I picked up the telephone on September 7, 2011, and dialed the North Carolina chapter of the Humane Society of the United States. I was on guard from the moment I heard the line ring on the other end. I’d listened repeatedly to local-level rescuers nationwide tell me that they do not trust large charities when it comes to saving actual dogs on a day-to-day basis. There is a shared opinion—which, right or wrong, is common among rescuers and regularly reported in the media—that big organizations collect an awful lot of donations by showing pictures and videos of dogs in distress, but then put that money toward efforts that help animals in general, and not always shelter dogs in particular.
Even given this information, it seemed to me that a prominent, nationally funded organization was my best bet, and the truth was that I wanted to interview somebody from the HSUS in North Carolina for this book, anyway. A representative answered my call, and we spent about twenty minutes talking about the turnaround at Robeson County’s animal shelter. She seemed every bit as professional and smart as activists in North Carolina had told me she was, even while they criticized the organization for which she worked. I had the Turner situation in the back of my mind the entire time we spoke, and as I was winding up the interview, I told her there was something else I wanted to discuss, something about Person County.
I explained that I’d seen something troubling while I was in North Carolina doing research, and I wanted to know if one thing in particular that I’d been told was actually true. I then repeated what Turner had said, so matter-of-factly while sitting next to me in her golf cart, about being able to keep as many as sixty dogs at one time on her land.
“The legal limit for adoptable dogs in a home that are part of a rescue is actually nine,” the representative answered.
Nine
, I thought. I’d counted twenty-seven. I’d written their locations in my notebook—yard, bedroom, kitchen—and then added them up to be sure. And I’d heard what sounded like even more dogs behind the covered doors and blacked-out windows. Even if the dogs were spread across two properties, there were a heck of a lot more than nine. Or even eighteen. And on top of the numbers, the place just hadn’t felt right to me, for whatever that was worth.
I took a deep breath, and I told the representative everything.
While I’d been asking her open-ended questions just moments before, she now began extracting information from me with the sharp beats of a criminal prosecutor. She asked me exactly what I had seen and precisely where I had seen it. She listened while I looked at Google Maps on my computer and tried to remember how I’d driven to Turner’s place. I felt incredibly nervous and talked about all the shelter statistics I’d verified, making sure she understood that I did not want the dogs ending up in the local gas chamber. She soothed my fears by telling me the Humane Society of the United States is a well-funded organization that can offer everything from temporary shelters to assistance with getting the dogs adopted through proper channels. She assured me that I’d done the right thing by providing the information so an expert could go and take a look. I hadn’t filed a police report or accused anyone of a crime. I’d simply seen dogs who appeared to be in a questionable situation, and I’d reached out to people with more experience so they could verify what was actually happening.
By the time we hung up, I had a clear vision of what I thought was going to happen next. An HSUS representative would go to Turner’s homes to look around. If things seemed okay, they would leave Turner and the dogs alone. If things didn’t seem okay and a large number of dogs had to be seized, the HSUS would step in and make sure they didn’t go straight to local animal control and get killed.
That sounded right to me. It sounded reasonable and responsible. I won’t say that I slept well that night, but I did sleep better than I had the previous few nights. Making the call seemed to have been the right thing to do. If Blue had still been in one of those houses, I’d have wanted somebody else to make the call for him.
Less than twenty-four hours later, the representative e-mailed to give me an update. An officer had been sent to take a look around. Whatever he’d seen appeared to be part of an investigation that was already under way. Enforcement agencies in neighboring counties had been contacted. The representative instructed me not to speak to anyone else in the state of North Carolina about what I’d seen. She didn’t want the investigation being compromised. She said she’d be back in touch soon. That was all.
Enforcement agencies in neighboring counties?
I thought.
What on
earth could involve dogs like Blue and an investigation in neighboring
counties?
