Michael Vick's pit bulls find foster homes across nation

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," said 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.

Leslie Nuccio and Hector, a pit bull that was seized from Michael Vick's property, were seen at her home Wednesday in the San Francisco Bay area in California. Several dogs once owned by Michael Vick were saved by a series of unlikely breaks and are now nurtured by new families. (Eric Risberg ~ Associated Press)

Instead, Hector is learning how to be a pet.

After the hell of a fighting ring, he has reached a heaven of sorts: saved by a series of unlikely breaks, transported thousands of miles, along with other dogs rescued with him, by devoted strangers, and now nurtured by Nuccio, her roommate, Danielle White, and their three other dogs.

Authorities descending last year on 1915 Moonlight Road in Surry County, Va., found where Vick, the former NFL quarterback, and others staged pit bull fights in covered sheds, 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. Three co-defendants, Purnell Peace, Quanis Phillips and Tony Taylor, also pleaded guilty and were sentenced, and the four now face state animal cruelty charges. Oscar Allen, who sold a champion pit bull to Vick's dogfighting operation, was sentenced Friday on a federal dogfighting charge.

A bewildered Hector and more than 50 other American Pit Bull Terriers or pit bull mixes were gathered up. The dogs, held as evidence in the criminal prosecutions, were taken to a half dozen city and county pounds and shelters in Virginia.

One dog seized was euthanized as too aggressive, but the others, more than four dozen, have had different fates.

Nearly half have been sent to a Utah sanctuary, Best Friends Animal Society, where handlers will work with them. None showed aggression toward humans and many have potential for adoption someday. Others, evaluated as candidates for foster care and eventual adoption, went to several other groups.

Among the latter was Hector.

Hector's settling into his new life, getting further and further from his past.

Weekly AKC "canine good citizen" classes are correcting 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.