She does not open up. She does not relax, even when they bring her back to her pen. It doesn"t smell funny this time. It smells the same as when she left. She burrows back into the corner and tries to ignore the tide of barking around her.
The evaluations had started out better than anyone could have hoped, but that didn"t mean there weren"t low points. In all, eighteen of the dogs had reacted the same way as Suss.e.x 2602, flattening out on the ground and trying to ignore what was happening around them. One was so stressed that he puked when Racer tried to pull him out of his cage.
Many of the dogs had no names, but two that had been singled out were Lucas and Jane. Vick"s only known champions-a dog that has won three straight times-showed troubling reactions to some of the tests.
Lucas was confident and great with people but when the test dog was brought out he showed another side. The test dog had been used numerous times, and he knew the drill. He trotted out toward Lucas, who stood on the concrete. As the test dog approached, Lucas simply turned and looked at him. Something about his stare or the way he held his body told the test dog everything he needed to know about Lucas. The test dog stopped in his tracks, turned, and went back into the shelter.
Jane was the dog who had made a habit of shredding metal bowls. She had a condition that had caused many of her teeth to fall out, but she ground the bowls across the floor with her paws, air-hockeyed them around her pen, and gnawed at them so relentlessly that they eventually succ.u.mbed. Jane, whose face was a highway map of scars and whose mouth permanently hung open from where her jaw had been broken but never set, had a bad reaction to the food test, latching onto the fake hand and shaking it ferociously.
There was something about Jane that Racer admired, though. She made the best of what she had. Lock me up in a kennel for four months with nothing but a metal bowl? Fine, but I"m going to have as much fun with that bowl as I can. Put me next to another dog with nothing but a chain-link fence between us? Okay, but like an older sibling trying to entertain himself on a long car ride, I"m going to rattle that fence, shake it with my mouth and push on it with my paws, pester that little sister next to me until I get a reaction. Will I break down and cower in the corner? No chance.
Charming as that s.p.u.n.k could be, it was also evidence that Jane had an att.i.tude problem. Part of that had come from her treatment: She had been aggressively and forcibly overbred. That was enough to turn any dog sour on the world, and it no doubt played a role in Jane"s response to stimuli.
An even more heartbreaking example of how such mistreatment could harm a dog lived in the kennel next to Jane. The black female that inhabited that s.p.a.ce had been overbred to the point that she had simply lost her mind. Her body sagged and swayed and she growled through gritted teeth at everything around her. She wanted to attack anything and anyone that came near. She was the only dog that Racer didn"t actually handle. No testing was necessary.
Two other small dogs seemed friendly enough with people, but as soon as they were put into the testing area they displayed an aggressiveness common to fighting dogs. They had a heightened sense of awareness, a certain tension in their bodies, and they searched the area for another dog. Racer realized that the team had unintentionally re-created a fight scene: They had placed these dogs in an enclosed area with people standing around gawking. The evaluators were pushing the dogs" b.u.t.tons. These two little guys had been down that road before, and they knew what to do. Both of them attacked the stuffed dog. But pushing b.u.t.tons, intentional or not, was part of the deal. The testers weren"t after false promise; they wanted reliable results.
When the day was done, the team had tested all but five of the dogs. The members gathered for dinner at a diner across from the hotel. The evening was filled with much excited talk about what they had experienced during the day. What they had found so far were anything but the most viciously trained dogs in the country.
Instead, they"d encountered American pit bull terriers and Staffordshire bull terriers with a broad spectrum of temperaments. A few of them had that fighter"s instinct, a visible willingness-almost desire-to go after other dogs that dog men refer to as gameness, but not many. No more than twelve.
Beyond that there were the pancake dogs, creatures so stressed out from life first at Vick"s and then in the shelters that they had largely shut down. Even those dogs, though, could be very sweet. One of them stayed flattened to the ground through all the tests, until the examiners brought out the child-size doll. The dog grew visibly interested and slowly but surely it crawled across the concrete floor to reach the doll. When it got there, it sniffed and wagged with glee.
