Michael Vick's Dogs Get A Second Chance! 7-8-08

[Bullies2Love]

Michael Vick's pit bulls get a second chance
Rehabilitated fighting dogs may alter breed stereotype

By BRIGID SCHULTE / Washington Post
HASH(0x6475ac)

Published on: 07/08/08

When former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick pleaded guilty
last year to conspiring to run a dogfighting operation, he had kept
about 50 pit bulls on his 15-acre property in rural Surry County, Va.
Headlines described the dogs as "menacing." Some animal rights groups
called for the "ticking time bombs" to be euthanized as soon as
Vick's case was closed.

Instead, the court gave Vick's dogs a second chance. U.S. District
Judge Henry Hudson ordered each dog to be evaluated individually. And
he ordered Vick to pony up close to $1 million to pay for the
lifelong care of those that could be saved.

Of the 49 pit bulls animal behavior experts evaluated, only one was
deemed too vicious to warrant saving and was euthanized.

More than a year after being confiscated from Vick's property, Leo, a
tan, muscular pit bull, visits cancer patients as a certified therapy
dog in California. Hector, who bears deep scars on his chest and
legs, recently was adopted and is about to start training for
national flying disc competitions in Minnesota. Gracie is a couch
potato in Richmond, Va., who lives with cats and sleeps with four
other dogs.

Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes,
and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed
potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal
sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to
move on to foster care and eventual adoption.

How is it that some of these abused and reputedly vicious dogs can
find new lives as pets? Frank McMillan, a veterinarian who is
studying the recovery of some of the Vick dogs, said too little is
known about pit bulls to say for sure.

"We've assumed all pits are the same, and we've never let this many
fighting dogs live long enough to find out. There are hardly ever
studies, because these animals don't survive," he said.

Aggression vs. isolation

Evaluators said that when they walked into the kennels where the Vick
dogs were being held, they weren't sure what to expect.

"I thought, if we see four or five dogs that we can save, I'll be
happy," said Randy Lockwood, an animal behaviorist with the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "If we had to
euthanize the majority, then we could at least say we'd tried."

Instead, they found dogs with behaviors that ran the gamut.
Some "actually seemed happier around other dogs," said Rebecca Huss,
a law professor and animal law expert who was appointed by the court
to oversee the evaluations and determine the dogs' fates.

Once it became clear that the dogs might be allowed to live,
evaluators gave them names: Iggy, Zippy, Cherry Garcia, Hazel, Little
Red, Uba, Squeaker, Big Fella, Handsome Dan, Ginger, Ernie, Alf.

"One of the things that struck us immediately was that these dogs
were more like the dogs we see rescued from animal hoarding
situations," Lockwood said. "Their main problem was not
aggressiveness but isolation."

Of Vick's dogs, 22 showed enough aggression that they could be held
only at the tightly controlled sanctuary Best Friends Animal
Society's 3,700-acre Dogtown sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. There,
McMillan, the veterinarian, has developed a "personalized emotional
rehabilitation plan" for each.

All but two are now on "green collar," meaning they are open and
friendly to human visitors. About nine have begun to have supervised
play dates with other Vick dogs.

The remaining Vick dogs were given to seven animal rescue
organizations across the country, which placed them in experienced
foster homes. Many are in the process of being adopted.

Changing the stereotype

Sharon Cornett, a member of the Richmond, Va., Animal League's board,
agreed to foster Gracie and is now adopting her. "I adore this dog.
She is just a love bucket," Cornett said.

Still, Cornett and other pit bull rescuers say that they never leave
the dogs unsupervised with other animals.

John Goodwin, a dogfighting expert with the Humane Society and a
proponent of euthanizing fight dogs, is skeptical of the emerging
reports of the Vick dog recoveries.

"The behavior is bred into them," he said. "... These pit bulls
should never be left alone with other dogs, because you never know
when that instinct to fight another dog is going to surface."

Tim Racer, who took in 10 Vick dogs, disagrees.

"You have 150 years of man trying to produce an aggressive dog. But
you have tens of thousands of years of Mother Nature preceding that,"
he said. "Dogs are pack animals. They survived because of their
pack. ... It's hard-wired into their genes that they do no harm to
each other."

Indeed, long before a glowering pit bull came to symbolize tough guy
vogue, pit bulls were the all-American dog. In the Civil War era,
they were known as nurse dogs because they were so good with
children. Pit bulls sold war bonds, earned medals in World War I and
starred in such TV shows as "The Little Rascals."

All the more reason, Racer and other rescuers say, to look at each
dog individually.

"Every thoroughbred is not a great racehorse. Every pit bull, even if
it's of fighting stock, is not an aggressive dogfighter," said Steve
Zawistowski, an animal behaviorist with the ASPCA who helped assess
the Vick dogs. "There are no simple answers."