It all started in 2016 with Honey, an eight week-old German Shepherd puppy given four months to live. At that time, Mike Favor was newly sober after 13 years of active cocaine addiction. He didn’t think he was capable of caring for himself much less another being, but Honey changed all that. Today, his rescue Staten-Island dog rescue, “Freedom Home” specializes in matching pitbulls and drug addicts—two “misunderstood breeds.”
When Mr. Favor started Pitbulls and Addicts, he had ambitious plans to house dogs as well as people in recovery from substance abuse. The dogs, it turned out, were the easy part.
“I’ve been robbed,” he said. “I let people sleep on couches. I put people in hotel rooms. I took guys under my wing for many, many, many months.” He suspects that someone deliberately started a fire that burned down much of the shelter in 2019.
He concedes now that he tried to do more than he could handle. “In the beginning, I was trying to make this visionary dream, just in a rush,” he said. “And it just set me back.”
“I’ve been screwed over way too many times by the humans,” he said. “But when somebody turns to me, I have open arms.”
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