“Aw, you like her,” Carragh said.
Zoe put her face against Annie’s face, and Annie tried to kiss Zoe through the muzzle. She was at ease with this child and was showing her affection.
“Aw, that’s sweet,” Carragh said. “She’s doing good!”
“She’s doing great!” Sherry said. “What a day!”
“It was wonderful and precious to see them together,” Sherry said after it was over. “I’m really hopeful that she can get out there in society and have a lot of fun and be safe. I think if she’s with the right people, the chances are she will succeed. Annie’s going to be a joy to share life with.”
HIGH JINKS AND A HOME
And as it turned out, Annie did find the right people to share her joy and her life with. After watching the DogTown episode about Annie on television, a Las Vegas family decided they wanted to adopt her. A woman named Irene drove to the sanctuary to take Annie back home, where she lived with her husband, Steve, and their 29-year-old daughter Alison.
The three of them fell for Annie’s high-energy high jinks and her seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm for play. She loved to bounce into the air like a pogo stick, and “she will jump into my husband’s waiting arms, jump down, and do this until my husband tires,” Irene wrote in a posting to the Best Friends website (details of Annie’s adoption are available at http://www.bestfriends.org/dogtown). “Annie never tires of this game.” Annie’s energy was so extraordinary—and so in need of being burned off every day—that the family took her along on their daily bike rides. Each evening, Irene would attach Annie’s leash to the handlebars of her bright red bike, and then they’d all take off together, with Annie racing out ahead with so much spirit that Irene sometimes didn’t even have to pedal.
Annie was especially fond of Steve and Alison, choosing to sleep on Alison’s bed. She loved to go on car rides, sitting in the passenger seat just like a person, and selectively choosing to bark—or not bark—at people in other cars at stoplights. “There are definitely some people she likes better than others!” Irene reported.
An uncomfortable test took place when Irene and Steve’s year-old granddaughter came to visit. While adults were present, Annie stayed in the same room with the baby for a short while, but “she kept her distance,” Irene said. The little dog was not aggressive, nor was she affectionate; she merely tolerated the baby (who was never left alone with Annie). Perhaps the trauma of the incident that changed her world was still too vivid for Annie to come any closer—and that may be best for everyone.
All in all, wrote Irene, Annie “loves our family and is protective of all of us. She has some funny antics and makes us laugh all the time. We are all so glad that we adopted her.” This is a convincing testament to just how far Annie has come.
Jenny’s Gift
Sherry Woodard, Animal Behavior and Training Consultant
As anyone who comes over to my house can tell you, there is a motley crew of animals that live there with me. All my animals are special, but visitors all seem to gravitate to Miles, my eight-pound, incredibly cute Chihuahua mix. Everyone seems to want to get their hands on him and pick him up. But if Miles isn’t in the mood, he may bite a well-meaning person. I find that I’m on guard for this behavior and take care to explain to first-timers that not every dog wants to be petted and picked up by every person they meet every day.
Miles’s zest for life and intelligence are obvious to everyone. He can show amazing bravery by running up to any other animal without a second thought for his own safety. And, despite his occasional crabbiness, he can also be astoundingly gentle: When I was fostering some baby rats in our home, Miles learned to be careful with them as if he knew they were vulnerable and needed special care. When I think back to how Miles came into my life, I think that might be where he acquired these two sides of his personality. He had a rough start, one that required both gentle care and bravery.
It all began with a call for help. A local woman was experiencing maximum stress and called up Dogtown. In addition to caring for her elderly, sick mother, the woman was left to care for two dogs and the four-year-old child of her daughter, who had disappeared. To add to the woman’s woes, one of the dogs, a purebred Chihuahua, had delivered a litter of five puppies three days earlier. The mother dog had stopped nursing the pups, and the woman didn’t know what to do about it. “They’re all going to die,” wept the woman, who was clearly overwhelmed. The receptionist at Dogtown forwarded the call to me.
