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

by Jim Gorant

  About the same time, in interviews with federal agents, Vick had also failed a polygraph, contradicting his original confession. He had maintained from the start that he’d never had a hand in killing any of the dogs, but when he maintained those claims in these latest inquests the lie detector had called him out. He was forced to backtrack and admit that he had participated, with his own two hands, in eliminating poor-performing fighters.

  If all that was weighing on Vick, it wasn’t obvious as he entered the courtroom. Wearing the black-and-white-striped prison garb he’d been issued when he turned himself in, Vick smiled and spoke with people in the room. Once the hearing began, he stood between his two attorneys, listening intently as the proceeding advanced and when given a chance to speak he offered another apology. He said that he’d used “poor judgment” and added, “I’m willing to deal with the consequences and accept responsibility for my actions.”

  Judge Hudson was not impressed. “I’m not convinced you’ve fully accepted responsibility,” he said. Hudson explained that the failed drug test and lying in his original testimony undercut his claims of remorse and his pleas for leniency. “You were instrumental in promoting, funding and facilitating this cruel and inhumane sporting activity.”

  The judge continued: “You need to apologize to the millions of young people who looked up to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vick answered.

  Then Hudson handed down the sentence-twenty-three months. The harshest term of the bunch. On the same day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimated that Vick had incurred about $142 million in monetary losses. Taken together, the jail time and the financial loss represented a tremendous fall for an athlete who had once been viewed as a crossover star and the future of his sport.

  A week later, Tony Taylor, the former Bad Newz member who had provided key evidence to the prosecution, received a two-month sentence. Not everyone was happy. Some felt Vick was punished too severely, some thought the sentence not nearly harsh enough. Mike Gill and Jim Knorr and Bill Brinkman were satisfied.

  The result of all their efforts led to the biggest dogfighting conviction ever, one that set new precedents. It was the first time that dogs in a fight bust were looked at not as weapons, as the equivalent of a gun in a shooting, but as victims. It was also the first time that they were looked at individually, instead of being considered as a group. The bad guys were going to jail; the dogs were getting another chance.

  Brinkman had been a key figure in the outcome, from his role in the original raid, to his recruitment of the federal government, to his chasing down of a wide range of leads and linking many disparate strains of evidence together. Now, with the work behind him and the verdict in hand, Brinkman received an odd reward. Two weeks after the Vick sentencing, Brinkman was let go by the Surry County Sheriff’s Department, which he said told him only that it “was going in a different direction.”

  Surry County Sheriff Harold Brown told one reporter that Brinkman’s part in the Vick investigation had been a factor in his dismissal, although Poindexter later denied that was true. Still, it was hard not to think about what Brinkman had said the first day he stepped on Vick’s property: “This investigation is probably going to get me fired.”

  Brinkman took a philosophical attitude about the way things turned out, trying to keep sight of the greater good. Since the case ended, a few people had left injured dogs in his yard. His truck had started acting up, and when he took it in to be serviced, the mechanic told him the brakes had been tampered with. He had married recently, and he was beginning to feel unsafe in Surry County. It was a good time to get out. Still, he said, knowing how everything turned out, he would do it all again.

  PART 3 – REDEMPTION

  October 2007 to December 2008

  26

  NEWS OF THE LATEST courtroom developments arrived just in time for Donna Reynolds. The court’s approval of Rebecca Huss’s plan for the dogs and Vick’s sentencing brought a happy ending to what had been a rough and disheartening stretch. When the dogs had arrived from Virginia almost six weeks earlier, it was like Christmas morning. After all the months of work and worry, having them all there was exhilarating.

  Most of the volunteers came to pick up their foster dogs in the first few days, but a number had to stay at Donna and Tim’s place for several days before they could be retrieved. Within a week, ten of the dogs moved out, but a few of the foster arrangements fell through. Suddenly, some of those stopover guests became full-time boarders. The interlopers joined the four dogs that already shared the house with Reynolds and Racer.

