Michael Vick working with the Humane Society!

The idea that a man who has just served 23 months in prison for running a dogfighting business — and who has confessed to drowning and electrocuting dogs who became too old, injured, or weak to be profitable — sounds as absurd as John Gotti working with Mother Teresa. Or Magneto working with the X-Men. But Mr. Vick met twice while he was in prison with Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society, and told him that he wants to help the organization's anti-dogfighting programs.

 

"My first reaction was, 'You gotta be kidding,' " Mr. Pacelle told us. "But as I set with the issue more, it began to make sense.

"I'm not embracing Michael Vick," he emphasized. "I'm not saying he's a changed man. I'm not saying that we want him reinstated in the NFL. He said, 'I want to work with you on an anti-dogfight program.' And after much deliberation and soul searching, we said, 'here are some programs'."

The Humane Society has programs to educate against dogfighting in Atlanta and Chicago. They would like to expand to Los Angeles, Charlotte, and other cities. Dogfighting is illegal everywhere. The law long ago decided that it is brutal to animals, and brutalizing for people.

But dogfighting is still widespread. The Humane Society already works with young men who were once involved in dogfighting and other crimes. They can often reach youngsters who see dogs as personal, walking weapons, instead of living beings who share and enrich human lives. So, says Wayne Pacelle, they know how to work with someone like Michael Vick.

I asked Mr. Pacelle if, just at the fundamental human level, he sensed that Michael Vick was sincere and genuinely regretful.

"I went into meetings knowing I could never answer that," he told me. "I could spend one, two, five hours with him, but the only thing that would prove he is a changed person is a sustained involvement that you can see captured his heart."

Of course, seeing someone convicted of dogfighting suddenly turned into an advocate for dogs also sounds like a premise in a Christopher Buckley novel, where the celebrity roars at his advisors, "Get me a new image and get back my endorsements!"

But Wayne Pacelle says he finds this powerful self-interest reassuring.

"To me, that's an insurance policy," he says. "That he won't consider this just a six-month or three-month gambit, but that he's in it for years."

(By the way: Michael Vick's attorney and his public relations counsel were the people who contacted the Humane Society. But prison communications are limited.)

Mr. Pacelle says that there was much in his meetings with Michael Vick that still appalls him. Mr. Vick didn't just have a financial interest in dogfighting. He told Mr. Pacelle how he personally drowned many dogs, holding their heads in buckets of water as they struggled, because shooting them would alert authorities to the crime that he knew he was committing.

"Terrible, criminal," Mr. Pacelle said simply.

He acknowledges that some local Humane Societies, and some of his own contributors, are outraged by his decision to let Mr. Vick become involved in anti-dogfighting programs.

But Wayne Pacelle says that about 70 percent of the dogs they see in urban animal shelters are pit bulls. Young men get them to be walking weapons, or some kind of strutting macho display. It's on these mean streets that he thinks Michael Vick may be able to bring a message that will be compelling because it comes from him, and not just the usual suspects (including me) who love animals.