Then there was a group of what were simply dogs. They were not socialized, they had no manners and no idea how to behave, and many of them had likely experienced at least fight-testing sessions if not outright fights, but they remained largely sound of mind and body. They needed only direction, affection, and companionship.
The court doc.u.ments showed that Bad Newz had not been terribly successful at breeding fighters. With the exception of a few dogs like Jane and Lucas, most of the Vick dogs had underperformed. That was why so many were being killed: The crew could not get them to fight. Most of the dogs that remained almost certainly would have fallen into that same category, and if not for the raid on 1915 Moonlight Road, almost all would have suffered some sort of hideous demise.
This was to some degree a matter of pedigree. Breeding no doubt plays a role in dog behavior. There are border collies that are better at herding and retrievers that are better at retrieving because they"ve been carefully selected to perform that task over time. By the same logic there are pit bulls-so-called game-bred dogs-that are more inclined to fight and are potentially better at it than others.
The Bad Newz crew, it seemed, had not been willing or wise enough to spend the thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars more it cost to buy dogs from such elite lineages. Instead they rolled the dice on adult dogs that showed promise and when they found a few good ones, like Jane and Lucas, they attempted to start their own line of champions. That"s why Jane was so criminally overbred, and why so many of the dogs rescued from 1915 Moonlight Road had the same sandy brown coat as both she and Lucas did. Many, if not all of them, could probably claim one or both as a parent or grandparent.
However, breeding a good fighting dog isn"t as simple as taking the offspring of two champions, throwing them in the ring, and counting the money. The process is a subtle blend of nature and nurture. How the dog is trained and treated, how it"s kept, how it"s socialized, at what stage in its life it is introduced to certain stimuli all contribute to how it develops. Some pit bulls could be raised by the most caring, loving family in the world, who do everything by the book and those dogs might still have an inclination to go after other dogs. Some dogs can be raised in the harshest way possible and still have nothing but happiness and companionship to share with the world.
And breeding a dog to fight is different than breeding it for other traits. There"s nothing about herding or retrieving or pulling a sled that goes against the dog"s internal drives. But creating a dog that wants to attack other dogs is at odds with twelve thousand years of evolution, a period of time in which dogs were instilled with the instinct to work together in a pack to survive. Centuries of breeding based on mutual dependence goes far deeper than fifty or even one hundred years of manipulation to encourage a desire to do harm.
Even Louis Colby, a renowned breeder and reformed dogfighter, has said that if you mated two champion dogs and harvested a litter of twelve pups, there might be one champion in the group. Certainly, if you raised pit bulls in an atmosphere of hostility, frustrated and angered them, honed their aggressiveness, and then put them into a situation where they felt challenged, some of them would fight, but so would most other dogs. The Vick dogs showed that even under those circ.u.mstances many of them still did not prefer to fight, and even when they did, the simple fact that they were pit bulls did not guarantee that they would be good at it. The truth, in the end, is that each dog, like each person, is an individual. If the Vick dogs proved nothing else to the world, this would be a significant advance.
20.
STEVE Z STACKED THE evaluation sheets on his desk. One per dog. Forty-nine sheets of paper that would determine what became of the last vestiges of Bad Newz Kennels. One by one he tabulated the results and compiled them in a chart showing each dog and how it performed in each test. evaluation sheets on his desk. One per dog. Forty-nine sheets of paper that would determine what became of the last vestiges of Bad Newz Kennels. One by one he tabulated the results and compiled them in a chart showing each dog and how it performed in each test.
In their earlier conversations the team had decided that each dog would be placed in one of five categories: Foster/Observation, Law Enforcement, Sanctuary 1, Sanctuary 2, and Euthanasia. Foster dogs were the best of the lot. These dogs seemed to be well-adjusted and capable of living as a family pet. In a foster home they would live with experienced dog owners who"d done previous rescue work, and those people would begin to train them and integrate them into household life while observing them for six months to a year. If no issues arose during that time, the dogs would be eligible for adoption.