  The couple found themselves as the caretakers of seven dogs, who were crammed into their small house. The incumbents weren’t much of a problem, but the Vick dogs were a ton of work. Reynolds needed to begin the process of unwinding their kennel stress, which meant lots of time outside, keeping them engaged, working with them on basic training, and helping them get through their issues.

  The dogs all seemed to get along well, and they had all tested as dog-friendly during their evaluations, but as a matter of protocol, Reynolds could not have more than one dog out of its pen at a time, meaning there was no opening the back door and letting them romp. Each had to be fed separately, walked separately, exercised separately, and played with separately.

  To make matters worse, the Vick dogs were not housebroken. In fact, because they had spent so much time locked up in pens, they had become accustomed to relieving themselves right where they slept. And since Reynolds was trying to make them comfortable, each dog had a blanket in his pen. These two factors did not work well together, as the dogs were constantly soiling their blankets, which meant that Reynolds, on top of everything else, was constantly doing laundry.

  Of the Vick dogs, Mya was among the most shut-down and needed extra time and attention. Another, Uba, was a bundle of energy, bouncing off the walls forever in search of something new and fun to do.

  In the little bit of downtime she had, Reynolds continued to work on regular BAD RAP business, evaluating new dogs that came into the Oakland shelter, trying to arrange foster care and adoptions for them, and working the group’s weekend training classes. She also hit the phones. She fielded calls from volunteers who had foster dogs and lots of questions. She created a password-protected online forum where all the foster volunteers could come together and discuss what was happening with their dogs. She stayed in touch with Nicole Rattay, who was in Virginia working the shelters. She searched among her network of volunteers to see if any could take the remaining dogs out of her living room.

  She also dealt with the unexpected. Some of the foster situations needed to be tweaked. One dog had been sent for training as a law dog, but it turned out he was too old for the program, so Reynolds had to find a new home for him. Another dog needed to be moved, too.

  And she raised funds. For the first month they had the dogs, Reynolds and Racer didn’t even know if Vick would pay up and if he did, when. They were burning through food and veterinary bills at a stunning rate. They stretched their own finances to the brink and scrambled to get outside help. But the gag order meant they couldn’t mention what the funds were for. They couldn’t say why they needed the money; they just needed it.

  The cumulative effect of it all wore on Reynolds. The days turned into weeks with no breaks and no prospects for improvement. She worked from the time she got up in the morning until well after she wanted to go to sleep. Washing, walking, feeding, cleaning, calling, worrying.

  By early December she’d reached her breaking point. It was late in the day. She had kept track. In six weeks she’d done seventy loads of laundry. She couldn’t keep up anymore. She was exhausted and cranky and could not yet see the benefits of all her effort. Laundry piled up on the floor. Dogs were barking, demanding walking or water or both. Someone always needed something, and there were very few people she could talk to about what she was going through. The gag order limited her ability to recruit foster caretakers for the remaining dogs. She couldn�
�t vent in a blog post. She couldn’t even get the satisfaction of letting people know what she was doing.

  She began crying. A little at first, then more forcefully. She let it all out. All the frustration and weariness. What were they doing, exactly? Why were they doing it? When would it all end? When would her life go back to merely being insane? Racer comforted her. “It’s important,” he said. “It will all work out.”

  Even as things were lurching forward in northern California, they were winding down in northern Virginia. Maureen Henry, a technician at the Washington Animal Rescue League, found herself standing in a McDonald’s. The guy behind the counter gave her a strange look. It was 7:00 A.M. on Christmas morning and she wanted eleven Sausage McMuffins. He might have figured she was fighting off the world’s worst Christmas Eve hangover or hosting the world’s worst Christmas dinner, but he got her what she wanted and sent her on her way.

  She took her bag of snacks to the WARL, unlocked the main door, walked through the empty lobby, through the double glass doors, and into the shelter area. She unlocked the door that separated the Vick dogs from the rest of the kennel. Many of them hopped to their feet, rising to the fronts of their kennels, wagging for attention.

