It is an interesting read, thanks. Especially the existence of Paws for Tales "in which kids who get nervous reading aloud in class practice their skills by reading to a canine audience of one". Which frankly seems very odd to me.

I'm sorry to say I couldn't really read the article as a whole - because when it started telling the story of Vick and what he did, the dogs' lives, I couldn't handle it. But I definitely appreciate this post; I'm glad that the dogs were not just put down and that people have cared for them and adopted them.

In a related note, I have a a weird thing with Google News: I've put in "dog" and "dogs" as custom news filters because I wanted to read educational and fun things about dogs as they appear in the news, and I get that... but I also get tons of horrible abuse stories, so I'm always kind of reading that section with my head half averted, one eye closed, through my fingers.

So many days I promise myself I'm just going to delete that section from my news page - but then I look at the rest of the news, which also sucks razor blades, and realize that even with the awful stuff it is a section where I at least most of the time can find something good. This is a good one, BP.

Neat article, BP. For further reading, my local paper has been posting articles about the dogs now and then as one of the rescue agencies is located here. The Wapo story linked from the second sfgate article is good too and includes some more details about the rehab of Sweet Pea, the pit mentioned in the SI story.

It's a mostly happy ending to a horrible story (quoted from the article):

In the end, 47 of the 51 Vick dogs were saved. (Two died while in the shelters; one was destroyed because it was too violent; and another was euthanized for medical reasons.) Twenty-two dogs went to Best Friends, where McMillan and his staff chart their emotional state daily; almost all show steady improvement in categories such as calmness, sociability and happiness. McMillan believes 17 of the dogs will eventually be adopted, and applicants are being screened for the first of those. The other 25 have been spread around the country; the biggest group, 10, went to California with BAD RAP. Fourteen of the 25 have been placed in permanent homes, and the rest are in foster care.

I wish I had control of the Hell I don't believe in. Animal abusers would be put in a very special level of it.