The Law Enforcement category was for healthy, high-energy dogs who showed the drive and motivation to get through the rigorous training that was required of dogs that did police or other investigative and patrol work. The Sanctuary 1 label went to dogs that had long-term potential but needed a lot of help. They would go to some sort of animal sanctuary that had the facilities to provide them with a comfortable and rewarding life while working with them to overcome their problems. If these dogs improved, they could eventually be moved to foster care and then to adoption.
The Sanctuary 2 dogs were those that were good, healthy dogs but because they had either shown aggression toward people or other dogs could probably never live outside managed care. They could live in a sanctuary but would likely never leave it.
The final category, Euthanasia, needed no explanation.
Dr. Z drafted a report, placing each dog in what seemed like the best category. He e-mailed the chart and the report to everyone on the team. Comments and suggestions came back. He tweaked a few of the recommendations. For any dog that was questionable, they went with the more conservative category. If a dog was borderline between Foster and Sanctuary 1, it went into Sanctuary 1, etc.
Finally, after a few weeks of back and forth, the report was sent to the Department of Justice and the USDA. On September 19, Dr. Z flew to Washington for a meeting with officials from both agencies to explain how the team had come to its conclusions. As an academic the most pressure-packed meeting Zawistowski had ever attended was a faculty Senate session, but now he was before a roomful of government attorneys and agents. Everyone in the place was armed with either a law degree or a gun or both.
As nerve-racking as that was, Dr. Z stuck to his program. He took the officials through the report, explained the process and the concept of each category of care. He showed the videos of the evaluations. There was some push back. Questions emerged about how dogs were differentiated, and Dr. Z answered by showing examples of how certain dogs reacted differently to the same stimuli and what that indicated about them.
Several of the officials didn"t see the upside of keeping any of the dogs alive. No one really expected these dogs to be spared and there was no political risk to following precedent. There was no way to know for sure how the dogs would fare. If just one of them failed, it could be a huge liability issue for the government. Headline writers and talk show hosts would have no mercy on anyone responsible for freeing a fighting dog that then went on to attack someone. Compa.s.sion and empathy were laudable instincts, but this situation called for pragmatism and responsibility, they argued. On the other side, some of the agents spoke about past cases, where they"d seen good dogs die without ever getting a chance because of a "destroy all evidence" policy; it would be encouraging to try something else.
Dr. Z suggested that if the government was going to attempt to save the dogs, it would be wise to hire one person to oversee the process. The DOJ and USDA had already received calls and letters from rescue groups and sanctuaries offering to help. This person would need to devise a formal application process, screen the applicants, and oversee the actual disburs.e.m.e.nt of the dogs. The officials asked Zawistowski to recommend someone.
It was a difficult question, as the person needed to be an expert in animal issues who did not have a stake in the outcome; who had a proven ability to understand and administer the legal aspects of the job, including the transfer of liability; and strong organizational skills. The person would also have to be capable of dealing with the government bureaucracy on one hand and the pa.s.sionate advocates who ran the rescue groups on the other. They would need to determine if an applicant was truly capable of taking on one or more dogs and to make judgment calls about which facilities were the best fit for each dog. He or she would need to devote significant time to the task and be willing to stand up to the inevitable sniping that would follow any decision.
There was yet another piece of the puzzle. Some of the less-responsive dogs-the real pancake dogs-might normally be considered clear-cut cases for euthanasia, but this situation was different. Because there might be resources available to support them, it could be possible to save dogs that would otherwise probably not make the cut. Sure there had been letters from people and groups offering to take the dogs, but once all those volunteers had seen the requirements of the official agreement, how many would actually meet the government"s standards, and of those who did, how many would still be willing to a.s.sume the risk? Would any rescue groups or no-kill sanctuaries volunteer to take what could be very needy and not very satisfying dogs? And if so, how many such dogs would each one take? The ASPCA team had decided to take a wait-and-see approach, hoping that a significant number of facilities would materialize to save these dogs, but the possibility that they might end up on the euthanasia list remained very real.
