What ever happened to the Michael Vick dogs that were trained to fight? Did they go through rehab, or did PETA want them destroyed?

The progress of the Michael Vick dogs through the kind people at the Best Friends Animal Santuary in Utah, to the volunteers that have adopted or provided foster homes for these courageous dogs on their road to recovery in rehab.  Agressive dogs can be rehabiliated through training and love as these dogs show us that not all dogs are hopeless cases.

Tags: Agressive dog training, Best Friends Animal Shelter, National Geographic video.

Since last January the dogs apprehended from Michael Vick’s dog fighting compound on Moonlight Road in Smithville Virginia have been on a long road back to being rehabilitated to a better life,  but this did not happen over night or very quickly.

Michael Vick called his dog fighting operation “Bad Newz” and these dogs which numbered 51 have had a life of pain and alot more bad news than normal dogs.  The trainers on Moonlight Road often roughed up the dogs that did not fight by slammed them to the ground repeatedly until they died. Dogs that had no fight in them were shot, electrocuted, drowned, or hung by a rope and killed at the compound.

Their water bowls outdoors stank with green colored algae water and were kept hungry to make them meaner and leaner to fight. For exercise the dogs had to hang from a rubber ring to make their jaws stronger for long periods of time. These dogs were trained to kill each other and they were taunted to attack. The female dogs were tied down with ropes to be raped by the males for breeding purposes or perhaps the entertainment of the visitors. Dogs that were too young to fight were kept as bait for the older dogs to train on and this was the method to toughen up the younger dogs if they survived the attacks at all.

This blood sport as some call it, was for the entertainment of Vick and his friends although he never lived at this particular house it was a torturous hell for these pit bull dogs. The road away from Moonlight Road could only have been an improvement but could it?

The Vice President of the ASPCA Stephen Zawistowski stated that the dogs that lived through this brutality felt the trauma that was happening to the other dogs in the woods.  They endured those same feelings after hearing or knowing their mates were being killed or tortured through brainwaves. He stated that trauma is not only endured by the dog that is being killed, but by the dogs that heard the barking and screams of pain and were to endure more pain of their own.

Initially the dogs were taken to animal control facilities and kept separately in cages, for months they were feared and not let out of their cages. They stood in their own waste and squalor not knowing what their fate would be at the hands of their keepers because their cages were not cleaned at all. The dogs stood hunched over with heads lowered as if they felt something dreadful was going to happen to them. They did not want to venture out of their cages at all as bad things happened when they were let out. One dog was so frightened even while inside the cage it was very stressed out. Eventually a shelter worker put a blanket tent inside the cage to give the dog some comfort and to hide away from the world.

Surprisingly PETA called for the dogs to be put down stating that ……continued in tomorrow’s Post.

Tags: Michael Vick’s Dogs, ASPCA, PETA, agressive dogs, agressive dog training, abused dogs, dog, dog health.