12 Years After Their Rescue, HBO Shows Some Happy Endings for Dogs from Michael Vick's Dogfighting Operation

When Melissa and Paul Fiaccone learned in 2008 about a black pit bull named Cherry — so terrified of humans he’d stay curled under a desk at rescue organization Best Friends Animal Society — the couple felt drawn to the dog, a survivor of ex-football player Michael Vick’s brutal Virginia dogfighting operation.

The Fiaccones would eventually adopt Cherry from Utah-based Best Friends, and these days the graying pup loves kissing the couple and their two young children, and greeting strangers with a raised paw.

The latest episode of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, currently streaming on HBO GO and HBO NOW, includes a 15-minute segment on Cherry’s blossoming — and the tear-jerking transformation of some of the 47 other dogs saved from Vick’s dogfighting ring 12 years ago. 

“He trusts us,” Paul tells HBO in the clip below. “He’s overcome that negative things are going to happen to him.” 

The show also includes some extraordinarily graphic and upsetting scenes of dogfighting at Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels, and an interview with investigator Jim Knorr, who helped to break up the ring. 

Knorr tells HBO that dogs at Bad Newz who lost a fight would be hung, drowned, slammed to death, shot or fatally electrocuted. “It was like a horror story,” he says. “I just didn’t believe people would do that.” 

But the primary focus of the segment is on the surviving dogs and their current lives — the pups have not only become family pets, but canine athletes and therapy dogs. They have also transformed the dog-rescue community; no longer are dogs saved from fighting rings automatically killed, instead, they are kept alive and helped.

Michelle Weaver, director of animal care at Best Friends, who slept in her office with Cherry when he first arrived from Vick’s bust, tells HBO, “For us, they are individual dogs we got to know and love, but they’ve made such a difference for so many dogs across the country.”

Catch Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO, HBO GO and HBO NOW.

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