That decision meant that whoever was put in charge would also have to make the final call on what happened to any such dogs that were not taken in by a rescue or sanctuary. Zawistowski promised to give the candidate more thought, but in the meantime a few of the team"s other recommendations demanded immediate attention. Two of the more problematic dogs required further medical examinations because it was difficult to tell if what ailed them was physical or psychological. Beyond that, the report read as follows: Foster/Observation, sixteen dogs; Law Enforcement, two dogs; Sanctuary 1: twenty dogs; Sanctuary 2: ten dogs; Euthanasia: one dog.
That last dog was the overbred female who had been so aggressive that the team had not even been able to evaluate her. Acting quickly, the government ordered the necessary veterinary evaluations and the euthanization of the one dog. Less than two weeks later, on October 1, a court order approved the measure and a black female pit bull, known only as #2621, which had been forcibly bred to the point that she"d turned violent, was given a lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital. Within minutes, her suffering was ended.
By that time, Steve Zawistowski had a name.
The pink "Urgent Message" notice taped to the door grabbed her attention. She had never received one before. Eight years behind the desk had taught Rebecca Huss that there were no urgent issues in academia. And yet here it was, a note from an a.s.sistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Huss didn"t know if she was quite prepared to return the call. She had received a B.A. from Northern Iowa in 1989, a law degree from the University of Richmond in 1992, and a masters in law from Iowa in 1995. She worked a few corporate law jobs, including two years in the animal health division of a pharmaceutical company, and then decided to go into teaching. That move necessitated that she find a specialty. Huss figured that if she were going to spend so much time focusing on one area of the law, it ought to be something she was pa.s.sionate about.
Growing up in Iowa City with four brothers and sisters and a very busy house, Huss had always appreciated the patient endurance of the family"s dachshund, Tip. Years later, when her own mini-dachshund, Jackie, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, she noticed that the dog still woke up happy every day. Animals, Huss felt, could teach us a lot about how to live if we paid attention to them. She had chosen to pay attention.
In 1999 she landed a position at Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana and her specialty, her pa.s.sion, she decided, would be animal law, which involved dealing with cases and issues revolving around animal rights and welfare. In 2007 she published a paper about the interaction between animal control officers and rescue groups that was noticed by a colleague of Steve Z"s at the ASPCA.
Huss presented an interesting combination of skills. She was a recognized animal law expert with a corporate background, which meant she"d dealt with large organizations and had a certain level of polish to her work. To write her latest paper, she had taken a hard look at different rescue groups. She had a long history with animals, but no direct interest in how the Vick case would be resolved. Steve Z had put forward her name in late September.
She looked at the pink slip of paper one more time, dialed the number, and asked for Mike Gill. His mellow tw.a.n.g came over the line. He explained how he"d gotten her name and caught her up on where the case and the dogs stood. He told her that they were looking for someone to oversee the process that lay ahead, and he spelled out in detail what that process would be.
Finally, he asked: "Are you interested?"
Huss couldn"t say. She had long ago dismissed the case from her mind. She"d seen a few headlines, absorbed the gist of things, but had not followed the story. When news first broke she"d written it off as just another dogfighting case. They always ended the same way, with a bunch of dead dogs and very little justice. Just because there was a celebrity involved, she didn"t see how this would be any different.
Suddenly, the differences were coming toward her at a hundred miles per hour. Almost $1 million had been ticketed for the care and treatment of the dogs; individual evaluations had been conducted; recovery plans had been suggested and rescue groups would be screened. The process would require a lot of time and there would be criticism. It was the kind of issue that generated so much pa.s.sion on either side it was unavoidable that someone would be unhappy in the end. She needed some time to think about the offer and to check with her Valparaiso colleagues, since some of the fallout and workload would hit them, too.
Huss spoke to her bosses and co-workers at the university, and everyone supported her taking on the a.s.signment. A few days later she called back and accepted. An official motion was put before the court, and on October 15, Rebecca Huss was named guardian/special master of the forty-eight remaining pit bulls from Bad Newz Kennels.
