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

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THE RED DOG PULLS hard against the leash, straining to rush up the path and see what lies beyond. It is the first time she’s been out of the clearing, off her chain and axle, in weeks. She’s nervous though, too, and regularly looks up at the man holding her, trying to read some sign of what he has in mind. She sniffs the air for a hint, intermittently wagging and holding her tail down.

They emerge from the trees into a compound of kennels and small black buildings. The dogs in the kennels begin to bark, rushing forward to press their faces against the chain link as she goes by. Her tail and ears droop, as if they’re being blown flat by the force of the barking. But she hasn’t eaten in three days and her hunger drives her forward. She can smell food and hopes that she will be getting some.

The man steers her toward the biggest shed, the two-story one. As they step inside, the door swings closed behind them, and the sound of the barking becomes more distant, then dies down altogether. The man grabs a small rope that hangs from the ceiling in the corner of the room. He pulls it and with a loud squeak a staircase descends from above. The man carries the little red dog up.

At the top he flips a switch and bright lights flood into a small, open room with a square of carpet in the center, maybe sixteen feet by sixteen feet. The carpet is a light color, a sort of off-white, and there are dark blotches on it. It’s not attached to the floor and the edges curl up a little. For the little red dog, the smells are overwhelming. There have been many people here, many dogs. The remnants of sweat and blood and urine and fear mix in the air, and the dog’s insides churn with anxiety and concern.

She hears barking outside the shed, and in a moment there are noises downstairs. Another man emerges from the staircase carrying another dog. The red dog does not recognize this dog, but, like her, it’s a female and it’s about eighteen months old.

The man puts the red dog onto the carpet and the other dog is placed on the carpet opposite her. Both dogs sniff the air. The red dog licks her snout and shifts her weight from side to side. Instinctively they are drawn toward each other but the men get in between them. The one who brought the red dog up from the clearing stands over her, clapping and yelling, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

Two other men have come up the stairs, and they stand around the carpet. They begin to shout as well. The man puts his hand on the red dog’s face and shoves her backward. She comes back toward him and he does it again. He grabs her by the muzzle and shakes her face from side to side.

The red dog remembers all the days she spent chained up in the clearing, face-to-face with other dogs she could not quite get to. Frustration and fear and anger and the instinctive need to defend her territory begin to stir within her. Her stomach turns with hunger. The men’s voices mix with the riot of smells. The dogs outside begin to bark again. The other dog lets out a low growl, her own fear and aggression surging. The leashes go tight as the men back off and the dogs begin to pull toward each other. The little red dog lets out a strong bark that echoes off the plywood walls.

Dogfighting is everywhere and nowhere. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that there are forty thousand dogfighters in the country, and yet most people are untouched by it. They wouldn’t know a pit bull if they petted one in the park, they never read about dogfighting in the local paper, and they’ve never been anywhere near an actual dogfight. The practice cuts across all sorts of demographic distinctions: age, race, class, economic status, education, profession. Dogfights have been uncovered at Ku Klux Klan rallies and at inner-city drug raids. Busts have netted unemployed urban teens and suburban professionals-teachers, doctors, lawyers.

Some of the mystery results from the varied faces of dogfighting. At the most basic level, it’s a guy with a dog, some wannabe tough who wants to let his pet prove his manhood. These are often random clashes in alleys and empty lots that may have little riding on them but the owner’s pride-and the dog’s life. These owners have probably done little to prepare the dog for the match other than mistreating it to make it aggressive and maybe feeding it some drugs.

The next level up might be the guy who keeps a few dogs, trains them a bit, and puts them in prearranged fights. He’s not running a business; it’s more of a pastime, but he’s trying to make a few bucks on the action. Those first two groups make up the vast majority of dogfighters, which is why they remain so hidden from view-they’re small-time, random, and by their very ubiquity they blend into the woodwork.

Then there are the professionals. They have a full stable of dogs, thirty-five or more, which they raise for the specific purpose of fighting. They use elaborate training methods and equipment mixed with backwoods wisdom. They feed the dogs high-end food, supplements, and sometimes even steroids. When they get a winner, they breed it and sell the pups for high fees, hoping to establish known lines of fighting dogs that can fetch even more money.

