Saving Gracie

Saving Gracie

How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills

Carol Bradley

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Copyright © 2010 by Carol Bradley. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-470-44758-1

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Edited by Beth Adelman

Book design by Lissa Auciello-Brogan

Book production by Wiley Publishing, Inc. Composition Services

For Steve,and for Sadie, Delta, Bosco, Chachi, and Jillie,who taught me that all dogs matter.

Preface

The north side of Great Falls, Montana, where I live, is ideal for dog-walking. Craftsman bungalows and 1940s-era houses line the residential streets, and the sidewalks are shaded by towering ash and elm trees. I head out each morning with Chachi, my Husky-Golden mix; my Border Collie, Jillie; and a pocketful of treats to dole out to canine friends along the way. Among the dogs we stop to visit are Bear, a shaggy German Shepherd with kind blue eyes; Jocko, a red-haired mutt who waits eagerly for his prize; and Cody, an Akita whose enormous nose peeks out from under a vinyl fence, quietly passing the time until a biscuit skitters her way.

Every now and then, on a less familiar block, I stumble across a dog confined to a small run, excrement piling up inside, obviously ignored by its family. These animals usually sit too far back from the street to toss a treat to—they would set off an alarming racket if I tried—yet I can see the yearning in their eyes as my own dogs trot by. The sight of a lonely, cooped-up dog is distressing. But then I remind myself that even these dogs live like kings compared to dogs confined in puppy mills.

It’s one of America’s most shameful secrets: the hidden world of substandard kennels, where dogs are caged like chickens and forced to produce puppies over and over, until they can produce no more. For all the attention we bestow upon man’s best friend, all the designer collars we fasten around their necks, the doggy day care programs we enroll them in, and the organic wheat-free premium biscuits we feed them, you’d think we would be more curious about where dogs come from—that we’d be more knowledgeable about the bad breeders in our midst and more willing to blow the whistle on them.

In fact, many people are incensed. Do an Internet search on the phrase “puppy mills” and up pop 1.5 million results. Despite the plethora of information, I am continually surprised at how many of my friends and acquaintances haven’t a clue that hundreds of thousands of companion animals in this country are living out their lives in barbaric conditions.

I didn’t know puppy mills existed either until the fall of 2002, when Collie breeder Athena Lethcoe-Harman and her husband, Jon, tried to relocate their kennel from Alaska to Arizona. To make the 2,240-mile journey, the couple crammed 180 Collies into a tractor trailer, in cages stacked three high, and hit the road without stopping for food or water. By the time their rig crossed into Montana from Canada late on Halloween night, the dogs were wet, shivering, hungry, and yelping loudly enough to alert the customs inspector. He, in turn, contacted law enforcers for rural Toole County. Sheriff Donna Matoon could have taken the easy way out and let the Harmans pass through. Instead, she did the right thing: She ordered a deputy to arrest the couple and charge them with multiple counts of animal cruelty.

The case dragged on for nine months. For much of that time, residents of Shelby, Montana, were left to care for the dogs. They housed them in a barn at the local fairgrounds and devised a complicated schedule for feeding them, walking them, and working to dismantle their fear of human beings. As autumn turned to winter and then to spring, the workload required to operate “Camp Collie” was nothing short of staggering.

It took two trials to convict the Harmans and free the dogs up for adoption. Before the trials were over, dozens of animal lovers from Florida to California flew in to donate their time on the Collies’ behalf. When Shelby-area residents became overwhelmed with the task, the dogs were moved to Great Falls, where another army of generous souls stepped forward to do their part.

I covered the case for the
Great Falls Tribune
, and it opened my eyes to the widespread existence of puppy mills and to the cost, both in real dollars and in human effort, required to salvage their victims. Years later, I still see survivors of Camp Collie around town. Adopted by loving families, most of these beautiful dogs have overcome their past abuse, but some never will forget. They are so scarred by their experience that they still hide in a corner or flinch at the sight of a belt.

I began to track puppy mill busts in other communities across the United States, places where animal shelters and volunteers suddenly find themselves caring for 50, 100, 300 dogs. The problem, I realized, was immense—a national disgrace. That’s when the idea for this book began to take shape.

Pennsylvania isn’t the worst puppy mill state, but it is home to a large number of dog breeders as well as a cluster of activists—veteran investigator Bob Baker, consumer advocate Libby Williams, vocal opponent Bill Smith, and even Governor Ed Rendell among them—who are determined to clamp down on the bad operators. The influences at work there created a perfect storm of events needed to tell this story.

