Saving Gracie (6 page)

Chapter 7: A Safe Place for Dog 132

The first thing that struck Pam Bair was the smell, an odor equal parts barnyard and sewer that assaulted her the instant she stepped into the hallway of the Berks County Animal Rescue League.

“Whoa! Is that you, Alison?” she asked with a sardonic grin.

Humane society police officer Alison Rudy acknowledged her with a rueful grimace. Rudy and fellow humane officer Katie McGlory had just arrived with a dozen puppy mill rescues from the Berks County Humane Society in Reading. The Humane Society had agreed to house twenty-five dogs from the Chester County SPCA, but quickly decided that the maximum number it could handle was thirteen. The Animal Rescue League had offered to house the rest.

All Bair knew was that the dogs had come from a high-volume breeding operation in Lower Oxford that had been busted five days earlier. The dogs had now taken their third road trip in as many days. “The journey had to be intimidating for those dogs,” Bair thought as Rudy and McGlory carried in the last of the crates.

Bair ran the Rescue League’s boarding kennel—the wing set aside for dogs whose owners were out of town. She also tended to pregnant dogs, orphaned puppies, and, every now and then, a group of dogs involved in a court case, which was the category Wolf’s dogs fell into. The newcomers would remain at the Rescue League until the charges against Wolf were resolved, however long that took.

Inside one of the crates, a tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with enormous eyes and feathery ears trembled. A self-confident animal might have been curious about her new surroundings. She might have glanced about at the shady elms that flanked the shelter or squinted up at the winter sun. But Dog 132 wasn’t noticing any of this. She cast her eyes downward as Rudy sat her crate against one wall of the wide hallway into the boarding wing, where Bair stood waiting.

Bair knelt and peered inside the crates. She counted one Havanese puppy, two English Bulldogs, and nine Cavaliers. She’d been told to expect a dozen dogs, and it looked as though all twelve were accounted for. She’d cleaned out six cinderblock kennels; the dogs were small enough to fit in them nicely, two by two. The Bulldogs could share one kennel. The Havanese could bunk with one of the Cavaliers. That left eight more Cavs, and it occurred to Bair that if she separated them by color—if she put a tricolor and a chestnut and white Blenheim in each three-by-three-foot kennel—it would be easier to tell them apart.

She had to admit, the thought of caring for a dozen new dogs at once was a little overwhelming. Bair knew something about English Bulldogs, but next to nothing about Havanese and Cavaliers. They were considered toy breeds, and when it came time for the Toy Group to trot around the ring at the Westminster Kennel Club Show, well, that’s when she turned off the TV, got up off the couch, and went to do the laundry. “Toy” dogs weren’t real dogs, as far as she was concerned.

Bair could see that one of the Blenheim Cavaliers was close to giving birth. Despite her distended belly, the dog looked puny and seemed overcome with fatigue. One of the mostly black and white Cavaliers, number 132, was also smaller and more sickly looking than the rest. She must have had a litter recently—her mammary glands practically swept the ground. Bair especially wanted to keep an eye on that one. She assigned the pregnant dog the kennel on the end, closest to the aisle, and the black and white dog the second kennel from the end—the dogs would be easier to see there, even from a distance.

McGlory gently lowered the crate containing Dog 132 onto the cement floor, unlatched the door, removed the foul-smelling creature, and set her down in her new home. Folded neatly and tucked into one corner of the kennel was a faded pink blanket, Bair’s favorite color. In the far corner sat a bowl of clean water.

After years of living on a hard wire floor, her paws raw from being splayed out, the solid feel of the cool cement floors must have felt strange but good to the little dog. Outwardly, though, the Cavalier registered nothing; she stood motionless. Minutes later, McGlory delivered her roommate: a Blenheim Cavalier, another female. If Dog 132 recognized the other dog, she didn’t show it; she ignored the Blenheim, and the Blenheim ignored her. “Oh, great,” thought Bair, “now there are two dogs standing side by side like statues.”

She shook her head. The Bulldogs and the Havanese would be easy enough to bond with, but the Cavaliers were going to be high maintenance. She just knew it.

