Halle’s Vicktory
Halle is the first Vicktory dog being adopted. Woohoo!
So much for the naysayers proclaiming a pit bull that’s been trained to fight can’t be rehabilitated.
Her life now is totally backwards and opposite in every possible way from her days before as part of Michael Vick’s dogfighting ring. Good for her.
You may remember that six months ago Halle went into foster care with her new mom Traci. Part of the intricate legal hoops with adopting any Vicktory dog is that the dog must first live in a potential new home for six months before being considered for adoption. There are a whole host of other things that have to happen during those six months as well (such as working with a trainer toward Canine Good Citizen certification) but in the end it all came down to waiting out the time. Traci and Halle sailed through the other stuff perfectly.
Halle has come a long way with her confidence, too. Here’s one example. Back when she first went into foster care, the video folks at Best Friends wanted to get some footage of the big day. That didn’t work out, though, because Halle got really nervous around the cameras. A couple weeks ago, however, Traci attended a nearby news conference to talk about pit bulls. This time around, Halle had no problems with the cameras. She let the reporters pet her and everything.
Sometimes that confidence isn’t always a good thing, though. Halle has developed a mischievous streak! Traci says that one of Halle’s new favorite pastimes is to sneak up on her while she’s applying makeup for the day. Halle watches, waits, and then quick as can be, she grabs one of the cosmetics and dashes out the room!
Traci also has another pit bull she adopted from Best Friends, his name is Tacoma. It was because of him that she thought about adopting another pit bull, a friend for Tacoma. After all, everybody needs friends.
Read Traci, Tacoma’s, and Halle’s full story on the Best Friends website. We wish them all the best.
*Halle and Tacoma, pic taken by Traci, courtesy of BF’s.
What a wonderful story..We are very proud of the bully breed and others who are put in the media as “bad dogs”. It hits home for us because We wanted to get a Pit or a Rottie but we are a military family and they wont even consider them to be on there base. Which I think is DUMB. There are alot of dog owners that should be baned from owning a animal period but are they doing that “NO”. We will get a Pit when we retire. They make great family dogs. My husband has raised them when he was a youngster and Family members of my Family have them. I could go on and on about these greats dogs but I will save it. I will just say This is the news we like to hear “Good news”
Great Story! I own a pittie and since owning him I will never be without a pit bull in my life! They are wonderful dogs!
I wonder how many people will think this is such a great story when this dog, who has been trained from a puppy to attack/kill other dogs, attacks or kills someone else’s dog when they’re out at a park for an innocent day of fun.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like to see dogs who’ve endured such a horrible fate be put down because of it, but I don’t believe stories like this one always turn out so happy in the end.
I can’t believe that a dog has accomplished so much and has proven herself again and again and still there are people that choose to hate the breed. ITS NOT THE BREED, ITS THE OWNER. Cece, I hope one of these days you will give up on the pessimism and just let a story like this fill your heart with joy.
I am so proud of everyone who worked with a Dog from Best Friends. They all deserve so much for all of their love and devotion to these dogs. Maybe one day the world will stand up and realize what can be done with just a little love, and stop feeding into stereotypes.
CeCe I have to wonder if you own a dog and if so how you could say that? I can not believe the number of people that own dogs and STILL think that Pitbulls are more dangerous than other breeds. Especially when most of them couldn’t pick out a Pitbull if it DID bite them.
I have an Australian Kelpie and lots of dog owners think she’s a Pitbull, she been attacked by other dogs while at the dog park and not ONE of those dogs were Pitbulls even though a fair number of Pitties go there.
Just because someone makes a dog fight doesn’t mean the dog wants to fight, and given time and the right owner they can be taught that they don’t have to fight. I’ve seen more Labs and Goldens fight just because they can than I’ve seen Pitties.
Indy’s mom and Wolfb8 – I didn’t blame the breed, did I? In fact the word Pit Bull doesn’t even appear in my post. Whether it was a Pit or any other breed that had been trained to kill other dogs, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, I doubt that drive can be completely trained out of a dog when it was trained into the dog right from the start. Read a post thoroughly before making a comment.
Another good news happy ending from Best Friends!
There seems to be some people out there that don’t know about the good work Best Friends does. They never release a dog for adoption until it has gone through months, if not years, of evaluation, training, and behavior modification. Sure you can’t be 100% certain that a dog wouldn’t attack, that goes for any dog, they are animals after all.
So let’s be happy about the fact that yet another homeless dog now has a good home, and applaud Traci for taking a chance on a dog that otherwise would have had no hope.
What a wonderful happy ending to a fairy tale story! I’m ecstatic for beautiful Halle and for Traci! Such a great way to start the day
It’s so great to see that these dogs are making a full recovery and being put into responsible, loving homes.
Cece, I’m pretty sure Best Friends thoroughly screened the potential owner and would not put her into a home where she’d be taken to an off leash dog park; what’s bred into fighting dogs is prey drive and lots of it, so I doubt they’d put the dog with an owner who would take a risk like that.
I am so, so happy for Halle. She deserves a great home with another dog for a friend and a great owner.
I was very disappointed to read today that Vick will be playing football again. The dogs that weren’t as lucky as Halle have now died in vein:(
Cece why would you even consider that first, if you read the story it says they have been screened for six months A TRAINER INCLUDED in the adopted house and the new owner is ALSO BEING TRAINED we dont go into this totally naive we always have to be cautious and I am sure she was also trained that…..SO SEE THE GLASS HALF FULL INSTEAD OF HALF EMPTY AND BE HAPPY FOR THE DOG……..
This is such a great news, I’ve been following up with Bestfriends on this but are well aware that 8 of the Vick dogs that were taken in from BadRap were adopted as well and are all living wonderful lives.
You can read about how they are now here: http://vickdogsblog.blogspot.com/
Two are awaiting forever homes, one of which has since earned her CGC — yay!
CeCe, I’m sure the people evaluating the dogs at the time had the same thing in their mind therefore the dog that did show aggression was put down. However, out of all the Vick dogs only ONE was aggressive, another was put down because it was extremely ill. Many of the Vick dogs were punished because they WOULDN’T engage in a fight and were tortured because of it. You’re saying a dog that refuses to fight and was punished for that is not deserving of a life because they were born into bad hands but remained sane and friendly?
Hm… that doesn’t sound to fair.
I am so happy for the dogs that made it out with a successful rehabilitation. I was so happy when I first heard that Vick was in jail and no longer could play. Now that I have heard he is going to be signed with somebody it made me so angry and disappointed in the team that will accept him. We can only hope some of the other team mates will play really “ruff” with him.
I can definitely say that we will not be watching his team in our house.