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

One dog, a little black male named Dutch, lay in a pen that sat next to a window. He had come from a shelter where the dogs had been given little or no outdoor time. Each morning when Nicole opened the shade next to Dutch’s pen he rolled onto his back and stretched his face to the sun. It had been a long time since the little guy had gotten so much light and he was soaking up every ray he could. When she wasn’t sleeping, Nicole took to holding him on her lap and petting him.

The hardest part of the trip was that it did not guarantee anything. The court could still rule that many or even all of the dogs be put down. The dogs were still government property and all they were being granted was a better place to live while they waited for their fate to be decided. One day, the dogs might have to travel all the way back across the country, either to be housed elsewhere or to be destroyed.

Nicole thought about that as she sat feeling the warmth of Dutch in her lap, watching the trees rush by.

The Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL) is on the cutting edge of animal housing. A $4 million-dollar facility in northwest Washington, D.C., it has padded floors with radiant heat, sound-absorbing materials, skylights, and cascading waterfalls that create a backdrop of Zenlike peacefulness. The multipart kennels are separated by sliding doors that allow workers to easily transfer dogs and to open up two back-to-back pens to create a large run for each dog.

Yet in late October 2007 the place was undergoing some changes: One area was being isolated with locking doors and the kennels in that section were getting new locks, reinforced doors, and double bolts on the sliding gates. The Washington Animal Rescue League was preparing for some new visitors.

The thirteen dogs road-tripping to Oakland were not the only Vick dogs on the move. Three other dogs were being moved into foster homes on the East Coast that same day. About a week later another eleven dogs were moved from the shelter in Sussex to WARL.

Conditions in Sussex had always been difficult and now the head animal control officer had been in a car accident that would keep him out of work for a long time. There was concern that the dogs would suffer in his absence, so they were shipped from one of the most basic and difficult shelters to the canine equivalent of the Ritz-Carlton.

For the dogs it would be a stressful transition but one that would ultimately lead to a better life. It was the WARL staff that suffered. Their expectations had been shaded by their interactions with the shelter workers who had cared for the dogs for the previous five months. When two people from WARL had gone to pick up the dogs, they had gone from pen to pen asking the shelter workers some general questions about each dog. The responses ranged from “not too bad” on the positive end to “wouldn’t turn my back to him” on the more ominous side.

Internally, WARL staffers started referring to the Vick dogs as the unicorns, because the federal gag order required such secrecy that it was almost as if the dogs didn’t really exist. They felt as though they were preparing the facility for eleven invisible dogs.

For safety purposes, the WARL staff decided to give the Vick dogs their own section of the facility, where no other dogs and only a limited number of people could enter. On the day they arrived the attendants worked in tense silence. A binder that fell off a counter caused everyone to jump. Taking each of the Vick dogs out for a walk in the small yard next to the facility was a three-person operation. Two leashes were clipped to the collar, each held by a different attendant. A third person stood by with a noose pole and pepper spray. On that first day, as the dogs were led down the hall, attendants pressed themselves against the wall to let the animals pass.

Getting outside proved uneventful, but what would happen once they got out there? There was a six-foot-high fence but how high could these dogs jump? How aggressive were they? Could they be let off the leash? The fence was see-through and no one knew if the sight of other dogs walking through the parking lot or birds and squirrels flickering in the trees across the street would set them off. To prevent such problems the staff had put screening around the outside of the fence to limit the visual stimuli. Still, that first time out, it was a “hold on and hope for the best” situation.

The best turned out to be what they got. Before long the staff realized the dogs might be much less of a problem than they were led to believe.

Dr. Janet Rosen, WARL’s staff veterinarian, was able to give the dogs their first serious medical attention in months, which included spaying or neutering all of them. She was surprised to find that three of them had von Willebrand disease, an anemia-like bleeding disorder. How could anyone have a fighting dog with a bleeding disorder?

More than anything, Rosen found that the dogs needed dental attention. This was especially true of Georgia, the grand champion formerly known as Jane, who liked to destroy metal food bowls. Georgia had only a few teeth remaining and no one knew why. She had been bred multiple times, and there had been some speculation that the Bad Newz crew had pulled her teeth so that she couldn’t injure the male dogs that were being foisted on her.

But when Rosen went to clean Georgia ’s remaining teeth, she discovered the true reason. Something was wrong with the dog’s jaw; the bone was very soft. She prodded the teeth and they lifted right out. This process caused the dog no pain and required almost no effort. Within minutes, the grand champion was literally toothless. To show how unbothered she was by this, Georgia went back to her pen and began playing air hockey with her metal bowl before gumming it into a new twisted shape.

Like the dogs in the RV, the ones brought from Sussex to WARL had been living under high-stress circumstances for months, and although they were still in a kennel, these were far more pleasant and nurturing surroundings. They seemed to spend the first few days shaking off the effects of their recent past. The staff too was settling in. They continued to take the utmost precautions, but they also began to see the dogs for what they were rather than what they were reputed to be. They began to get more comfortable as well.

Two weeks had passed since Rebecca Huss had been appointed guardian and already sixteen of the dogs were in or on their way to foster homes while another eleven had been moved to one of the cushiest and most attentive shelters in the country. The application for rescue groups, including all the government’s terms and conditions, had been posted online and completed forms were beginning to come in. Evaluations were being updated and the dogs constantly reassessed. Still, Huss felt as though she needed to do something about the other twenty-one dogs. They couldn’t simply be left to linger in county shelters until the court ruled on a final disposition.

NICOLE RATTAY WAS CRYING. This was not terribly surprising. Every night for the last two weeks, she’d found herself in tears as she drove home. But tonight felt different.

After her long drive back to Oakland, Rattay received another call. Rebecca Huss was looking for someone to go to southern Virginia and spend the four weeks leading up to Vick’s sentencing caring for the dogs that remained in the shelters.

Rattay consulted her husband. It would be a large burden on him. As the operations manager for a small hotel and restaurant company, he had a busy job, and with his wife away he’d have to come home and take care of five dogs-the couple’s three and the two Vick dogs they were fostering. It was a lot to ask, especially from someone who wasn’t really a “dog person,” but he agreed to do it.