His back resting comfortably against her chest, Hector nestles his massive canine head into Leslie Nuccio’s shoulder, high-fiving pit bull paws against human hands.
The big dog — 52 pounds — is social, people-focused, happy now, it seems, wearing a rhinestone collar in his new home in sunny California.
But as Hector sits up, deep scars stand out on his chest, and his eyes are imploring. “I wish he could let us know what happened to him,” says Nuccio, the big tan dog’s foster mother.
Hector ought to be dead, she knows — killed in one of his staged fights, or executed for not being “game” enough, not winning, or euthanized by those who see pit bulls seized in busts as “kennel trash,” unsuited to any kind of normal life.
Instead, Hector is learning how to be a pet, nurtured by Nuccio, her roommate, Danielle White, and their three other dogs.
The animals barrel around the house, with 4-year-old Hector leading the puppylike antics — stealth underwear grabs from the laundry basket, sprints across the living room, food heists from the coffee table — until it’s “love time” and he decelerates and engulfs the women in a hug.
Hector has come such a long way since he was trapped in the horrors of Michael Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels.
Authorities descending last year on 1915 Moonlight Road in Surry County, Va., found where Vick, a former NFL quarterback, and others staged pit bull fights, tested the animals’ fighting prowess and destroyed and disposed of dogs that weren’t good fighters.
Vick is serving a 23-month federal sentence after admitting that he bankrolled the dogfighting operation and helped kill six to eight dogs.
A bewildered Hector and more than 50 other American pit bull terriers or pit bull mixes were taken to a half-dozen shelters in Virginia.
How much to trust the capacity of fighting dogs to have a new life as pets or working dogs in law enforcement or therapy settings is an issue that has divided animal advocates. But nearly half the dogs seized from Vick have been sent to a Utah sanctuary, Best Friends Animal Society, where handlers will work with them. None showed human aggression, and many have potential for adoption someday.
Others were evaluated as being immediate candidates for foster care and eventual adoption.
Among the latter was Hector, who is taking weekly AKC “canine good citizen” classes to correct his social ineptitude. And he’s taking cues on good manners from patient Pandora, a female pit bull mix who’s queen of the household’s dogs. Once Hector graduates, he’ll take classes to become a certified therapy dog, helping at nursing homes and the like.
For now, he’s learning the simple pleasures of a blanket at bedtime, a peanut butter-filled chew toy, even classical music.
“I put on Yo-Yo Ma one day and he cocked his head, laid down and listened to the cello next to the speaker,” Nuccio said. “He’s turning out to be a man of high class and culture.”