I flipped back through my notebooks and remembered what an activist had told me about Robeson County: She was now turning her attention from the conditions at the shelter to the growing problem of dogfighting, which seemed to be a serious and emerging threat. A Person County shelter official had mentioned dogfighting, too, when he told me that gang members had once cracked a shelter window trying to get inside to re- trieve pit bulls who had been seized. A Robeson County shelter employee had also mentioned dogfighting, when she told me that men wearing matching colors and tattoos used to enter the facility and bang on all the cages, trying to determine which dogs were the most vicious. There was a reason that both Person County and Robeson County animal shelters were surrounded by tall chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. It wasn’t to keep the good dogs in. It was to keep the bad people out.
The ding of realization might as well have been a game-show buzzer in my mind. I felt my back stiffen. I felt my pulse race. I thought about all of the cash that changes hands whenever a dog gets rescued. I imagined ways that some people might want to enhance that cash flow by, say, using a rescue organization as a cover for something sinister.
It occurred to me that a scared, little, freshly neutered dog like Blue might be somewhat valuable to people like me looking for a new pet, but might in fact be far more valuable to people who wanted a large number of small dogs as bait.
I didn’t come to this conclusion without thinking seriously through the numbers. The economics of dog rescue, I’d learned, do not make anybody rich. The economics of acquiring dogs for purposes other than rescue, however, sometimes do.
Where rescue is concerned, the money trail starts with the shelter where a dog like Blue is found. Most shelters charge an adoption fee. It’s usually a low fee at a shelter where officials actually want to see dogs go to homes. In Person County, where Blue is from, the fee is $25 after a refund when the person gets the dog spayed or neutered. Otherwise, the cost is $100.
Once a rescue acquires a dog from a shelter, the rescue pays to get him a rabies vaccine plus basic shots. The rescue also pays to get the dog spayed or neutered. Whether a Northern or Southern rescue is funding the care, it’s almost always done in the South. Up North where I live, such care costs hundreds upon hundreds of dollars. But in the South, the same needs can often be met at a sharply discounted rate. In some cases, dogs may be diagnosed with mange, heartworm, parvo, or other illnesses that cost hundreds of additional dollars to cure, but for a dog like Blue, the basic investment by the initial rescue group is usually somewhere between $100 and $125. The rescue puts that money into the dog’s care knowing that an adopter like me will then pay to take the dog once he is “adoption-ready.”
Sometimes, a Southern rescue moving dogs into the care of a Northern rescue will add an upcharge, an amount that depends on the rescue group itself. Generally speaking, a dog like Blue can be acquired from a North Carolina rescue for anywhere from $150 to $250—an amount that is consistent with basic, initial vetting. If a group is charging more, it can get a reputation for being “in it for the money” instead of “in it for the dogs.” Northern rescues will stop working with Southern rescues if they feel this is the case, which helps to keep prices in check.
Next comes the transport, which, if done by RV, averages about $100 per dog. So for a pooch like Blue, the total investment in care and transport is somewhere between $250 and $350. If an adopter has not been found by the time the dog arrives up North, the dog goes into a foster home or a kennel at additional expense to the Northern rescue. In Blue’s case, no kennel was needed. I was standing at the end of the rescue pipeline with a $400 check, so the Northern rescue pocketed the difference and applied it toward saving more dogs.
A lot of this money is changing hands in cash—not to mention under the tax shield of charity status. When a rescue truly is putting every possible nickel toward saving more dogs, the profit margins are small, if they exist at all. That’s especially true when you add in things such as collars, leashes, flea and tick prevention, and heartworm medication. Rescuing shelter dogs into good homes is a lot of work for little to no money.
By comparison, there is a great deal of quick cash that can be made by selling shelter dogs to people with different motives. Dogs sold into pharmaceutical trials and other forms of experimentation, for instance, require far less initial investment. Dogs sold into illegal fighting operations, too, can create a far bigger stream of income. Some dogfights have deep-pocketed investors.
