a difficult question, as the person needed to be an expert in animal issues who did not have a stake in the outcome; who had a proven ability to understand and administer the legal aspects of the job, including the transfer of liability; and strong organizational skills. The person would also have to be capable of dealing with the government bureaucracy on one hand and the passionate advocates who ran the rescue groups on the other. They would need to determine if an applicant was truly capable of taking on one or more dogs and to make judgment calls about which facilities were the best fit for each dog. He or she would need to devote significant time to the task and be willing to stand up to the inevitable sniping that would follow any decision.

  There was yet another piece of the puzzle. Some of the less-responsive dogs-the real pancake dogs-might normally be considered clear-cut cases for euthanasia, but this situation was different. Because there might be resources available to support them, it could be possible to save dogs that would otherwise probably not make the cut. Sure there had been letters from people and groups offering to take the dogs, but once all those volunteers had seen the requirements of the official agreement, how many would actually meet the government’s standards, and of those who did, how many would still be willing to assume the risk? Would any rescue groups or no-kill sanctuaries volunteer to take what could be very needy and not very satisfying dogs? And if so, how many such dogs would each one take? The ASPCA team had decided to take a wait-and-see approach, hoping that a significant number of facilities would materialize to save these dogs, but the possibility that they might end up on the euthanasia list remained very real.

  That decision meant that whoever was put in charge would also have to make the final call on what happened to any such dogs that were not taken in by a rescue or sanctuary. Zawistowski promised to give the candidate more thought, but in the meantime a few of the team’s other recommendations demanded immediate attention. Two of the more problematic dogs required further medical examinations because it was difficult to tell if what ailed them was physical or psychological. Beyond that, the report read as follows: Foster/Observation, sixteen dogs; Law Enforcement, two dogs; Sanctuary 1: twenty dogs; Sanctuary 2: ten dogs; Euthanasia: one dog.

  That last dog was the overbred female who had been so aggressive that the team had not even been able to evaluate her. Acting quickly, the government ordered the necessary veterinary evaluations and the euthanization of the one dog. Less than two weeks later, on October 1, a court order approved the measure and a black female pit bull, known only as #2621, which had been forcibly bred to the point that she’d turned violent, was given a lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital. Within minutes, her suffering was ended.

  By that time, Steve Zawistowski had a name.

  The pink “Urgent Message” notice taped to the door grabbed her attention. She had never received one before. Eight years behind the desk had taught Rebecca Huss that there were no urgent issues in academia. And yet here it was, a note from an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

  Huss didn’t know if she was quite prepared to return the call. She had received a B.A. from Northern Iowa in 1989, a law degree from the University of Richmond in 1992, and a masters in law from Iowa in 1995. She worked a few corporate law jobs, including two years in the animal health division of a pharmaceutical company, and then decided to go into teaching. That move necessitated that she find a specialty. Huss figured that if she were going to spend so much time focusing on one area of the law, it ought to be something she was passionate about.

  Growing up in Iowa City with four brothers and sisters and a very busy house, Huss had always appreciated the patient endurance of the family’s dachshund, Tip. Years later, when her own mini-dachshund, Jackie, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, she noticed that the dog still woke up happy every day. Animals, Huss felt, could teach us a lot about how to live if we paid attention to them. She had chosen to pay attention.

  In 1999 she landed a position at Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana and her specialty, her passion, she decided, would be animal law, which involved dealing with cases and issues revolving around animal rights and welfare. In 2007 she published a paper about the interaction between animal control officers and rescue groups that was noticed by a colleague of Steve Z’s at the ASPCA.

  Huss presented an interesting combination of skills. She was a recognized animal law expert with a corporate background, which meant she’d dealt with large organizations and had a certain level of polish to her work. To write her latest paper, she had taken a hard look at different rescue groups. She had a long history with animals, but no direct interest in how the Vick case would be resolved. Steve Z had put forward her name in late September.

  She looked at the pink slip of paper one more time, dialed the number, and asked for Mike Gill. His mellow twang came over the line. He explained how he’d gotten her name and caught her up on where the case and the dogs stood. He told her that they were looking for someone to oversee the process that lay ahead, and he spelled out in detail what that process would be.

  Finally, he asked: “Are you interested?”

  Huss couldn’t say. She had long ago dismissed the case from her mind. She’d seen a few headlines, absorbed the gist of things, but had not followed the story. When news first broke she’d written it off as just another dogfighting case. They always ended the same way, with a bunch of dead dogs and very little justice. Just because there was a celebrity involved, she didn’t see how this would be any different.