I gathered supplies and headed out to her home. I thought my job that night would be simple: provide her the skills and supplies to supplement the litter with formula since the mother dog had stopped feeding them. Was I ever wrong.
Upon arrival, I walked into pandemonium. Two elderly women were wandering around the house, the dogs were barking, the four-year-old child was screaming…and the caregiver, the woman who had called, was frazzled and exhausted. She was definitely trying to keep it together but was losing the battle right in front of me.
We sat down, and I started asking questions about the mother dog’s medical history. Unfortunately, she had no history. She had never been to the vet, never had been spayed, and had given birth to four litters of puppies. They had let her wander and breed, so they had no idea who had fathered any of the litters. All of her previous puppies had been sold for profit. The family had a sense of pride that the mother dog had never required any additional medical attention. But many problems and sicknesses can be invisible to the average person. Mama dog could have had a host of health problems that her owners had never detected. To my great surprise, they didn’t see this situation as problematic at all.
At this point, I could not believe what I was hearing, so I offered to take the mother Chihuahua and her five puppies back to Dogtown. I wanted to get them to our vet to be examined as soon as possible. When I met the mother dog, I realized she had raging mastitis (inflammation of the breast) and was in pain, which I realized was why she had ceased feeding the puppies. I reached to pick her up, and, like a lot of dogs who are in pain, she bit me.
I asked the woman to find a box and bring it to me. Then I carefully loaded the mom and her five mouse-size puppies into it. We agreed that I would find homes for any puppies who survived, and I would return the mom after she was spayed.
I was (and still am) lucky enough to work at Best Friends Animal Society, where the vet staff, after a quick phone call, was waiting for my arrival. Driving to the clinic, I realized that I would not be going home that night. At the time, I was the manager of Dogtown, and there were many nights when I did not go home because I needed to care for a newly admitted dog around the clock. In fact, I considered my office a second home.
Because my office already contained animals, I asked Faith Maloney, one of the founders of Best Friends, if I could borrow her office for the mother and her pups. As it turned out, she lent it to me for the next few weeks. I moved in too to care for the pups!
When we arrived at the clinic, the veterinarian confirmed that the mom had extreme mastitis and was running a high temperature. Her parasite load was so heavy that she had shared it with her pups, and they were passing blood instead of stool. Two out of the five puppies were barely hanging on to life. We fed all five with syringes, since they were too weak to suck from bottles. I provided warm compresses in between feeding the puppies every three hours around the clock. At this point, the mama dog was still not my friend—she was still snapping at me.
Mom was put on medication. Within a few days, she began to feel better and three of the puppies were back to nursing part of the time, supplemented with bottle-feeding. Two puppies remained very weak and were being syringe-fed by me around the clock. Mom, now answering to the name Jenny, had begun to trust me and had made it extremely clear that she would no longer care for the two ailing puppies. She started removing them from their bed and placing them on the cold office floor. Whenever I found them there, I picked them up and gently placed them back, beside their mother and
siblings.
Despite all my attempts to keep the two sick pups in the bed with their family, Jenny persisted. I starting having conversations with Jenny about her puppies, but I would still return to find the two sickly pups on the office floor. So I set up a second bed with a heating pad and a beating-heart toy, which one of our members had donated, for the two smallest pups. By this time, each of the puppies had a name. The largest boy was named Bernard, after one of our trustees in Dogtown, and the smallest was named Traveler. I named the two girls Cascade and Pixie. The remaining boy, Miles, was named after one of my personal favorite dogs in Dogtown. A kind and gentle shepherd mix, Miles the elder was the epitome of a good dog but often was overlooked by adopters.
Despite my best efforts and numerous visits to the clinic, the two weakest puppies, Traveler and Miles, were struggling. At one point, I fed them and left the office; when I returned about a half hour later, I discovered that Traveler had lost the fight and was gone. Miles was still hanging on, and I had to find a way to save him.