Once you understand that math, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which a person establishes a rescue charity for the ultimate purpose of gaining unfiltered access to a constant stream of cheap shelter dogs. It’s also easy to imagine that person moving a handful of dogs each year into homes to keep his tax status as a charity intact, all the while selling the majority of dogs out the back door at far higher prices for pure profit.
And so, while dutifully keeping my mouth closed about whatever the Humane Society had discovered at Turner’s house, I couldn’t help but let my mind run wild. I thought about dogfighting and pharmaceutical experiments and all the ways a shelter dog could be bought and put into harm’s way, all of the kinds of things that might involve a multicounty investigation. I felt physically ill at the thought that Blue, or any of the dogs I’d seen, may have been destined for such a fate.
The only thing I failed to imagine in the case of the dogs at Turner’s house is what actually happened.
A week after my initial report, I spoke with the representative by telephone again. She told me not to worry about dogfighting— though a logical conclusion, it was not true in this particular case—and said the situation was under control. She had personally taken the initiative, she assured me, to contact Person County Animal Control on the day that I originally talked with her.
“What the hell are you talking about!” I blurted into the telephone. “I thought I was very clear in telling you the local animal-control department has a gas chamber and a 95 percent kill rate. I called you, and not them, for a reason.”
She said her job required her to follow the rules of legal jurisdiction, and that’s what she’d done. While the HSUS could offer assistance, it was not actually in charge of anything. She’d been in touch daily with an animal-cruelty officer under Person County Shelter Director Ron Shaw’s command, an officer who had been knocking on Turner’s door for a week without being able to get inside and investigate further. But at the end of the day, the dogs at Turner’s house could very well find themselves right back in the local shelter’s cages and, ultimately, inside the gas chamber. The HSUS would only actually offer assistance depending on how the situation unfolded, if it decided to offer assistance at all.
I felt like screaming, but I tried to return to reason. “Person County Animal Control,” I said, “is going to kill all of those dogs. They have nowhere to put them.”
“That’s not true,” she said as if batting away a confused idiot.
“It’s absolutely true,” I insisted, with anger now rising in my voice. “I’ve just spent months documenting that it’s true. I’m writing an entire book about how it’s true. The shelter director himself gave me the paperwork that proves it’s true. I have it here on my desk. I’ll fax it to you, right now, if you still don’t believe it.”
She took a moment to collect her thoughts, which probably included my reminder that she might see this story in print someday. She then told me that it was her hope, since the HSUS had become involved, that Person County Animal Control would contact her for assistance if a large number of dogs had to be seized. That was the best she could do. She thanked me again for my information and assured me that I’d done the right thing by calling her.
I hung up the telephone, stood up next to my desk, and bent over with sharp pains in my stomach. Blue heard me moaning and wandered into my office to see what was happening. Izzy and Summer followed him. I was certain that I’d just caused at least thirty dogs like them to be killed in a gas chamber.
I sat down on the floor, let Blue crawl into my lap, and began to cry.
Later that night, I joined friends for dinner at a restaurant in Summit, New Jersey. It was a tiny little Italian place with homemade pasta and outdoor tables that attracted wealthy celebrities like CNBC stock guru Jim Cramer, who wandered past our table just before our appetizers arrived. I completely hijacked the evening’s conversation with my friends, neither of whom had any background in dog rescue, but both of whom tried to help me figure out what, if anything, I could do to undo the nightmare I’d apparently set in motion. My elbows were on the table and my head was in my hands. I was pale-faced and inconsolable, like someone who had just witnessed a bloody crime.
“Excuse me,” I heard a voice say from the table next to ours.
I spun in my chair to see a woman with long brown hair and gentle, wise eyes. She reached out her hand to shake mine.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you,” she said. “I’m ToniAnn from Home for Good Dog Rescue here in Summit. I’ve saved more than six hundred dogs from Georgia in the past couple of years.”
This woman sailed into my day like a life raft for my conscience, which had not only become untethered but now felt long lost at sea.