  Suddenly, the differences were coming toward her at a hundred miles per hour. Almost $1 million had been ticketed for the care and treatment of the dogs; individual evaluations had been conducted; recovery plans had been suggested and rescue groups would be screened. The process would require a lot of time and there would be criticism. It was the kind of issue that generated so much passion on either side it was unavoidable that someone would be unhappy in the end. She needed some time to think about the offer and to check with her Valparaiso colleagues, since some of the fallout and workload would hit them, too.

  Huss spoke to her bosses and co-workers at the university, and everyone supported her taking on the assignment. A few days later she called back and accepted. An official motion was put before the court, and on October 15, Rebecca Huss was named guardian/special master of the forty-eight remaining pit bulls from Bad Newz Kennels.

  She had been told that it would be best to provide the court with her final placement recommendations before Vick was sentenced in early December. That gave her roughly six weeks to evaluate the dogs, have them implanted with microchips, create an application and reach out to rescue groups and sanctuaries, solicit and screen applicants, allow the accepted groups to meet the dogs, decide which dogs were the best match for each group, and write up a report.
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  Huss had long ago thrown away the piece of pink paper that she’d found taped to her door three weeks earlier, but the sense of urgency that note foretold was just now beginning to become clear. It would be months before the feeling subsided.

  21

  IT WAS THIRTY-SIX HOURS after Rebecca Huss had agreed to be special master of the Vick dogs, and she was covered in every variety of canine excretion she cared to consider: saliva, blood, vomit, urine, feces. She knew that legal procedures sometimes got messy, but she never thought the law would lead her to a series of dances with pit bulls in sometimes antiquated shelters across rural Virginia.

  The day after the court approved her as special master she had boarded an early morning flight from Indianapolis to Richmond. If she was going to have to individually place each dog, she knew the first order of business was to meet each dog.

  She also needed to reassess their condition. It had been six weeks since the ASPCA team had met with the dogs. That was six more weeks of kennel life-of barking, of cramped quarters, of limited or sometimes no exercise or outside time, of scant attention and interaction with people or other dogs. All that came on top of four previous months locked up under similar circumstances. Would the ASPCA evaluations even hold up at this point?

  Huss had spent a lot of time with dogs, but she knew those types of assessments were beyond her capabilities, so Tim Racer had also scrambled out to Virginia. Over the next three days, the pair spent time with every dog, getting each out of its pen for an extended period. They gave each one a chance to run on a leash, and at shelters that had an enclosed area, they set them loose. They observed each dog as it interacted with another dog. They played with the dogs, they held them and petted them.

  Huss had never spent much time with pit bulls, but now that she was immersed in their world she couldn’t understand why they had such a bad reputation. In truth, the pit bull was simply a dog, imbued with all the positive and negative attributes of its kind. Just like any dog, pit bulls could be sweet, friendly, and loving, and they could also be unruly, ill-mannered, and prone to doing incredibly stupid things by human standards.

  But for a number of reasons, pit bulls were the latest breed to get sucked into a self-fulfilling cycle of fear, hype, substandard care, and rising population. In the nineteenth century, a different breed of dog was considered so vicious and insidious that it inspired almost universal fear and loathing. That breed was the bloodhound. [3]

  Every time a bloodhound was involved in an incident, accounts of their aggression filled news columns. Why? For starters, the term bloodhound had come to include many different breeds, not just the classic floppy-eared specimen that accompanies Scotland Yard detectives in TV movies, but any dog prized for its tracking and guarding abilities. There were Irish bloodhounds, Siberian bloodhounds, Cuban bloodhounds, and numerous others.

  Many of those dogs were used to track escaped prisoners and slaves, guard stores, and protect homes, so they were encouraged to be aggressive and territorial. In the course of doing that work they often ended up in situations where they were pitted against people, and as one would expect, a fair share of those run-ins ended violently.

  The bloodhound got a reputation as a fearsome beast with a taste for blood. That reputation stoked anxiety in the general public, and at the same time caught the attention of people attracted to the idea of having a tough dog. The bloodhound population increased, and the new owners were not raising their dogs to be family pets. Many of them wouldn’t have known how to properly train the dogs even if they’d wanted to. As a result many bloodhounds were ill-equipped to deal with people and new situations. This led to even more violent run-ins and more fear.

  What finally turned things around for the bloodhound? Was it a sudden change in social attitudes or an improved understanding of the forces that created the problem to start with? No, it was the emergence of the German shepherd. These dogs arrived in the United States around 1910 and quickly gained a reputation as great guard dogs with an aggressive streak. Again, ironically, this reputation caused a population spike, particularly among the wrong type of dog owner. By 1925 there were so many German shepherds around causing so many problems that the borough of Queens, New York, proposed a ban on them. Australia banned them in 1929.

  By the 1950s, the German shepherd-redeemed in the public’s mind by Rin Tin Tin-gave way to the Doberman pinscher, which had earned its fearful rep as the Nazis’ dog of choice during World War II. SS troops with Dobermans were a staple of war photography and the tales of what these dogs inflicted on concentration camp victims were well known.

