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

As the group continued to scan the area something else caught one officer’s eye: a white shiny object lying on a window ledge. When they moved in for closer inspection, they realized it was something even more grim-a canine tooth.

A VAN LURCHES FORWARD, then rattles over a few bumps in the grass as it drives across the yard and onto the driveway. As the sound of the pavement rolling underneath fills the cabin, most of the dogs inside look down at the shaking, humming ground beneath them and bark. Some spread their legs to stabilize themselves. Others flatten out on the bottom of their pens. One or two whine in fear.

The brown dog is both excited and scared by the slow rocking and forward pull of the van in motion. The entire moving process makes her nervous and uncertain. She was born on this land and lived her entire life in the clearing. She knows the smells and the seasons. The sound of the all-terrain vehicle coming through the trees. The look of the sky, the barking of the other dogs. She knows the ebb and flow of the place.

Now, she is locked up in a space that is filled with strange new smells, although the familiar scent of the other dogs is something of a comfort. The barking echoes off the bare metal walls of the van, making it painfully loud inside, so it is a relief when the protests die down as the other dogs settle in for the ride.

They are headed for the Sussex County Animal Shelter, where they will be held until their fate can be determined. In all, nineteen of the fifty-one Vick pit bulls wind up in Sussex while the rest are distributed among five other area facilities: thirteen to Surry County, ten to Chesapeake, five to Suffolk, three to Virginia Beach, one to Hopewell.

For the brown dog, the thirty-five-mile trip from Moonlight Road to the Sussex County Shelter drones on, but finally the van makes a left onto a gravel access road. The crunch of the rocks beneath the tires sets off another round of barking, but it doesn’t last long.

The road lets out into a lot filled with school buses and old police cars, an empty field off to one side and a canopy of trees on the other. The building is new and spiffy, with tan aluminum siding and white trim. Around it stands an eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped off with a coil of razor wire.

One by one the pens are pulled off the truck and carried into the building. The little brown dog shifts her weight from side to side, lifting her paws off the ground with each move as she waits in anticipation for her turn. She moves forward and back in what little space she has and sniffs at the air feverishly. She lets out a little bark.

At last the man comes and reaches for her crate. As it begins to slide forward she is seized by fear. Her tail drops and she lowers her body into a crouch. Her head dips. The crate is lifted free of the van and she swings through the air. Beyond the structure rise the trees and the clouds and the still-blue evening sky. The breeze smells faintly of blacktop and gasoline but also of hot dirt and the woods that surround the facility. She takes one last sniff and then turns toward the door, a dark rectangle in the side of the building that she can see through the jostling bars of the crate. If she knew how long it would be before she was outside again, she might have looked somewhere else.

In the morning the brown dog awakes in a four-foot-by-six-foot pen made of cinder blocks and chain link. Hanging from the gate that keeps her in is a piece of paper that, among other things, gives her an identity: Sussex 2602.

The building is brand-new and the Vick dogs are its first tenants. The kennels are built on two levels and broken into three rows. The brown dog recognizes some of the dogs around her but not all. She is drawn to one of the others in particular, a female almost the exact same color but a little bigger. She cannot get close to that other dog, though. She cannot get close to anything.

Four small windows let in a touch of natural light but it is overwhelmed by the yellowish glow of the fluorescents, which bounce off the white walls. Ceiling fans turn slowly. The vaulted aluminum roof and cavernous interior reflect sound, turning the place into an echo chamber, a bright shiny hall of noise.

The hum of the central air-conditioning that keeps the place cool is audible only when the barking subsides. So far that has not happened. The dogs bark and bark from the time they are brought. As they are fished out of their portable pens they bark about leaving these little safe zones. As they are led into the kennels, they bark at the strangeness of their new confines. They bark at the buzz of activity, at all the officers and officials coming and going, loading and unloading. They bark from hunger and thirst, and after they are fed and given water they bark because they have renewed energy.

After everything dies down they bark at the dogs around them, now closer than ever but still out of reach. They bark as the light goes out of the windows and out of the room. They bark because they do not like the feel of the cold concrete floor or know how to sleep on the strange little beds that sit in their pens-metal- or plastic-framed rectangles with a piece of cloth stretched across them. They bark when they realize they have no other choice. They bark and bark.

Through the night there are stretches of silence when they sleep but those too are shattered by barking when one of them wakes or rolls over and finds himself in a strange place, with foreign smells and no moon or stars over his head.

They bark because it is morning and the light once again streams through the glass. The place is new and strange. They paw at the chain link, chew on it. What will happen now? Who will come? When will they be fed again? All the newness and uncertainty makes them anxious, so they bark.

The brown dog shares those feelings and she barks some, too. She waits for what will come next. She sniffs at the ground beneath her, which is hard and cold and smells of a million things-paint and soap and people. She has to relieve herself but has no idea where to do it. She has never done it anywhere but on the soft ground, where she can sniff for an appropriate spot and then cover it up with dirt.

Back in the clearing, chained to the axle, she had a few places she usually used. They were as far away from the house as she could get. But there are no spots like that here. Instincts honed over thousands of years and woven into her genetic fabric impel her not to do it inside this space, where she eats and sleeps. So she works her way up and down the enclosure, sniffing and probing. She looks toward the windows, the daylight streaming through, smells the hint of outside air that comes through the vents, and whines a bit. She waits. She hopes there will be a chance to get outside.

Many of the other dogs have already gone, peeing to mark the space, to begin putting their scent down and claiming ownership of their spot. The results of their efforts sit puddled on the floor. Whatever else they have produced sits on the floor, too, and they bark about that as well, about having to sit with and walk around in their own piss and shit.

But there are no options and the brown dog can wait no more. She finds a spot in the corner, near the back of her area, and empties herself. Then she goes to the opposite corner, circles once, and lies down. She stares out the window and lets the sound of the barking wash over her.

Tires crunch on the gravel outside. The brown dog springs to her feet. All the dogs do. They bark at the sound and at the silence that follows it. Then comes the jangle of keys in the outer door. There are footsteps in the offices outside the main room, but still no one comes through the door. Other doors out in the hall open and close. The dogs bark and pace. Some of them jump up on their hind legs, pressing their front paws against the chain link.