Saving Gracie (15 page)

Animal welfare advocate Marsha Perelman and veteran puppy mill investigator Bob Baker reach out to pet a puppy mill survivor. By 2006, Baker had visited more than 800 substandard kennels across the country. He knew better than anyone how weak and ineffective the laws governing kennel operators were. (
Libby Williams
)

In 2005, Williams helped rescue eighty mixed-breed dogs when the broker died and his widow contacted her organization. The dogs were several months old and looked happy and socialized in their pens, but as soon as anyone reached in to pick them up, they were terrified—frozen, she recalled. At another puppy mill, a friend accompanying Williams furtively called her attention to a mother dog pacing about in a cage, a dead puppy hanging from her mouth. Elsewhere in the barn, breeding dog after breeding dog lay on wire floors, nursing puppies. Years later, Williams was still haunted by the memory of the mother dogs refusing to make eye contact. “They looked down as if they were ashamed—as if to say, ‘I’m not even worthy of having you look at me,’ ” she said. “They just looked so spent.” She shook her head at the thought that, weeks later, unsuspecting buyers would spend up to $1,500 apiece for the puppies produced by these overbred dogs.

Pennsylvania’s kennels were nothing short of scandalous. Newspapers had repeatedly exposed the conditions. Between 1991 and 1996, the
Pittsburgh Press, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer,
and
New York Post
detailed the fetid environment, particularly in kennels operated by the Amish. To the surprise of many, Amish farmers admitted openly to raising dogs as livestock—they confined them to tiny cages and destroyed the breeding animals as soon as they stopped producing. The
Post
described dogs caged in dimly lit barns—filthy, covered in feces and so broken in spirit they were “unresponsive to a visitor’s presence and voice.” The stories prompted the passage of the puppy lemon law, but did nothing to curtail the poor breeding practices.

Libby Williams and Sweetie, a Gordon Setter who found a new life with her after ten years in a dilapidated kennel. (
Libby Williams
)

Pennsylvania’s 1982 law wasn’t working, in large part because it wasn’t being enforced. Breeders were ignoring space requirements and, worse, denying veterinary care to their dogs. When a dog became sick or injured, it simply languished; it cost the breeder too much to take the dog to the vet. A breeding dog’s reward for producing litter after litter was to be shot dead around the age of 5 or 6.

The state laws created a situation that made it difficult, if not impossible, to nail unscrupulous breeders. Pennsylvania’s dog wardens had the authority to inspect licensed breeders. But it was police officers employed by nonprofit humane societies who actually enforced the state’s animal cruelty law. Unless they had a warrant, however, humane officers weren’t allowed to enter private property to determine whether any cruelty had taken place. It was a classic Catch-22: The people who were permitted to see the problems were not allowed to do anything about them. In theory, dog wardens could inform humane officers of a problem, but few did.

The relationship between dog law officials and the breeders had grown far too cozy, as far as Williams was concerned. A bureau official later conceded that instead of reprimanding breeders for committing violations, wardens were more inclined to help them comply with the rules.

Pennsylvania had fifty-three dog wardens, and needed more. Money wasn’t an issue. The state earmarked revenue from dog license sales to pay for enforcement, something most states didn’t do. But Pennsylvania wasn’t spending the money: Its Dog Law Bureau was sitting on a $14 million surplus.

The state’s puppy lemon law needed tightening, too. Buyers who unknowingly purchased a sick or diseased dog had the right to return the puppy for a refund, exchange it for another dog, or seek reimbursement for veterinary bills up to or equal to the purchase price of the dog. But the law didn’t go far enough for families whose new pet turned out to have a life-threatening illness such as parvovirus or pneumonia; dog owners quickly racked up hundreds, if not thousands of dollars more in vet bills than they could ever hope to get back in the form of a refund.

The governor’s ad hoc committee said breeders should be required to pay all of the veterinary bills associated with a sick puppy. The committee also said the attorney general’s office should survey veterinarians to determine which kennels ill puppies were coming from, and publicize the puppy lemon law more aggressively to make sure buyers understood their rights. The absence of veterinary care provided to dogs in commercial kennels was the system’s single biggest failure, Baker believed.

Aware that animal welfare advocates took a dim view of their practices, commercial breeders had become more careful to conceal their operations. Where once hutches full of dogs could be seen from the highway, the cash crops were now hidden inside low-slung metal barns. Some commercial breeders refused to deal with the public at all—they sold their dogs to brokers instead. A few breeders admitted to Baker that they knew people would be horrified if they saw their facilities up close.

•  •  •

The raid on
wolf’s
kennel occurred a month after Rendell formed his ad hoc committee. The nasty details of Mike-Mar Kennel filled newspaper columns and the airwaves. This time the governor decided to go public with his discontent. In March 2006, a month after the raid, Rendell told the
Philadelphia Inquirer
he was considering a shake-up in the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement. While he was at it, he announced another bold move: he planned to fire all fourteen members of the state Dog Law Advisory Board. The board was made up of dog breeders, veterinarians, representatives from animal welfare groups, animal research entities, sportsmen, and pet shop owners, and had no real enforcement authority. The group had convened just three times since Rendell took office. Rendell said the board had not been active enough, and the ASPCA chimed in, faulting the bureau for hiring too few dog wardens, failing to train them properly, and failing to report cruelty violations to humane society police officers.