•  •  •

Even the best-intentioned shelters can be dimly lit, smelly, and raucous—light years better than a puppy mill, certainly, but a far cry from a real home. But if most shelters could be likened to a Motel 6, the Berks County Rescue League shelter was more along the lines of a Marriott. It sat on ten acres of lush, wooded grounds crisscrossed with tree-lined walking paths. In addition to the kennels and a crematorium, the main building offered a grooming room and a surgical suite. Outside, a small barn housed a rotating parade of horses, llamas, and other large animals. On a grassy spot halfway up a bank sat a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, and next to it was a saying of Assisi’s that had been carved into stone: “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men.” It was a gentle reminder that any animal brought there deserved to be treated with respect.

The timing of the rescue was fortuitous. It was February, the off-season for the rescue league’s boarding business. As a result, that wing of the shelter was only half full, giving Bair and her associates extra time to devote to the puppy mill survivors. It was obvious the dogs were going to need as much as attention as the staff was able to give.

The Berks County shelter usually dealt with lost or abandoned dogs, or dogs whose owners no longer wanted them. Either the dogs had grown too old and feeble, or they didn’t get along with the family’s new pet, or their owners had divorced and moved to apartments that didn’t allow dogs. The shelter lacked the space and money to house dogs indefinitely, however. Eventually, if someone didn’t adopt a dog, the animal was euthanized. For four million dogs in the United States each year, ending up at a shelter means a date with death.

The puppy mill survivors were different. They weren’t going anywhere until their legal case was closed, and that could take months. Knowing the dogs were staying put for a while gave shelter techs a chance to bond with them, give them names, furnish them with toys and blankets, and even play with them from time to time. The only disadvantage to forming such close ties was knowing that one day these dogs, too, would leave.

Fifty years old and constantly in motion, Bair had worked at the shelter for six years. Before that she’d handled claims for an insurance office, typed briefs as a legal secretary, and tended to residents of the Rainbow Home, an AIDS hospice in nearby Wernersville. She hadn’t minded changing diapers for the AIDS patients—now that she was middle-aged, she actually enjoyed performing chores others couldn’t or wouldn’t do—but when the opportunity came to care for needy animals, she didn’t hesitate to apply for it. In shelter parlance, she was a boarding kennel technician, a euphemistic title for someone who spent much of her day scouring kennels and scooping poop. The grunt work was worth doing in exchange for the chance to bestow a little kindness on a scared and lonely animal.

She’d been given little advance notice about the dogs from Mike-Mar Kennel and had no idea what kind of shape they would be in. On a hunch, she’d hauled in enormous bags of puppy food. Puppy food contained more protein than regular dog food, and protein was something these dogs were likely to need. She’d stocked up on a nutritional supplement in case the dogs were emaciated and needed to gain weight. And she had amassed a thick pile of blankets and an assortment of toys she’d picked up for pennies at a local thrift shop. The Rescue League was good about paying for things like that.

Havanese, a breed originally from Cuba, are normally happy and affectionate dogs, known for being smart, curious, and playful. Bulldogs are people lovers, too, dependable and gentle with children, while Cavaliers ordinarily are sociable, enthusiastic, and active. But while the Bulldogs and the Havanese were friendly and approachable that first day, the Cavaliers were quiet and withdrawn. The smaller dogs apparently had never interacted in any meaningful way with human beings. For all these dogs knew, they’d been moved from one puppy mill to another, and a puppy mill was a frightening place to be. At the sound of approaching footsteps, they bolted to the rearmost corner of their kennels and cringed in fear.

None of this behavior surprised Harry D. Brown III, the shelter’s executive director. He’d seen enough puppy mill survivors to understand how baffling the sudden transition to life outside a cage could be. The younger dogs would adapt to their new surroundings fairly quickly, Brown suspected, but the older dogs would have a harder time adjusting. A puppy mill survivor who had spun in circles to overcome the tedium of confinement might continue to spin long after escaping a crate, for example. Brown kept a Jack Russell Terrier in his office who covered several miles during the course of a day, all of it in a three-foot radius.