The fights, arranged months in advance, ride on significant wagers, up to $20,000 or $30,000 per match, although they can sometimes shoot even higher than that, into the hundreds of thousands. Fighters need the long lead time to train their dogs, a six-week period of seasoning called “the keep,” which not only gets the dog in shape but attempts to prime its aggression. The exact mix of drills and work-outs and even chemical supplementation is where a dog man, supposedly, shows his true skills, and so each man guards the elements of his approach as if they were ingredients in a sought-after recipe.

There are occasional off-the-chain fights, in which two dogs are simply taken off their restraints and allowed to go at it without any preparation or restrictions, but most clashes follow a general set of practices established more than a hundred years ago, the so-called Cajun Rules, which give all the fights a similar form. A neutral party holds a deposit from each fighter, usually half or one-third of the bet. Upon arrival the dogs are weighed and if one is overweight the fight is forfeited and the owner loses his advance. After the weigh-in each handler washes the other man’s animal, to make sure there are no drugs or poison on the fur that could hinder his dog.

The pit itself is usually a square of anywhere from twelve to twenty feet, with low walls around it to keep the dogs inside. A carpet is laid on the floor to help the dogs get traction, and sometimes a light-colored rug is chosen to make the blood more visible. The dogs enter the pit with a referee and one handler for each. There are diagonal “scratch” lines in opposite corners, and the handlers hold their dogs behind the line. When the referee calls “Fight,” the dogs are released and they charge toward each other.

The handlers remain in the ring, urging the dogs on. The dogs fight until one turns sideways or disengages, at which point the handlers take the dogs back to their corners. The dog that turned away is released and if it charges back toward the other dog, the fight continues. If it fails to reengage, or is unable to, the fight is over. Otherwise, the battle goes on until one of the handlers calls the match. It can be over in ten minutes or it can go on for hours. When it’s done the winning dog usually gets immediate medical treatment. The losing dog might. Or it might be killed.

Fights and dogs are celebrated through an underground network of magazines and Web sites. A secret world filled with coded language, clandestine meetings, and black market trade. Such publications are not necessary to carry out the fights, but the participants can’t help but brag. Although many of the sites post disclaimers saying that they don’t promote any illegal activities and that all the stories are fiction, they have provided peeks into the gruesome world of dogfighting. A now-defunct Web site for Keepem Scratchin’ Kennels described a fight between Little George and Virgil: “Virgil started out fast and tore a gaping hole in Little George’s chest. Within the first ten minutes it looked like he was going to put him away.” As the dogs continue to struggle, heat becomes a factor and causes a turn of events. “Little George started coming back into the fight and got Virgil down for a little while. But the more George tried to put on Virgil, the worse Virgil bit him right back into the gaping hole that he opened in the beginning of the fight. As they were standing up battling it out, you could see the blood dripping out of his chest like you turned on the spigot.” Eventually, the blood loss gets the best of Little George. “Little George had weakened and went down. He had a hold of Virgil’s leg. Virgil was chewing on his head to get him off and it sounded like he was chewing on his knuckle bone.”

Here’s another, from the book The Complete Gamedog by Ed and Chris Faron, that describes two men trying to treat a dog after a fight, which gives an even more visceral sense of what these dogs are forced to endure:

She was so physically busted up that it was necessary to take the kennel crate apart to get her out of it. We spent the next hour or so desperately trying to save her, but nothing we did helped. [The other dog] had destroyed her face so badly that her sinuses were crushed, her whole face was pulsing up and down as she breathed and air was bubbling out of the holes on her muzzle and around her eyes. The last thing Jolene did before losing consciousness entirely was throw up an incredible amount of blood. We couldn’t figure out how she could have swallowed so much. We carefully pried open her mouth and peered inside with a flashlight, and it was then we saw just how badly she was hurt. There was a big hole between her eyes-big enough on the outside to stick a dime into, and this hole went clear through her skull, emerging in the roof of her mouth just in front of her throat. A thin trickle of blood was running down her throat, she must have been hemorrhaging throughout the fight. We sat there helplessly, watching our pride and joy take one last faltering breath, and then Jolene was gone.

And this one, from an academic study called “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dogfights” by Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth in Deviant Behavior, captures not just the fight but the overall atmosphere:

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.