Behind the scenes, the ad hoc committee offered another recommendation: that Rendell should empower the state’s dog wardens to continue monitoring breeders whose licenses had been revoked. The governor agreed. If the wardens had possessed that authority earlier, they could have stopped Wolf long before the Chester County SPCA was forced to step in, the governor said. “People say we lie down on kennels, but here they did the right thing [revoking Wolf’s license], and the guy goes back in business and we never know about it,” Rendell said. “Once we close a kennel, we should go back and do spot checks.”

The message to breeders was unmistakable. Moreover, Rendell was just gearing up. On October 17, 2006, seven months after the raid on Mike-Mar Kennel, the governor held a press conference on the steps of the Chester County Courthouse to propose a sweeping overhaul of the state dog law. Flanking him were Chester County SPCA board president Sandra Thielz and humane society police officers Cheryl Shaw, Michele Beswick, and Rebecca Robers. Also on hand was one of the dogs rescued from Michael Wolf’s kennel—a colorfully bedecked Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Cricket—embraced by her new owner, Amy Dluhy of Chester Springs.

“We are taking strong steps to protect consumers, reputable breeders and kennels, and the defenseless animals whose health and welfare is at the heart of this important issue,” the governor said.

He announced that Jessie Smith, a twenty-year veteran of the attorney general’s office and former president of the Harrisburg Area Humane Society, would fill the newly created position of special deputy secretary for dog law enforcement in the Department of Agriculture. Rendell named Jeffrey Paladina as special prosecutor for dog law enforcement. And he appointed a team of four kennel compliance specialists to make sure the kennel provisions of the dog law were carried out.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell greets Amy Dluhy and her Cavalier, Cricket, after announcing a sweeping plan to overhaul the state’s puppy mills. (
Chuck McDevitt
)

Among other things, the governor wanted the state legislature to give dog wardens the authority to seize dogs in distress. While cruelty charges were pending, the breeder in question would either have to pay for the care of the dogs or forfeit ownership. That would help head off the kind of stalemate the Mike-Mar Kennel raid had created. And the secretary of agriculture would be required to revoke the license of any kennel owner convicted of cruelty. Not only that, but the license would be withheld for ten years.

The legislative proposals were one thing, but it was Rendell’s regulatory wish list that incited breeders most. The governor wanted to double the size of cages in all kennels, require that all dogs be exercised for at least twenty minutes a day, and establish minimum standards for lighting, temperature control, ventilation, air movement, bedding, sanitation, slope of ground, and flooring materials. Breeders would be required to keep more detailed records.

Finally, Rendell announced a special team to improve state dog law enforcement, and he named sixteen people to the Dog Law Advisory Board. The new members included representatives from agriculture, breeders, dog club officials, veterinarians, and others. Their first assignment was to review changes to the state dog law. The board planned to meet before the proposed regulations were published so that all concerned could review them before a sixty-day comment period got under way.

“This is just the beginning of our efforts to strengthen the dog law,” the governor said. “I encourage the public to play an active role in this important and ongoing process.”

Three weeks later, Pennsylvania voters reelected Rendell, a Democrat, to a second term with 60.4 percent of the vote over former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann. Anyone who thought the puppy mill issue was nothing more than campaign rhetoric, to be shelved once the election was history, was in for a surprise. The following month, the governor was on hand when nearly 300 people crowded into the Farm Show meeting hall in Harrisburg for the first gathering of the new Dog Law Advisory Board. The board members faced a gauntlet of anger from small-scale and large-volume breeders alike over the proposed regulations, which they said were cumbersome, expensive, and unenforceable.

A decade earlier, the Pennsylvania Federation of Dog Clubs had urged passage of the puppy lemon law, but now it opposed cracking down on puppy mills. “This document would not allow me to keep a litter of puppies next to my bed because it is not a washable room,” the federation’s Nina Schaefer said.

Ken Brandt, a former state representative who now headed the Pennsylvania Professional Dog Breeders Association, argued that dog breeding had helped keep Amish and Mennonite families on the farm. Many of them would be forced out of the dog business and unable to pay their mortgages, he said. He also warned that tougher regulations might encourage breeders to operate without a license as a way of avoiding laws they couldn’t afford to obey. “There’s a demand out there for dogs,” Brandt said, “and that demand will stay.”

The chorus of opponents included Cynthia Miller, a delegate to the AKC. She said inadequate enforcement of the existing law appeared to be the problem, and she cautioned that tougher regulations could prove more burdensome and could “make things worse.” Shelters and rescue groups weren’t happy, either. They said the paperwork required by the new rules would engulf them, and the move to bigger cages would limit the number of dogs they could rescue.

Rendell responded that shelters and small breeders would be exempt from some of the rules, but he acknowledged that some of the largest kennels in the state might feel the hit. He said his goal was not to get rid of Pennsylvania’s kennels, however.