It is in Pennsylvania, too, that I found Gracie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel whose breed was developed to be companion dogs but who instead seemed destined to spend her life in a cage.
Saving Gracie
traces this resilient dog’s journey out of a puppy mill and tells the stories of the people who helped her along the way: from Cheryl Shaw, the humane society police officer who raided her kennel; to Lori Finnegan, the prosecutor who took Gracie’s breeder to court; to Pam Bair, who cared for Gracie in a shelter; and finally to Linda Jackson, the woman who gave Gracie a permanent home. How Linda saved Gracie and Gracie, in turn, unlocked Linda’s heart is a story that is replayed thousands of times over in this country each year as families rescue puppy mill survivors, realize for themselves the awful truth about the dark side of dog breeding, and begin spreading the word, one person at a time, that recklessly run kennels need to be shuttered for good.

Chapter 1: Caged for Life

The puppy began life blind, deaf, and quivering with energy. The warm, pulsating shapes of her littermates surrounded her, and with every breath she inhaled the sweet scent of her mother’s milk. The fragrance of the milk was overpowering. The puppy pushed her way toward the mother dog’s belly, nuzzled against it, suckled until she was full, and then slept.

For this Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, the earliest chapter of life unfolded much the way it does for all puppies. Ninety percent of the day she slumbered; she nursed the other 10 percent. Satiating her hunger was foremost on her mind. Eyes shut, she squirmed under and around the other puppies to latch hold of a swollen nipple. She wedged as close to her mother as she could, dropping back only when a heavier puppy nudged her out of the way.

Two weeks of nursing and sleeping, and then one day her eyes opened. She could see—blurrily at first, faint blobs of light and then distinct shapes. In the darkened room she could make out her mother’s pink stomach, puffed out with sustenance. She could see her peach-fuzzed littermates lined up beside her. She could detect the crisscross pattern of the metal cage she was housed in. And on the other side of the wire, she could glimpse the silhouettes of the people who came and went.

Once or twice a day, without warning, the door to the room swung open, the lights were flipped on, and the large shapes appeared. The people shuffled about silently. Hands reached into the crates to set down a pan of water or pour some food, then the people moved on.

At three weeks of age the puppy’s ears began working, and suddenly her universe reverberated with noise. When the lights were on she could see rows of cages filled with dogs who yelped frantically whenever the big door opened and the people stepped inside. The dogs slammed against the cages hungrily, only to shrink back when footsteps neared. The clamor lasted as long as the people made their rounds. When the voices and the footsteps were gone, darkness filled the room and the barking subsided. Once again it was quiet enough for the puppy to hear the squirming grunts of her littermates and the comforting sound of her mother’s rough tongue licking her coat.

In a loving environment, the black-and-white dog with the feathery ears would just be starting to sample life’s mysteries. At two and a half weeks she would have been walking. At three weeks she would have learned to run. Loping, trotting, sprinting, she would have spent her days discovering the soft feel of carpet, the firmness of sidewalk, the coolness of grass. The people in her life would have held and played with her, dangled toys in front of her, and encouraged her to explore.

By week four the Cavalier would have begun eating food. She would be wagging her tail, baring her teeth, biting, growling, barking, and chasing. By week five she would be playing with the rest of her litter as a group. By week seven her sense of curiosity would be insatiable. She would be eager—no, anxious—to investigate everything she could see, taste, or smell. By week eight she would begin to respond to her name.

But this was not a loving home. There would be no running for this dog, no joyful discoveries, no toys. The Cavalier was born into a large-scale and shoddily run commercial kennel—a puppy mill. She shared a crate with her mother and the rest of the pups in her litter, but there was no room to frolic; there was barely any room to walk. The darkness of the room left little to see. She smelled plenty of scents, but they were disagreeable odors: the stench of feces, the caustic vapors of urine. Her eyes stung from the fumes.

No dog born into a puppy mill is lucky, but if fortune had shone on this Cavalier, she would have escaped the wretchedness. In a matter of weeks, the breeder might have sold her to a distributor for anywhere from $100 to $200. She would then be loaded onto a truck and shipped hundreds of miles away to the distributor’s own facility, where she would be held for forty-eight hours, bathed, and given her “puppy shots.” Next, she would be crated up and trucked again, this time to a pet store, which would pay the distributor anywhere from $200 to $300. Store employees would give her another quick bath, inject her with a new round of vaccinations, and offer her for sale. After a few days, maybe weeks in a pet store cage, she would be sold for $1,600 or more, the going rate for Cavaliers. In the fickle dog industry, Cavaliers were currently a popular breed.