Nearly every puppy mill survivor Brown encountered refused to walk on a leash; the dogs had no clue how to behave. And they were so accustomed to standing on wire that when they finally got the chance to stand on cement floors—the first solid footing many had experienced—it felt so foreign that they tiptoed. Saddest of all, these dogs had never learned to trust humans. They’d never had any reason to do so, and at the sight of strangers they practically shrank. After two or three weeks of care, some dogs began to respond, but others never came around. They remained shy and skittish for the rest of their lives.

The staff understood that Wolf’s dogs needed as much TLC as they could give them. The animals were grubby and covered with infections and parasites. But it was the emotional suffering evident on the faces of Dog 132 and the others that weighed on Bair the most. The dogs were still on her mind that evening as she drove home to her century-old Victorian house in nearby Shillington, and again after dinner, when she settled onto the sofa with her own two dogs, Dudley and Odie. Basset Hounds, they were shelter rescues, adopted just in time to spare them from euthanasia. “Thank goodness neither suffered anywhere near the degree of neglect Michael Wolf’s dogs experienced,” Bair thought. Like most of the dogs headed for the “sleeper,” the Bassets had committed the unforgivable sins of being old and inconvenient. “Now that he’s five or six and housebroken and perfect, I don’t have the time,” is what their owners might as well have been saying when they dropped their pets off at the shelter.

There was no sense dwelling on the regrettable facts of life that came with shelter work. Bair learned early on that you just had to roll with it, because the next day would present a brand-new cat or dog who needed to be cared for. Still, it helped to be able to go home to her own fortunate dogs, whom she knew were free to lollygag away the hours until the mistress of the house arrived at the end of the day to feed them dinner. Seeing these carefree survivors always managed to bring her mood around. “You guys have no idea how good you have it, dust bunnies and all,” Bair thought as she aimed a mock evil eye in Dudley’s direction.

•  •  •

Dogs thrive on routine. For Dog 132 and the other puppy mill survivors, life at the Berks County shelter would revolve around routine. The dogs were given two meals their first day at the shelter. Day two began with still more food—a small bowl of dried kibble mixed with canned food for each. Food was plentiful at the shelter. That was one of Bair’s rules: As soon as a dog emptied the bowl, she told workers, fill it up again. Dog 132 picked at her portion, but she stared at her bowl as if to marvel,
Every day?

After breakfast it was time to scrub the kennels. The dogs hadn’t been at the shelter twenty-four hours and already their kennels were smeared with feces. One of the biggest perks of the boarding wing was the small guillotine doors in the kennels that, when raised, enabled the dogs to step out into a graveled run. One by one that morning, the techs opened the doors, guided the dogs outside, then lowered the doors behind them and hosed down the kennels with a disinfectant powerful enough to kill the most potent germs. They wiped the kennels down with towels and let them air dry, then raised the doors again and let the dogs back in.

The rest of the day was consumed by paperwork and physical exams, including one emergency. The tail on one of the Bulldogs had grown backward into her rectum, causing a hideous-looking abscess; the tail would have to be surgically removed.

As workers strode up and down the aisle, they ran their fingers playfully across the kennel doors and squatted down to try to connect with pair after pair of bewildered eyes. Dog 132 wasn’t used to having anyone seek out her attention. Like everything else about the kennel, the friendly faces and soothing words were new and strange. They made her uncomfortable. She refused to meet anyone’s gaze. Some of the other Cavaliers avoided eye contact, too, a habit that kennel tech Sandy Lambert, for one, found enormously frustrating. She was going to have trouble bonding with dogs who wouldn’t even look at her.

On top of their confusion, the dogs simply didn’t feel very good. That afternoon they were examined by the shelter’s veterinarian, Carl Veltri. For a small dog—she weighed just sixteen pounds—Dog 132 had more than her share of ailments. A skin infection riddled her patchy coat. Her ears were infected and filled with mucus. She had a case of dry eye so advanced it had left her half blind, and her teeth were almost completely decayed. Veltri prescribed antibiotics for her skin infection and daily drops for her raw, red eyes. For now, that would have to do.