Miles, who had an open fontanel (space between the bones of his skull), had been deemed different by his mother. Even though he looked so small and alone, I knew he could make it with his mother’s help. It was at that moment that I decided to start negotiating with Jenny again. This time, as we talked, I promised her that if she would allow Miles time with her and with his siblings, I would care for him for life. My true belief was that she knew he was special, and if she understood that he would be cared for, she would accept him.
That day, I was a good dealmaker. Jenny never put Miles out on the floor again. As the weeks passed, I was amazed at the change in physical appearance of each puppy. They grew healthier and stronger, but as their appearances began to change, there was no doubt that the mom had been allowed to run around: Mom was a purebred black-and-tan Chihuahua. Both surviving males, Bernard and Miles, were becoming long-haired. Pixie and Cascade were wire-haired. Bernard was the biggest, and Miles grew larger than Pixie, who was now the smallest and was taking on the appearance of a werewolf.
Even though I knew the puppies wouldn’t be ready for spaying or neutering for quite some time, I started screening homes for them. At Best Friends, we do spay or neuter when dogs are at least eight weeks old and weigh over two and a half pounds. It would be a while before these puppies reached that weight.
I contacted Jenny’s original caregiver to give her an update on the family’s progress. Her own personal situation had not improved enough to take Jenny back into her home, so I offered to find Jenny a new home as well as finding homes for all the surviving puppies. She agreed that would be the best situation for Jenny and her litter.
It didn’t take too long for Jenny and her family to find wonderful places to live. Jenny and her daughter Cascade both went to live with a Wisconsin family who had adopted from Best Friends in the past. Pixie was adopted by a staff member, and Bernard, still growing fast, was adopted by a Best Friends founder. As for Miles, I honored my promise, and it couldn’t have worked out any better for me. It turned out that he was very special. His cuteness, his spirit, and his bouncy manner have made him a fun addition to the animals who live at my house.
To this day, I am thrilled to give Miles the constant supervision and protection that he requires. For the most part, he has enjoyed good health since his difficult delivery into the world. His size makes him easy to manage—I can scoop him up if other animals are approaching. I love Miles very much and think of him as a gift from Jenny. I hope to enjoy sharing my life with him for many years to come.
Because Best Friends Animal Society provides a lifetime commitment to every dog adopted from Best Friends, including Jenny and her pups, we are able to keep up with adoptive families and arrange the occasional family reunion. One Mother’s Day, Jenny and Cascade traveled back from Wisconsin to reunite with their family. It was a happy reunion, and I had the chance to thank Jenny for striking a deal with me all those years ago. I wanted her to see that I had held up my end of the bargain—that Miles was healthy, safe, and loved.
Tuffy’s spirit never flagged after Dogtown rescued him from a hoarder.
07
Tuffy: The Will to Live
If a person were trying to find the smack-dab middle of absolutely nowhere, Gabbs, Nevada, would have to be close. It’s the sort of place people go in order not to be found—and they generally succeed. It is a flat, relentless emptiness not far from such scenic wonders as Cactus Flat and the Humboldt Salt Marsh, though distantly one can see eerily beautiful, dead-dry mountains, like mountains on the moon. It was here that Dogtown rescued a resilient young Dalmatian mix they named Tuffy. Tuffy never gave up on life, and Dogtown never gave up on him. It was the perfect combination to bring the young dog back from the brink.
THE PROBLEM OF HOARDING
In December 2007, Dogtown got a call about a horrific hoarding situation near Gabbs. A woman contacted Dogtown after her aunt, who had been keeping hundreds of dogs on her isolated property, passed away. The deceased woman had started out as a rescuer, taking in abandoned dogs. But the situation overwhelmed her, and she wasn’t able to look after all the animals properly. Conditions at the property deteriorated, and the dogs were surviving in terrible circumstances.