  The pack of dogs they had nicknamed the unicorns would be leaving soon and much to their surprise, the people who worked at WARL were sad about it. Over the weeks the two groups-humans and animals-had bonded and the group of dogs that had arrived as anonymous fighting machines were now individual creatures with names and personalities.

  Henry looked down the line. There was Denzel, who liked to wrestle with his food bowl. Toothless Jane who made the most out of every minute. Tug, who was fond of plush toys; he had six or seven of them and he lined them up on the little bed in his pen. He also loved birds and when he went outside he would watch the trees for them, barking and chasing when he spotted one. Layla, a sweet dog, circled endlessly in her kennel. Charlie dumped his food out of the bowl at every meal and ate off the floor. Meryl could be prickly, but if she accepted you, she’d roll over and let you scratch her belly. If you rubbed Lucas’s belly he’d lick your face.

  Then there was Sweet Pea. Scars decorating the sides of her face, she remained one of the most reserved and nervous of the bunch. She looked similar to Sweet Jasmine and the two of them had an affinity for each other. Jasmine was younger, maybe two, while Sweet Pea was older, more like six. Pea had definitely borne pups, and a theory evolved that Sweet Pea might be Jasmine’s mother. The pair had been put in adjoining kennels, which appeared to help both.

  Although Jasmine still spent a lot of time under her blanket, she had made improvements. She had bonded with Eugene Hill, the man with the deep voice. She licked his hand when he came to see her, ate food from a bowl and let him lead her out to the yard on a leash. When he brought Jasmine out with other dogs, she perked up, becoming happier and more active. This was especially true when the other dog was Sweet Pea.

  Many of the dogs had shown a similar tendency to be happier and more animated around other dogs. The staff had learned through careful testing which ones liked being together, and regularly brought a few at a time out into the yard for frolicking and rocking games of fetch. They had come a long way from the days of two leashes and pepper spray. Now, when it was time to go out, it was more likely that someone would quickly snap a leash on one of the dogs and run him down the hall or, better yet, pick the dog up, fling it over a shoulder and carry it out.

  In many ways the dogs were easier to handle than regular kennel dogs. There was something about them that was more forgiving, more willing. It was these qualities and their unending resilience that touched the WARL staff so deeply. The Vick dogs reminded them in a more extreme way of everything people love about dogs to begin with.

  The dogs’ growth was easy to see, but Henry thought that maybe the people had changed more than the dogs. Though she and her colleagues had started out with one set of expectations, they came to see a far different reality. Maybe calling the dogs unicorns had actually been more profound than they originally thought. Maybe there really was an element of magic to them.

  She unwrapped the McMuffins and put one in each kennel, then stood back and watched the dogs approach their Christmas treat. She couldn’t believe what she saw. A few chomped right into it, but most carefully sniffed and nosed at the food. The dogs pushed the sandwiches around until they came apart. Many ate the sausage. Some ate only the muffin. Nearly all picked at it. Eight weeks earlier every dog on the line would have devoured that sandwich in two bites.

  Henry reassessed. Okay, the dogs had changed too. They weren’t unicorns after all, just dogs who had become a little pampered and picky, and that was pleasant enough to consider. A week later, they were gone.

  27

  CRIS COHEN COULD NOT stop laughing. Part of it was nervous laughter and part of it was sheer relief. It was the sort of giddiness that came after weeks of uncertainty and anticipation finally ended, and all the build-up-the wondering and planning-receded into a concrete new reality.

  Cohen was a BAD RAP volunteer and he had agreed to foster one of the Vick dogs. Wanting to be helpful, he said that he’d take any of them, and as a result he’d ended up being assigned a male who needed some work. This alone did not bother Cohen. He’d been down this road before. Almost six years earlier his then girlfriend, now fiancée, Jen, had discovered BAD RAP and brought home a rescued pit bull, a brindle female they named Lilly. Cohen didn’t like the idea at first, but shortly after the dog came home Jen went away on a business trip. Cris and Lilly bonded.

