LJWorld.com

Oakland, Calif. — For Tim Racer and Donna Reynolds, the dog rescues started with an open-door policy.

Cruising around Chicago on winter nights, they pulled up beside bedraggled strays and swung open the car door. If the animal didn't skitter away, if it wasn't too beaten down to contemplate jumping inside, they figured, there was a chance to save it.

"There was this satisfying sense of justice," Racer recalled. "We knew those dogs should not be allowed to die."

Moving west, the two artists focused their rescue efforts on American pit bull terriers, which they consider the nation's most misunderstood breed. In 1999, they formed Bay Area Dog-Lovers Responsible About Pit Bulls, or BAD RAP, to reverse the dogs' criminal image.

Now they've set their sights on the most vilified outcasts of all: fighting pit bulls taken from disgraced National Football League star Michael Vick's Bad Newz Kennels.

Animals saved

In many dog-fighting busts, the animals are euthanized. But this time, a federal judge ordered Vick to pay for the dogs to be assessed individually by experts who would look past the breed's stereotype.

Working with a team from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (www.aspca.org) and others, Racer and Reynolds evaluated 49 dogs.

What they found astounded them: Only one dog was put down because of temperament. Twenty-two, deemed either unsocialized or dog-aggressive, were sent to the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah (www.bestfriends.org).

The rest were placed with families, including an attorney who wears a T-shirt proclaiming, "My best friend is a pit bull."

As part of the adoption effort, BAD RAP brought 13 dogs back to Oakland. There was Teddles, Vick's trophy dog, and Hector, who bears fighting scars on his chest and legs. And Jonny Justice, Zippy, Grace, Iggy and little Uba, many of them displaying the pit bull's signature physical traits: broad face and bricklike head. The couple have so far found homes for 10 of the dogs.

Over the last decade, Racer and Reynolds have found homes for 400 pit bulls. They assist kennels nationwide in creating pit-bull adoption programs and help new owners train their pets.

For the artists, natives of Detroit, the work is part of the mission to restore a tarnished image. Just a few generations ago, they say, pit bulls were considered America's dog: The dogs helped sell bonds during World War I. And Petie the pit bull later became the mascot of "The Little Rascals," the popular children's TV show.

Because of perverse breeding and training, the animals are now associated with violence. They are the most commonly found breed in shelters nationwide, and hundreds of thousands are euthanized each year.

Racer and Reynolds say the dogs are chosen as fighters because of their athleticism and stamina. Many want nothing to do with fighting, yet are still put down by authorities.

"The Vick case is a milestone," said Reynolds, 46. "For once, these dogs were not destroyed, dismissed as ticking time bombs. They were seen for what they are - as victims."

Despite successful rescue efforts, some animal experts say pit bulls are not for everyone. Abandoned pit bulls need to be evaluated before an adoption and, like all dogs, they need exercise and training. Though fiercely loyal to their owners, some can be aggressive.

Couple's efforts

Racer and Reynolds moved to Oakland in 1996, and bought their first house. The first law of home ownership, they joked, was having their own dog.

Racer wanted a pit bull, something playful and clownish but with a sense of physical confidence. Not Reynolds. "All I knew I'd learned from the media - that these were unpredictable, violent dogs. I thought, why would you want to own a pet like that?"

Then, at a local animal shelter, they found Sally, a 10-month-old pup they couldn't walk away from. They took her home, intending to adopt her out, but noticed something peculiar.

"This was one of the best dogs we'd ever known," Reynolds recalled. "Clearly, we had been lied to about pit bulls."

They decided to keep Sally.

The couple also began scouring animal shelters for other pit bulls and launched a pit bull Web site, www.badrap.org.

But with their time devoted to rescues, the couple struggled to work as artists, Racer as a sculptor and Reynolds as a commercial illustrator. And funding for their new pet cause was so scant that they refinanced their home three times to keep the effort going.

Eventually, enough BAD RAP donations poured in for the couple to draw a salary. And one day, Sally gave Racer canine inspiration.

Using Sally as his model, Racer, 45, began sculpting a wooden pit bull rocker. The art piece, which still sits in the couple's living room, launched Racer in a new direction carving ornate models of pit bulls and other breeds for art and carousel collectors.

"In so many ways," he said, "that dog changed our lives."

Vick case

Neither Racer nor Reynolds had heard of Michael Vick when authorities indicted the Atlanta Falcons quarterback in 2007 for running a covert dog-fighting operation.

The news was grim: Dogs - those that failed in the ring and those that refused to fight - were shot, drowned, beaten to death or electrocuted on Vick's estate in Surrey County, Va. Others were chained to car axles.

Some animal experts called for the surviving animals to be put down.

Reynolds wrote to federal prosecutors, proposing that the animals be evaluated and "given the opportunity to serve as living examples : to encourage the pet-loving public to stay vigilant against the crime of dog fighting."

Authorities agreed.

Last Labor Day weekend, Racer and Reynolds evaluated 49 dogs spread across six Virginia shelters. They found many dogs, marked as killers, kept in isolation with little human contact.

The dogs surprised them. Many frightened animals had to be carried outside for testing, where they cowered in the grass, relaxing only in the presence of other dogs. The hardest test came with the one dog that was eventually euthanized.

"She wouldn't even let us into the pen," Reynolds recalled. "She'd had enough abuse. That was it for her."

Other dog rescue groups nationwide got involved to find homes for the Vick dogs.

"The majority of the Vick dogs did not need rehabilitation; they just needed to be rescued from that negative element," Racer said.

At the Oakland animal shelter, Moose the pit bull stepped out with a weightlifter's stride. But once inside the fenced-in field, the brown-and-white dog was all playful puppy.

Racer and Reynolds are helping the shelter launch a program to find homes for the two-dozen pit bulls left there each week. Like many dogs, Moose has a mysterious past. But Racer thinks of the future.

Moose is getting a pit bull makeover. For starters, his name has been changed to Jelly Roll Jones, something whimsical and artistic.

"We're trying to show that even 90-pound women can own a dog like this - nurses, teachers," Racer said. "Not just tough guys."