After former Atlanta Falcons (and Virginia Tech) quarterback Michael Vick was convicted last year of felonious dog fighting, 47 pit bulls were seized from his property and spared euthanasia. Rather, the animals were distributed to various rescue groups that were then charged with either rehabilitating the dogs or caring for the animals for the rest of their lives. There has been a rash of newspaper articles about the pit bulls in recent weeks, because some of the rescue groups are now ready to introduce the dogs they’ve been caring for to the public.
One of the rescue groups that took a number of Vick’s dogs is Bad Rap, a San Francisco Bay Area-based rescue organization devoted to pit bulls and to rehabilitating the breed’s public image. The website for Bad Rap now has three videos up of Vick’s dogs (“The Evaluations,” “Home to Heal” and “See Them Now”) and, if anyone needs proof of how amazing dogs are, these videos offer proof positive. The animals have been abused, starved and beaten and yet, thanks to Bad Rap, there’s still hope for them to have happy and fulfilling lives with loving, stable homes.
I’ll admit that as a pit bull owner myself, I’m a particular sucker for sites like this (and dog videos that make me cry), but this kind of website is really for lovers of all animals, great and small.