She had been told that it would be best to provide the court with her final placement recommendations before Vick was sentenced in early December. That gave her roughly six weeks to evaluate the dogs, have them implanted with microchips, create an application and reach out to rescue groups and sanctuaries, solicit and screen applicants, allow the accepted groups to meet the dogs, decide which dogs were the best match for each group, and write up a report.
Huss had long ago thrown away the piece of pink paper that she"d found taped to her door three weeks earlier, but the sense of urgency that note foretold was just now beginning to become clear. It would be months before the feeling subsided.
21.
IT WAS THIRTY-SIX HOURS after Rebecca Huss had agreed to be special master of the Vick dogs, and she was covered in every variety of canine excretion she cared to consider: saliva, blood, vomit, urine, feces. She knew that legal procedures sometimes got messy, but she never thought the law would lead her to a series of dances with pit bulls in sometimes antiquated shelters across rural Virginia. after Rebecca Huss had agreed to be special master of the Vick dogs, and she was covered in every variety of canine excretion she cared to consider: saliva, blood, vomit, urine, feces. She knew that legal procedures sometimes got messy, but she never thought the law would lead her to a series of dances with pit bulls in sometimes antiquated shelters across rural Virginia.
The day after the court approved her as special master she had boarded an early morning flight from Indianapolis to Richmond. If she was going to have to individually place each dog, she knew the first order of business was to meet each dog.
She also needed to rea.s.sess their condition. It had been six weeks since the ASPCA team had met with the dogs. That was six more weeks of kennel life-of barking, of cramped quarters, of limited or sometimes no exercise or outside time, of scant attention and interaction with people or other dogs. All that came on top of four previous months locked up under similar circ.u.mstances. Would the ASPCA evaluations even hold up at this point?
Huss had spent a lot of time with dogs, but she knew those types of a.s.sessments were beyond her capabilities, so Tim Racer had also scrambled out to Virginia. Over the next three days, the pair spent time with every dog, getting each out of its pen for an extended period. They gave each one a chance to run on a leash, and at shelters that had an enclosed area, they set them loose. They observed each dog as it interacted with another dog. They played with the dogs, they held them and petted them.
Huss had never spent much time with pit bulls, but now that she was immersed in their world she couldn"t understand why they had such a bad reputation. In truth, the pit bull was simply a dog, imbued with all the positive and negative attributes of its kind. Just like any dog, pit bulls could be sweet, friendly, and loving, and they could also be unruly, ill-mannered, and p.r.o.ne to doing incredibly stupid things by human standards.
But for a number of reasons, pit bulls were the latest breed to get sucked into a self-fulfilling cycle of fear, hype, substandard care, and rising population. In the nineteenth century, a different breed of dog was considered so vicious and insidious that it inspired almost universal fear and loathing. That breed was the bloodhound.3 Every time a bloodhound was involved in an incident, accounts of their aggression filled news columns. Why? For starters, the term bloodhound bloodhound had come to include many different breeds, not just the cla.s.sic floppy-eared specimen that accompanies Scotland Yard detectives in TV movies, but any dog prized for its tracking and guarding abilities. There were Irish bloodhounds, Siberian bloodhounds, Cuban bloodhounds, and numerous others. had come to include many different breeds, not just the cla.s.sic floppy-eared specimen that accompanies Scotland Yard detectives in TV movies, but any dog prized for its tracking and guarding abilities. There were Irish bloodhounds, Siberian bloodhounds, Cuban bloodhounds, and numerous others.
Many of those dogs were used to track escaped prisoners and slaves, guard stores, and protect homes, so they were encouraged to be aggressive and territorial. In the course of doing that work they often ended up in situations where they were pitted against people, and as one would expect, a fair share of those run-ins ended violently.
The bloodhound got a reputation as a fearsome beast with a taste for blood. That reputation stoked anxiety in the general public, and at the same time caught the attention of people attracted to the idea of having a tough dog. The bloodhound population increased, and the new owners were not raising their dogs to be family pets. Many of them wouldn"t have known how to properly train the dogs even if they"d wanted to. As a result many bloodhounds were ill-equipped to deal with people and new situations. This led to even more violent run-ins and more fear.