Animal hoarding is a complex issue, and it is sometimes hard to recognize. Often people who hoard animals believe that they are helping and protecting them, which leads them to take in too many. As the number of pets grows, the hoarder becomes overwhelmed and unable to provide the minimum care necessary: food, sanitation, shelter, and medical care. Beginning with good intentions, hoarders end up abusing their animals through neglect. Such behavior is remarkably common: Researchers at Tufts University have estimated that there are 700 to 2,000 new cases of animal hoarding in the United States every year.
Dogtown Manager Michelle Besmehn eases the wounded Tuffy into a crate to transport him to safety.
In one typical hoarding case investigated by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), a couple in Maryland started a shelter for cats called Chubbers Animal Rescue, complete with a cheerful website. Though the couple’s original intentions may have been good ones, when HSUS volunteers entered the house in May 2003, they found more than 300 cats, of which more than 70 were dead. In one part of the house, volunteers found themselves stepping on heaps of feces and skeletons. “It was disgusting,” said one volunteer. “The amount of filth was unbelievable.”
Yet, like many hoarders, the couple was convinced they had been caring for the animals properly, and they seemed in complete denial that their animal “refuge” had turned into a house of horrors. The pair were well educated and well spoken, and they had the uncanny ability to attract sympathy to their point of view. Their justification was that they loved animals intensely and were afraid the cats would be euthanized if they went to a shelter.
Psychiatric studies at several institutions have suggested there is some greater mental illness involved in hoarding. The most likely candidate is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which people develop an overwhelming sense of responsibility for something like taking care of animals even after they are no longer capable of doing so.
A SURREAL SITUATION
A small rescue team from Dogtown flew from Utah to a tiny airport in the Nevada desert, drove almost two hours, and then took a dusty dirt road 13 miles into the desiccated backcountry. They would be working on-site with other rescue groups to help assess the dogs and network them to other groups where they could be adopted. When the teams finally arrived at their destination, the scene that greeted them was “surreal,” Dogtown Manager Michelle Besmehn recalled.
In this weird, alien landscape, with its pitiless desert sun and sense of utter desolation, was a decrepit house and a rundown collection of kennels and cages containing 150 dogs. The dogs—multiple breeds, ages, and states of neglect—all seemed to be howling at once. Most of them were in individual kennels, while several others were running around in small packs in larger en
closures. Outside the cages, a few dogs simply roamed freely. There were ratty-looking dogs trying to jump the fences, and some dogs were attempting to mate with other dogs. It was chaos.
When Michelle entered one of the larger enclosures where a pack of dogs had formed, she found a scene that stabbed at her heart. Among the cacophony of the other dogs, a young Dalmatian mix, not much more than six or eight months old, lay quietly on the dirt, immobile and still. His dirty fur bore the signs of a savage attack by the other dogs; his side and back legs were covered with gaping, open wounds and were slathered in dried blood, mud, and excrement. Too weak even to raise his head, his shallow panting was his only detectable motion.
Michelle examined the dog and noticed that his heartbeat was weak and rapid. His gums were pale. His skin was cool to the touch. And then there was his smell: the putrid odor of infection. Michelle knew those signs meant the dark rider of death was on its way and due to arrive in a matter of hours. Whether the little dog actually knew this, it’s impossible to say. He looked pleadingly up into Michelle’s eyes, and she simply could not resist this canine soul, so young and so full of suffering.
She sat down on the dusty ground in her blue jeans, cradled the little Dalmatian’s head between her legs, and comforted him. Despite his injuries, it was easy to see that this little guy was a cutie. He had a sweet and comical coloration, with black ears, a scattering of white spots on the right side of his face, and a big black patch over his left eye. Dalmatians are sometimes called plum pudding dogs because of the random way blobs of black are scattered over their skin. The big black blob over one of this dog’s eyes had a particularly striking appearance. Michelle could see that the dog was in shock, but she also felt that he seemed grateful for the attention and the thought that help might have arrived at last.
DogTown Page 11