New Jersey couple offers second chance for sick and abused dogs. The inner city animal shelters Michael Pravec and his wife, Stacey, frequent have locked doors and no sign. These aren't places animals come to get adopted. It's where they go to die. They can't save them all, so the North Haledon couple looks for the worst cases – the ill or abused dogs that are hopelessly hard to find homes for. With the help of donations and a word-of-mouth network of foster homes, animal shelters, veterinarians and trainers, the dogs are nursed back to health, trained and placed in permanent homes. The emotionally wrenching work has consumed their lives and led to the founding of their own non-profit, Special Needs K9.

A chorus of excited barking greets Michael Pravec as he enters the dog pound. The concrete hallway is lined with cages for large dogs, nearly all of them pit bulls, their noses pressed desperately against the bars.
"This is the hardest part," Michael, 45, of North Haledon, says. "You want to leave here in a bus loaded with every single one of them, but you can't."
It's early on a weekday afternoon and Michael, a retired Paramus police officer, is supposed to be at a physical therapy appointment for a neck problem that requires surgery. But instead, he and his wife, Stacey, are at the Associated Humane Societies animal shelter in Newark. They're looking for a certain kind of dog – not the adorable young ones, but the worst cases: the abused, the discarded, the disabled.
"Everybody wants a puppy, not a dog that's scarred up," said Michael, who runs the animal rescue Special Needs K9. "Instead of the most adoptable, we take the least adoptable."
Michael is a man on a mission he sometimes wishes he never found. "It's taken years off my life," he said, adding that nearly 20 years on the police force was "a breeze" compared to the emotionally wrenching work of dog rescue.
While volunteering at a local animal shelter, Michael found himself drawn to the special needs cases – so much so that by the end of 2009, he and his wife made it official, incorporating as Special Needs K9.
With the help of donations, social networking, and relentless effort, the couple has saved more than 50 dogs, most of them abused, many of them in urgent need of medical attention, and placed them in homes. Michael and Stacey are the only employees – they earn no salary – and the work has quickly taken over their lives.
"Mike feels he's obligated to give back to the animals that have been abused. I take my hat off to him," said Denton Infield, who manages Associated Humane Societies-Newark. Many inner city shelters are far less scrupulous, however. Those are the ones the couple frequent but never name – shelters behind locked gates, where abandoned animals are sent to die.
Stacey, an attractive blonde who gave up her interior design business for the rescue, admits she's used her feminine wiles more than once to gain access to these shelters. Sometimes, a sympathetic worker will let her know the shelter is going to euthanize a large number of animals, and Stacey will race over and spend time with each dog slated to die.
"I give them treats, I try to take them out," Stacey said. Almost always, she says, "I leave in tears."
What keeps her going, Stacey says, is the one or two dogs they are able to save – dogs like Pennie, a deaf lab-pit mix pulled from a shelter earlier this year. Pennie was housed at Kamp Kanine, an upscale doggie daycare in Little Falls that works with Special Needs K9. She was nursed back to health and trained in sign commands before being adopted a few weeks ago.
But the work is taking its toll, Michael concedes. The couple do everything themselves, ferrying dogs to doctors and conducting home checks. "We bite off more than we can chew," he said. "When we run out of funds, I just use my own credit card for food or vet bills."
Still, on a Friday morning last month, the couple found themselves driving out to Oakland to see a dog referred by a local shelter. Isabella, a half-lab, half shar pei mix, suffered from entropion, a condition where the edges of a dog's eyelids roll inward, causing a painful scratching of the cornea that can lead to infection. Isabella's case had been left untreated for so long that the repeated scarring had forced her eyes shut.
"This dog is blind," Michael said, as he tried to pull Isabella's eyes open enough to put some drops in. "This is the worst I've ever seen."
Gail Lino, who took in Isabella when the dog's previous owners lost their home to foreclosure, said she could foster Isabella, but couldn't afford the necessary surgery, which can cost upwards of $2,000. The problem was, Special Needs K9 couldn't afford it either.
So, Michael got on the phone to his brothers. In his family, they don't give gifts, they give charity, and the brothers agreed to pull together the money for Isabella's surgery as a birthday gift to their dad. "She's lucky that my dad turns 80 today," Michael sighed.
That night, at a birthday dinner, his dad was "near tears" when presented with a picture of Isabella. The surgery, performed less than two weeks later at Pompton Lakes Animal Hospital, was successful, restoring the dog's sight.
Michael is long overdue for his own surgery. He walks with a stiff gait, unable to turn his neck freely. For months he's been waiting for things to "slow down" so he can set aside some time to recuperate, but there's always one more dog.
"When you start something like this, there's no going back," Michael says. "It's like an addiction. I'd like to stop, but I can't."