The Lost Dogs (20 page)

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?

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.

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 Saturday, 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 passenger 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 passed 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 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.