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

The handlers release their dogs and Snow and Black lunge at one another. Snow rears up and overpowers Black, but Black manages to come back with a quick locking of the jaws on Snow’s neck. The crowd is cheering wildly and yelling out bets. Once a dog gets a lock on the other, they will hold on with all their might. The dogs flail back and forth and all the while Black maintains her hold…

Snow goes straight for the throat and grabs hold with her razor-sharp teeth. Almost immediately, blood flows from Black’s throat. Despite a serious injury to the throat, Black manages to continue fighting back. They are relentless, each battling the other and neither willing to accept defeat. This fighting continues for an hour. [Finally, the referee] gives the third and final pit call. It is Black’s turn to scratch and she is severely wounded. Black manages to crawl across the pit to meet her opponent. Snow attacks Black and she is too weak to fight back. L.G. [Black’s owner] realizes that this is it for Black and calls the fight. Snow is declared the winner.

Back on the second floor of the black shed, the little red dog rushes across the pit. The other dog charges toward her. They’re on a collision course with each other and a battle that can end only with teeth and blood and pain. It’s only a few steps across the ring, but at the last minute each dog veers to the side, so they don’t quite meet nose to nose. Instead they circle to the right, keeping an eye on each other and passing so close that they bump. The other dog rears up and puts her paws on the red dog, who recoils momentarily, then lurches forward. They continue circling but gradually slow until they’ve almost stopped, shoulder to shoulder, heads turned toward each other, sniffing.

The red dog feels something pull at her neck and suddenly she’s being propelled backward across the rectangle. The man with the leash is yelling at the red dog and her tail drops. To determine which of their dogs have the right stuff, fighters regularly test or “roll” the dogs, putting them in brief matches to see which have the instincts and aggression to succeed. This little red dog is being rolled, and it’s not going well.

Instead of facing them off across the pit, the men now place the dogs face-to-face and hold them there. The dogs bark and struggle but the men keep forcing them together. Soon, the frustration and anger and proximity do their job and the dogs begin biting at each other. The dogs rise up on their hind legs as their front legs tangle in the air and their teeth tear at flesh. The other dog is a little taller, so she gets her head on top of the red dog’s and nips at the red dog’s ears and clamps down with her mouth on the back of the red dog’s neck. The red dog’s front legs fall back to the ground and she snaps at the other dog’s foreleg. The two of them tumble to the ground. They bounce up and dance around each other, snapping and bounding and rolling across the carpet. The men have gone silent. They’re unimpressed. Neither dog has shown any real aggression or skill.

The red dog is carried halfway down the steps and then tossed to the ground. The other dog is not as lucky. She is tossed from the top of the stairs and rattles down the steps, landing with an awkward sound. She lets out a squeal and hops up but will walk on only three legs. One of the men hoses the dogs off, then puts them into empty kennels. There’s still no food or water. The red dog paces in a small circle, then lies down. Every five or ten minutes the men bring a few dogs out of the shed and a few more in.

Before long nine dogs sit in the kennels around the red dog or stand tied to trees in the compound. Some of them have puncture wounds on their snouts or forelegs and they lick at the blood and whine. It should not be surprising that so many of them seem to have failed. One experienced law officer estimates that 80 percent of the dogs, even those raised in a professional fighting operation, won’t even scratch. That is, they won’t even cross the line and engage the other dog.

Dog men don’t have much use for dogs that won’t fight, that don’t show that instinctive prerogative to go after any other dog they meet. Such dogs represent lost income-it costs a lot to feed and house them-and so those dogs are usually eliminated.

The Bad Newz men emerge from the shed and stand talking. The red dog and the others wait in the shadows. Two of the men pull coveralls on over their clothes. One of them retrieves an old nylon leash and a five-gallon bucket out of the shed. He fills the bucket with water. The red dog sniffs the air. The smell of the food sitting across the compound is stronger than ever and she whimpers for something to eat. But the men won’t even look at her or the other dogs. They move quickly and keep to themselves. The red dog can sense the tension in the air, and the anxiety spreads among all the dogs, which alternately sit and pace. A few pull at their leashes and let out little half howls of protest.

One of the men comes toward the dogs. He grabs the one that had been in the rectangle with the red dog and fastens the old nylon leash around her neck. He picks her up and carries her over to two trees that stand next to the two-story shed. The other man ties the leash to a two-by-four that has been nailed between the trees. Once the leash is secure, the first man boosts the dog a little further up and lets go.

For a moment, the dog lifts upward, her back arching and her legs paddling the air. Her head spins as she looks for the ground. Then her upward momentum peters out and she begins downward. Forty pounds of muscle and bone accelerate toward the earth. The rope pulls. The dog’s head jolts to the side and with a single yelp, she is dead.

The other dogs in the yard spring to their feet: the ones that had been brought up from the clearing that morning, the ones that lived in the kennel, the ones inside the shed. They bark and howl and run back and forth, pulling at their leashes or bouncing off the walls of their enclosures.

Even as they do, the other man approaches a second dog, one that had been injured and that now lies meekly on the ground. He carries him to the bucket and then holds his back legs in the air. One of the other men takes the dog by the scruff of the neck and plunges his head into the water. The dog shakes and flails, splashing water out of the bucket, but he is unable to shake free and within a few minutes his body goes limp. He’s tossed into a wheelbarrow.

In all, four dogs get the bucket and four the leash, although not all of them are as lucky as the first dog. Some of them swing from the rope, gasping and shaking, eyes bulging, blood trickling from the corners of their mouths as they slowly strangle. Even when they are finally cut down, they are not quite dead, so they too have their heads stuck into the bucket.

Still, this is not the worst of it. This is not what happened to the red dog.

A BLACK DOG WITH brown specks runs free. Her name is BJ and she’s a border collie-golden retriever mix. As she moves across the grass, her ears flop and jangle. When she catches up to the bounding tennis ball she’s chasing, she knocks it down with her paws and then clamps her jaws onto it. She prances back across this suburban Maryland yard and drops the ball at the feet of the man who threw it, Jim Knorr.

Knorr is a big man, with wide shoulders and a broad chest. His handshakes are nearly full-body affairs, as he almost lunges into them. As he does, his strong chin juts forward and his mouth creases into an easy smile. His receding hairline adds to the sense of openness about his face, as if he’s all right up front-forward and forthright.

It’s an odd countenance for someone who’s spent his life lying, or as they call it in law enforcement, working undercover. Knorr is a senior special agent with the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General, a position he has held longer than anyone else-ever. That’s because he’s never put in for a promotion and whenever one has been offered he’s turned it down. He never wanted to give up “the greatest job in the world,” being a field agent. “There’s no better feeling,” he says, “than catching the bad guys.”