  After that the couple began fostering other pit bulls. There was Arlo, a total shut-down case that Cris managed to bring around; Lenny, a sweet dog that Cris and Jen almost kept; and Melvin, a big surly dude who Cohen didn’t like much at first but eventually came to understand. There had been six or seven in all, so as Cohen prepared for this latest guest he knew the drill.

  He knew what sort of supplies he needed, how much time he’d have to devote to the effort, and how to work with the dog. But there were just enough differences about the situation to keep him from feeling that he knew exactly what to expect. For starters, this dog was from a fight bust, and of all the dogs Cohen had worked with, none had that specific background. No doubt some of them had fought, but they had not been raised as part of a large, well-funded fighting operation. Although he didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, the dog’s potentially violent history made him nervous. Of all things, he’d been having visions of the Undertaker, the ghoulish professional wrestler who wears all black and fosters a persona of evil incarnate.

  The other attention-getting detail was the dog’s name: Jonny Rotten. A pit bull from a fight ring is one thing. A pit bull from a fight ring named after a notoriously abrasive and out-of-control punk rocker suggested something else altogether.

  Those facts had swirled through Cohen’s mind in the weeks since he’d been informed of his assignment, and they only grew more prominent as he prepared to meet the dog. Still, he grabbed the leash and collar, a handful of treats and a chew toy, climbed into his silver Toyota pickup truck, and made the half-hour drive from the Sunset Hill neighborhood of San Francisco out to Donna and Tim’s house in Oakland.

  Inside he greeted everyone. After a few minutes of friendly banter, he was led through a maze of pens. Finally Tim Racer stopped before one and opened the door. Out came a dog, Jonny Rotten. He was about thirty-five pounds and his black-and-white fur twisted around his body in a way that left his right eye encircled in a big ring of black. The other eye was surrounded by white and its natural tearing left a little pink comma on the fur below. Under his nose another little black patch looked like a greasepaint mustache, and when the sun was behind him, the light shone through his pink ears.

  There was no other way to say it: Jonny Rotten was small and cute. He looked like a scrappy street kid in a cow suit. As Cohen assessed the little fella he couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed at the name, he laughed at the do
g, he laughed at himself. He laughed right through Racer’s speech about his responsibilities. He laughed while he signed the release papers, and he laughed as he loaded the pen into the truck. He even laughed when, halfway over the Bay Bridge, the little dog puked all over the truck.

  Dogs love the rut. They love getting into a routine that doesn’t change. Once they know they’re going to get fed and walked and have playtime daily, they can relax. They can focus on other things. Jonny needed a rut.

  He’d come a long way since leaving the shelter but he was still stressed and wired. When Cohen came out to greet him after his first night in the house, Jonny’s eyes were the size of silver dollars, taking in everything. Jonny wiggled and paced in his crate and Cohen could tell that as fast as he was moving on the outside, he was going twice as quickly inside.

  In the last nine months he’d gone from Vick’s woods to the shelter, to the RV, to Donna and Tim’s, and now here to Cohen’s house. He was set up in a crate in the dining room, which was gated off from the rest of the house. As Jonny sat in his spot he could first smell and then see Lilly roaming around. There was another pit bull in the house; what did that mean? Who were these people? What would they want of him; what would they give him?

  The first thing Cris hoped to give Jonny was a rut, and then they’d go from there. Growing up in Southern California, Cohen had always had dogs and he’d spent his summers at a camp where animals were part of the curriculum: They rode horses, they caught snakes. He’d made it his business to understand animals and both he and Jen were such animal lovers that they decorated their home with a taxidermist’s tributes. The walls and shelves of their two-story rental were dotted with a horse skull, a rabbit, a possum, a raven, a snake, and an armadillo. There were rooster carvings and mini-alligator heads, too.