​To see him now, whippy tail wagging as he greets a group of children it’s hard to believe that he once cowered at the sight of a human hand.
To see him now, as he zips from weaves to jump, to tunnel, to tire, to chute in a noisy agility ring, it’s hard to believe that he would once flee in terror at the sound of a barking dog.
And to see him now, sitting tall on a podium, proudly wearing a necklace of blue rosettes, it’s impossible to believe that he was once facing a short, grim life and violent death as a fighting dog in the infamous Bad Newz kennels.
That he is alive at all is a triumph, but what he has achieved in the five years since he left that deadly kennel is nothing short of a miracle.

Many dogs from pro-football player Michael Vick’s kennel have made good, passing the AKC’s Canine Good Citizen® (CGC) test, working as therapy dogs, and being great pets and ambassadors for the pit bull.
Audie, however, has sailed over an even higher bar into competitive agility, a busy, boisterous sport that requires speed, brains, focus, and a bombproof temperament.
Five years ago, when Linda Chwistek met him, it would have seemed impossible. 

“I could tell, deep down inside, he just really wanted to please everybody.
 I think inside he had a rock-solid temperament, and 
there were just some environmental things he had to get through,” says Chwistek. “He’s really just an ordinary dog 
who came through an extraordinary situation.”

Death’s Door
When the 49 dogs were seized from the notorious Smithfield, Virginia, kennel, it was generally assumed they were all doomed.
Their survival, as described in Jim Gorant’s book The Lost Dogs, was the result of the hard work of a small group of rescuers, including BAD RAP, a nonprofit San Francisco organization dedicated to helping pit bulls. 
After rigorous temperament tests, only one of the Bad Newz dogs was deemed beyond hope and euthanized. Audie was among the 25 who seemed stable enough to go to foster homes, and perhaps, one day, to become pets.
At the time of the April 25, 2007, seizure from Vick’s property, the pup had no name, just a number—Chesapeake 54902. Along with the rest of the dogs, he spent five months isolated, warehoused as evidence in the case against the football star. The youngster received bare necessities—food and water—but scant human contact.
Once Vick’s legal issues were resolved, BAD RAP volunteers drove Chesapeake 54902 across the country to a foster home in San Diego. There he got a name, "Dutch."The fosters quickly realized that Dutch had the raw material—high energy and intense people focus—to be a great agility dog. And as fate would have it, they also knew that Chwistek was looking for a new agility partner. She seemed the perfect choice, a combination of sensitivity and skill, to polish this rough gem.
 Except for a brief time in college, she has had dogs since she was 8 now able to claim   nearly a half-century of training experience. On top of that, she has devoted more than two decades to working with shelter dogs and established a CGC program for BAD RAP. About 175 pit bulls and bully-breed mixes have successfully completed her program.
In April 2008, just a year after he had been seized from Vick’s property, the energetic Stafford had a new home with Chwistek and her husband, Bill. He also had a new name, Audie, after another little guy with outsized courage—World War II hero Audie Murphy.
Like all the Vick dogs, Audie had little socialization during the critical canine learning period—3 to 12 weeks, when  puppies must be exposed to all kinds of new things so they learn to be unafraid. In those weeks, Audie knew only loneliness, violence, and terror.
It left him with emotional scars, no manners, and a slew of bizarre habits. He didn’t know how to walk up stairs. He had never seen a lawn sprinkler. He ate everything in sight, even cigarette butts. One time he wolfed down a sock, requiring emergency surgery to save his life.
Oh, Brave New World
Easing his fear of humans was the top priority. An ideal spot for this was the waterfront in Chwistek’s town of Vajello, where large groups of commuters would gather to catch high-speed ferries across the bay to San Francisco. “Initially, he was just terrified of them,” Chwistek recalls. “So I sat on a bench, far, far away. Over the course of a couple of years, I kept moving closer and closer to the commuters.”
Slowly, Audie grew accustomed to the comings and goings of strangers.  One of the first to win his trust was a newspaper vendor, who offered treats. Audie wanted the cookies the man was holding out, but he was too afraid to walk up and take them from his hand. Instead, he’d fall to the ground, and crawl on his belly, getting just close enough to snatch the treat.
“It took a good six months for him not to be terrified,” Chwistek says. Today, he leaps up, wildly wagging his tail, as soon as he sees his friend.
Strange dogs also scared him, and this fear posed serious challenges when the team started training. “For a long time, he didn’t understand the difference between a dog who was barking happily, and a dog who was angry,” she says. .
Normal sounds of dogs playing so unnerved him during his first  classes that he’d bolt from the course and seek refuge in his crate or the car.
But Chwistek’s classmates refused to let her give up and offered to do whatever it took to help  keep Audie on track. They  concealed their dogs behind makeshift made oPVC barriers covered with blankets—during Audie’s turn. They tried to keep quiet and not offer too much overwhelming, loud praise that is indicative of many training sessions until after a task was completed. They buoyed both Audie and Chwistek's self confidence.  Audie became more comfortable, and the dogs emerged from behind the screen. Soon he could tune out everything else, except his handler and the obstacles. After two years of steady work, Audie was ready to start his competitive career ! 
In addition to numerous agility awards, he’s also earned his CGC and his first title in the new sport of nosework. In years to come Chwistek hopes to take him into obedience, and perhaps therapy-dog training.
After that, who knows???

This article was originally published in it's entirety in   AKC Family Dog under the title "She Caught a Chuting Star."