Dogs Deserve better lands ex-Vick property

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:
Tipton, Pennsylvania–The anti-dog chaining organization Dogs
Deserve Better on May 27, 2011 closed a deal to buy the site of
football player and convicted dogfighter Michael Vick’s Bad Newz
Kennels, on Moonlight Road in rural Surrey County, Virginia.
The property is to become the new Dogs Deserve Better head
office and rescue center, called the Good Newz Rehab Center for
Chained & Penned Dogs.

Arrested in April 2007, Vick in August 2007 pleaded guilty
to related federal felony charges. He served 21 months in prison,
plus two months of home confinement. In November 2007 he sold the
Bad Newz Kennels location to developer Wilber Ray Todd Jr., of
Carrollton, Virgina, for $450,000. Todd reportedly invested
$50,000 in clearing the property of Vick’s dog housing and training
facilities.
“The 15-acre property, including house and sheds, is selling
for $595,000,” said Dogs Deserve Better founder Tamira Ci Thayne.
Dogs Deserve Better raised a down payment of $178,500, Ci Thayne
said, “but we still need to fundraise to pay the remainder, build a
fence around the property to keep the dogs inside and safe, and
install temporary housing for dogs,” until funds are secured to
build “a state-of-the-art rehab center for chained and penned dogs,
as well as to maintain a memorial for the dogs who lost their lives”
in the Vick dogfighting operation.
Ci Thayne herself and more than 100 Dogs Deserve Better
regional representatives have fostered “as many as 400 dogs per year
out of our homes,” Ci Thayne said. “With a center to call our own,
we hope to rescue at least another 500 chained or penned dogs per
year,” Ci Thayne projected, “and move them on to better lives as
members of a real inside home and family. Dog lovers and supporters
of our work will be welcome to visit us and our rescue dogs, as well
as to take a moment to honor the memory of those who died there.”