What finally turned things around for the bloodhound? Was it a sudden change in social att.i.tudes or an improved understanding of the forces that created the problem to start with? No, it was the emergence of the German shepherd. These dogs arrived in the United States around 1910 and quickly gained a reputation as great guard dogs with an aggressive streak. Again, ironically, this reputation caused a population spike, particularly among the wrong type of dog owner. By 1925 there were so many German shepherds around causing so many problems that the borough of Queens, New York, proposed a ban on them. Australia banned them in 1929.
By the 1950s, the German shepherd-redeemed in the public"s mind by Rin Tin Tin Rin Tin Tin-gave way to the Doberman pinscher, which had earned its fearful rep as the n.a.z.is" dog of choice during World War II. SS troops with Dobermans were a staple of war photography and the tales of what these dogs inflicted on concentration camp victims were well known.
In 1964 there were 4,815 new Doberman registrations filed with the American Kennel Club. By 1979 there were 80,363 new Dobermans registered, making it the second most popular breed in the United States. Although there were a few notable, well-publicized attacks, to the Doberman"s credit, the population spike did not result in a proportionate spike in incidents.
Pit bulls weren"t so lucky. In the mid-1970s enterprising reporters began writing about the underground world of dogfighting, in hope of exposing and ending the practice. In the process they wrote about the tenacious and powerful dogs that were considered the ultimate fighters: pit bulls.
This had the effect of promoting pit bulls as next in the line of tough-guy dogs. By the early 1980s, the pit bull"s reputation made it popular among an emerging drug and hip hop culture. As with those before it, the breed"s popularity soared. Between 1983 and 1984 the United Kennel Club reported a 30 percent increase in registrations. And many pit bulls were not even being registered.
Between 1966 and 1975 there was one newspaper account of a fatality that resulted from a pit bull attack. In 1986, pit bulls appeared in 350 newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. Some of those reported legitimate pit bull attacks-the price of so many unsocialized, abused, and aggressively trained dogs popping up around the country-but many were the result of pit bull hysteria, in which almost any incident involving a dog was falsely reported as a pit bull attack. The breed, which had existed in some form for hundreds of years, didn"t suddenly lose control. The dogs simply fell into the hands of many more people who had no interest in control.
By 2000, pit bull fear and hype had reached such proportions that the breed was banned in more than two hundred cities and counties around the United States. Lost in all the legislation was the fact that for decades the pit bull had been considered one of the most loyal, loving, and people-friendly dogs on the planet.
Huss and Racer could not undo that tortured history, but they could impact the future of at least forty-eight pit bulls and hope to set an example that would help turn the tide for the rest. That"s why they spent two and a half days communing with the dogs, reviewing previous evaluations, and interviewing shelter attendants. But the most radical thing they did occurred at lunch on the final day. At a small pizza place Racer pulled out a piece of paper that listed each dog by its shelter I.D. number, color, and gender. Then he and Huss went down the list and gave each dog a name.
Suddenly these were no longer the Bad Newz dogs or those pit bulls from Vick"s place. They were Oscar and Rose, and Ernie and Charlie and Ray and Curly and forty-two others. They were no longer a story or a group or a commodity, they were forty-eight individual dogs in the same situation.
Despite how far they"d come, their destiny was not yet certain-any proposal still had to be approved by the court. But no one names a thing that doesn"t have hope. No one names a thing that doesn"t have a future. No one names a lost dog.
The Vick dogs had been found. Could they be saved?
22.
THE GUY BEHIND THE rental counter made small talk-"What brings you to this part of the country?" sort of talk. Donna Reynolds and Nicole Rattay did their best to deflect the questions, and when necessary, they outright lied. They told the man they had been visiting in the area and decided they wanted to see more of the country. rental counter made small talk-"What brings you to this part of the country?" sort of talk. Donna Reynolds and Nicole Rattay did their best to deflect the questions, and when necessary, they outright lied. They told the man they had been visiting in the area and decided they wanted to see more of the country.