The journey would not be pleasant. On the contrary, it would be fraught with risks. Had she been sold this way, the Cavalier likely would have been weaned early—a stressful occurrence that could instill in her a permanent sense of fearfulness and insecurity, made worse after being transported in a dark vehicle crammed with other unfamiliar dogs. The round of shots could overwhelm her immune system, exposing her to the very diseases the vaccines were supposed to prevent. The trip to the pet store might subject her to any number of illnesses—from kennel cough to diarrhea to intestinal parasites, eye and ear infections, even mange. That was scenario one.

In scenario two, the Cavalier might be sold directly over the Internet. That would be the most lucrative route for the breeder—no distributors and pet store owners looking for their own markup on the pup’s price. If her new owners weren’t able to pick her up at the kennel themselves, she would be flown to them in a crate. Her family would have no inkling of the conditions she was born into and no opportunity to meet the puppy’s mother. By purchasing her, her family would be investing in a product of unsound breeding practices that increase the likelihood she would be predisposed to heart problems, neurological disease, hip and kneecap abnormalities, cataracts, and a host of other hereditary problems. The Cavalier’s new owners might be willing to spend hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars to make her well. She might or might not overcome her lack of socialization, but at least she would have the chance to lead a happy, though compromised, life.

The worst fate of all was scenario three: to be kept behind, turned into breeding stock, forced to produce litter after litter and doomed to confinement for the rest of her life. If that were to happen, the Cavalier could look forward to a diet of substandard food and stagnant water. She would become covered in her own excrement, causing her skin to itch and her eyes to sting. The wire bottoms of her crate would produce sores on the bottoms of her paws, and her toenails might grow so long that she would have difficulty standing. There would be little to no veterinary care and almost no social interaction, and the psychological damage could be substantial. The little dog would learn to trust no one and nothing. She would live out her life in a state of uncertainty, fear, and tedium. The lack of socialization—no toys, no blankets, and little if any interaction with humans—could drive her insane: Like many puppy mill dogs, she might begin to circle her cage endlessly and obsessively to stave off boredom.

Becoming a breeding dog in a puppy mill would subject this Cavalier to the most brutally mundane life imaginable, a life far worse than other victims of factory farming are forced to tolerate. Veal calves are confined to wooden crates so small they can’t turn around, but they are slaughtered—spared further agony—at eighteen to twenty weeks. Pigs live in overcrowded concrete pens, breathing dusty, noxious air, until they balloon up to 250 pounds; but after six months, their brutal lives are ended. Chickens are crammed four to a cage, beaks clipped, for just six weeks before they are killed. But breeding dogs in puppy mills languish five to ten years or more in a cage before they are finally put out of their misery. Even death, when it mercifully comes, can be painful. The last thing many worn out, vacant-eyed puppy mill dogs experience is a bullet to the head.

What would become of this Cavalier puppy? She had an eye-catching coat—swaths of black hair sliced through with splashes of white on her legs and chest. Her front left leg was distinguished by a striking black mark, an inch-long checkmark swoosh. And she possessed the soulful brown eyes Cavaliers were known for. She was a beauty, and that was a bad thing; it meant the breeder would keep his eye on her. In time, he knew, her coat would grow long and silky, with tiny feathers of hair adorning her front legs. And the appealing roundness of her head and face could yield promising offspring.

He’d keep this one, the breeder decided. Turn her into a breeding machine. She would live out her days in his overheated kennel, in the same cage where she had been born. The other puppies in her litter would be shipped out in another couple of weeks, but this dog would stay behind, forced to reproduce until she was worn out.

She would deliver her first litter while she was still a puppy herself, then every six months after that. With each new litter, she would need to provide near-constant care: stimulating the puppies’ bottoms when they were too young to eliminate on their own, nursing them, providing emotional stability as her offspring began to feel their way. But as her delivery dates grew near, there was no calm and quiet place to retreat to, no blanket in a whelping box to help her feel safe and secure. If she were to die while giving birth, it would be written off as the cost of doing business. As the saying goes, “With livestock comes deadstock.”

The Cavalier would never get to experience the companionship she was bred to provide. She would learn quickly that each new day wasn’t something to savor, but something to endure.