  In 1964 there were 4,815 new Doberman registrations filed with the American Kennel Club. By 1979 there were 80,363 new Dobermans registered, making it the second most popular breed in the United States. Although there were a few notable, well-publicized attacks, to the Doberman’s credit, the population spike did not result in a proportionate spike in incidents.

  Pit bulls weren’t so lucky. In the mid-1970s enterprising reporters began writing about the underground world of dogfighting, in hope of exposing and ending the practice. In the process they wrote about the tenacious and powerful dogs that were considered the ultimate fighters: pit bulls.

  This had the effect of promoting pit bulls as next in the line of tough-guy dogs. By the early 1980s, the pit bull’s reputation made it popular among an emerging drug and hip hop culture. As with those before it, the breed’s popularity soared. Between 1983 and 1984 the United Kennel Club reported a 30 percent increase in registrations. And many pit bulls were not even being registered.

  Between 1966 and 1975 there was one newspaper account of a fatality that resulted from a pit bull attack. In 1986, pit bulls appeared in 350 newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. Some of those reported legitimate pit bull attacks-the price of so many unsocialized, abused, and aggressively trained dogs popping up around the country-but many were the result of pit bull hysteria, in which almost any incident involving a dog was falsely reported as a pit bull attack. The breed, which had existed in some form for hundreds of years, didn’t suddenly lose control. The dogs simply fell into the hands of many more people who had no interest in control.

  By 2000, pit bull fear and hype had reached such proportions that the breed was banned in more than two hundred cities and counties around the United States. Lost in all the legislation was the fact that for decades the pit bull had been considered one of the most loyal, loving, and people-friendly dogs on the planet.

  Huss and Racer could not undo that tortured history, but they could impact the future of at least forty-eight pit bulls and hope to set an example that would help turn the tide for the rest. That’s why they spent two and a half days communing with the dogs, reviewing previous evaluations, and interviewing shelter attendants. But the most radical thing they did occurred at lunch on the final day. At a small pizza place Racer pulled out a piece of paper that listed each dog by its shelter I.D. number, color, and gender. Then he and Huss went down the list and gave each dog a name.

  Suddenly these were no longer the Bad Newz dogs or those pit bulls from Vick’s place. They were Oscar and Rose, and Ernie and Charlie and Ray and Curly and forty-two others. They were no longer a story or a group or a commodity, they were forty-eight individual dogs in the same situation.

  Despite how far they’d come, their destiny was not yet certain-any proposal still had to be approved by the court. But no one names a thing that doesn’t have hope. No one names a thing that doesn’t have a future. No one names a lost dog.

  The Vick dogs had been found. Could they be saved?

  22

  THE GUY BEHIND THE rental counter made small talk-“What brings you to this part of the country?” sort of talk. Donna Reynolds and Nicole Rattay did their best to deflect the questions, and when necessary, they outright lied. They told the man they had been visiting in the area and decided they wanted to see more of the country.

  They couldn’t tell the truth, couldn’t say they were ren
ting an RV from him so that they could transfer thirteen pit bulls seized from the most highly publicized dogfight bust ever from southern Virginia to northern California. Especially since the dogs were still legally government property and the two women were operating under a strict federal gag order. That was, however, precisely the situation.

  If Rebecca Huss’s first days on the job indicated that she was moving quickly, the week that followed did nothing to dispel the notion. By the time Huss and Racer were wrapping up their evaluations on Thursday, October 18, Reynolds, Rattay, and her husband, Steve Smith, were flying into town. Rattay was one of BAD RAP’s most enthusiastic volunteers and Smith was her willing partner. Among the powers granted to Huss was the ability to transfer the dogs to interim housing if she felt it was in their best interest. BAD RAP had lined up enough foster homes in California for thirteen dogs and the plan was to get them out of the shelters and into houses as quickly as possible.

  So on Friday, Reynolds and Rattay rented the RV, bought thirteen portable dog pens, food, leashes, and other supplies. On Saturday, they drove around to the shelters picking up the dogs, and sometime just after dark Nicole and Steve shoved off for Oakland while Reynolds stayed behind.

  Like so many others who came in contact with the dogs, Steve and Nicole didn’t know quite what to expect. They’d heard the horror stories and yet they’d also heard much more positive things from the evaluation team. Not wanting to take any chances, they secured the pens throughout the RV with bungee cords and put cardboard barriers in between so the dogs would not be able to see one another.

  The trip’s start provided hope. The dogs had been so happy to get out of the shelters that they offered little resistance when it came to loading onto the RV. Some of them didn’t quite know how to do it, but with a little prodding and some gentle direction every dog got where it needed to go. They settled in quickly.