They couldn"t tell the truth, couldn"t say they were renting an RV from him so that they could transfer thirteen pit bulls seized from the most highly publicized dogfight bust ever from southern Virginia to northern California. Especially since the dogs were still legally government property and the two women were operating under a strict federal gag order. That was, however, precisely the situation.
If Rebecca Huss"s first days on the job indicated that she was moving quickly, the week that followed did nothing to dispel the notion. By the time Huss and Racer were wrapping up their evaluations on Thursday, October 18, Reynolds, Rattay, and her husband, Steve Smith, were flying into town. Rattay was one of BAD RAP"s most enthusiastic volunteers and Smith was her willing partner. Among the powers granted to Huss was the ability to transfer the dogs to interim housing if she felt it was in their best interest. BAD RAP had lined up enough foster homes in California for thirteen dogs and the plan was to get them out of the shelters and into houses as quickly as possible.
So on Friday, Reynolds and Rattay rented the RV, bought thirteen portable dog pens, food, leashes, and other supplies. On Sat.u.r.day, they drove around to the shelters picking up the dogs, and sometime just after dark Nicole and Steve shoved off for Oakland while Reynolds stayed behind.
Like so many others who came in contact with the dogs, Steve and Nicole didn"t know quite what to expect. They"d heard the horror stories and yet they"d also heard much more positive things from the evaluation team. Not wanting to take any chances, they secured the pens throughout the RV with bungee cords and put cardboard barriers in between so the dogs would not be able to see one another.
The trip"s start provided hope. The dogs had been so happy to get out of the shelters that they offered little resistance when it came to loading onto the RV. Some of them didn"t quite know how to do it, but with a little prodding and some gentle direction every dog got where it needed to go. They settled in quickly.
Nicole was surprised at how little they barked, and once the RV got on the highway, the gentle rocking of the cabin and the steady hum of the road put most of the dogs right to sleep. It was as if, finally removed from the stress and noise of the shelter, the dogs were taking the opportunity to simply relax.
It helped that most of the dogs on board were designated as foster-home dogs, which meant they were among those that showed the most promise. Still, that didn"t mean the ride would be easy. Steve and Nicole took turns, one driving while the other slept in the pa.s.senger seat, and continued straight through the night.
They made their first stop early the next morning. As they wiped their eyes and stretched they devised a simple plan: Each would walk one dog, letting it stretch and relieve itself, then give it some water and get it back in its pen with food. That done, they"d move on to the next two dogs. Nicole figured it would take about an hour to get all thirteen dogs done.
It took two. Two hours of walking and watering and feeding. Lifting out of the pens and placing into the pens. It was exhausting and time-consuming, but there was no choice.
The process also drew its share of funny looks. It"s one thing to climb out of an RV with a few dogs. But to keep going in and coming out with yet another set of dogs looked like a circus act and people noticed. At one park in northern Arkansas a groundskeeper kept staring at them. Nicole started to get a little annoyed-they were cleaning up after the dogs and no one was being bothered. Why couldn"t the guy chill out?
Finally, he approached. "You can"t be here with those dogs," he said. "There"s a few places just up the road where you"re not allowed to keep "em, and if someone complains or if they see "em, they"ll take "em from you. No questions asked." Nicole was taken aback. The man was not a pit bull hater, he was a pit bull helper. She thanked him, and she and Steve quickly got the dogs back on the RV and got out of the area.
Whatever difficulties they encountered did not come from the dogs. They were great. On the second day Nicole removed the cardboard from between the cages. Taking the dogs in and out for walks had made it clear that there was no animosity between them, as they were almost always happy to see and greet one another as they pa.s.sed by. With the cardboard out of their way, the dogs were even happier and some of them even licked each other"s faces through the grating of their pens.
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 Suss.e.x to WARL.
Conditions in Suss.e.x 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 pa.s.s.