Rescuing -- and redeeming -- pit bulls

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.

Often, their hearts got the best of them. They bolted from the car and chased down dogs of all shapes and sizes. Once they found a home for one animal, they'd soon spot another needy outcast.

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

Moving west, the two commercial 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 help reverse the dogs' criminal image.

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

In most 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 and others, Racer and Reynolds evaluated 49 dogs.

What they found astounded them: Only one dog was put down because of its temperament. Twenty-two, deemed either un-socialized or dog-aggressive, were sent to the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah.

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 took 13 dogs back to Oakland. There was Teddles, Vick's white-and-gray trophy dog, and Hector, who still bears fighting scars on his chest and legs. And Jonny Justice, Zippy, Grace, Iggy and little Uba, many of them bearing the pit bull's signature physical traits: the broad face and brick-like head. The couple has so far found homes for 10 of the dogs.

"I give BAD RAP a lot of credit for what was accomplished with the Vick dogs," said Rebecca Huss, a Valparaiso University law professor who was appointed by federal prosecutors to be guardian of the Vick dogs. "They were there at the forefront."