DogTown

by Stefan Bechtel

  Rather than being a dumb, slow bungler, unable to learn or even to live in a house, Johnny was about to become the new member of a family, and maybe even the smartest dog on the block.

  Best Friends rescued more than 4,000 animals after Hurricane Katrina.

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  Scruffy and Vivian: Staying Afloat After Katrina

  In the news photograph, nothing was visible except a sea of dark water and the face of a small dog, terrified and barely afloat, frantically paddling along behind a rescue boat. The photo rocketed around the world because it summed up the plight of thousands of animals stranded, abandoned, drowned, or starving after the city of New Orleans sank into the sea due to the furor of Hurricane Katrina.

  By some estimates more than 250,000 animals—dogs, cats, horses, birds, rabbits, fish, ferrets, and every other kind of pet, in addition to zoo animals—either were left homeless or died after the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. In the desperate chaos following the storm, rescue boat captains and helicopter pilots refused to take on animals, reserving space only for humans—which means that the little dog in the picture very likely drowned.

  Some pet owners simply fled as the storm bore down on the city, leaving their animals to fend for themselves. Others left food and water for their pets, expecting to be back in a few days; but the days grew to weeks, and many animals starved or broke free and roamed the wrecked city, fighting for survival. Desperate house pets, accustomed to regular meals and a favorite couch, had to revert to living in feral packs on the street, where they were sometimes found covered with chemical burns from polluted water. Many simply did not survive.

  Not long after the great storm devastated Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a small, intrepid team from the Best Friends Animal Society arrived in New Orleans to do what they could to rescue dogs who had been left behind. What they found was appalling.

  “We had dogs on houses, we had dogs in attics—we were receiving dogs that had gone through the most horrendous, traumatic experiences I could ever imagine,” said dog trainer John Garcia, who was in New Orleans during the nine-month rescue mission. “No wonder half of the dogs we dealt with had some kind of behavioral issue.”

  By the end of their stay, the Best Friends team had rescued more than 4,000 animals, many of whom were eventually reunited with their owners. Others were placed in shelters or other rescue organizations around the country while efforts to locate their original families continued. About 20 of the most difficult dogs, whose owners could not be found or whose behavior was scary or difficult, were shipped back to Dogtown, in the sunny canyon lands of Utah (at an elevation of 5,000 feet, well above the high-water mark).

  Many of these hurricane-damaged dogs showed signs of something similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in humans—psychic scars that can manifest in a variety of different ways. Two of the dogs, Vivian and Scruffy, were badly traumatized by their ordeals. But they appeared to have dealt with their traumas very differently. Vivian displayed what the trainers called “fear-based aggression,” which the average person would probably interpret simply as scary, snarling hostility. Scruffy, by contrast, was pathologically shy and withdrawn, so frightened by everything that he hardly had a life at all.

  SCRUFFY’S ISLAND OF SAFETY

  Scruffy is a well-named dog because he looks, well, scruffy. He was some kind of corn shuck-blond terrier mix, just a little furry fluff bomb who always appeared to be in need of grooming even after he’d just been groomed. His wet black nose jutted out from behind a curtain of long blond fur, but his pale amber eyes often disappeared behind it.

  After being rescued off the streets during the aftermath of Katrina by the Best Friends rescue team, Scruffy was first placed with a rescue organization in Tennessee. Many of the Katrina rescues were placed in foster care or with shelters that made room for them while every effort was made to locate their displaced families. Scruffy’s family was never found, and so he stayed in Tennessee.

  Life at the animal rescue didn’t suit Scruffy and might have worsened his anxiety. Traumatized and uneasy, Scruffy found a safe hiding place underneath a shed in his enclosure where he could go when he felt threatened. When strangers approached, he crept underneath, which made finding an adoptive home very difficult.

  The Tennessee shelter eventually closed down two years later, and Scruffy needed a new place to stay. Luckily for him and every other animal who came under Best Friends’ care during the Katrina rescue, Best Friends had made a lifelong commitment to Scruffy, so he was taken in at Dogtown. Unlike many other traumatized dogs who passed through the sanctuary’s doors, Scruffy was not aggressive or particularly dangerous. He was just so frightened and so shy that he could barely breathe. Many dogs breathe hard or pant when they are in a stressful situation, but Scruffy’s breath came in heaves and gasps, as though he was hyperventilating. Scruffy also struggled with everyday dog tasks; for instance, he vigorously resisted walking on a leash. In fact, Dogtown Manager Michelle Besmehn discovered how strongly he could resist soon after she started working with him. Scruffy also refused to walk through a doorway into a building.

  Hurricane Katrina, the tropical cyclone that hit the southeastern United States in late August 2005, separated many dogs from their families. The storm and its aftermath resulted in the deaths of more than 1,800 people.

  Nothing certain was known about Scruffy’s history before the hurricane, and nothing was known about the trauma he’d lived through. One could only speculate. Had he been trapped in a house, perhaps his family home, as the familiar rooms filled with dark water? Or could it have been something as simple as Scruffy having always been an outside dog who never spent any time indoors? Perhaps the clinic’s unfamiliarity scared Scruffy so much that he wanted to avoid it at any cost. If any of these things had happened, or anything like them, it would make perfect sense for him to want to avoid buildings. This was not “dysfunctional behavior” it was a reasonable response to his old life in New Orleans—except that now Scruffy was safe and sound in Dogtown, and the fear response was no longer needed.

  SCRUFFY AND THE SCARY DOOR

  One day, with a co-worker, Michelle decided to try to coax Scruffy into the clinic at Dogtown to see how serious a problem this building was for him. Michelle crouched close to an exterior entrance to the building, while a volunteer held Scruffy on a leash nearby. But as the volunteer tried to gently lead Scruffy toward the door, suddenly the little dog stopped short and wouldn’t budge. He crouched low, tucked his tail, and avoided eye contact—all signs that signaled panic. As the two people tried to bring him farther, he started fighting the leash, at first just pulling against it and then finally thrashing his head back and forth, like a furry fish caught on a line.

  “This is a big temper tantrum,” Michelle observed evenly as Scruffy twisted and turned, his golden hair flying furiously. But she and her co-worker didn’t try to force Scruffy inside the building. Forcing him inside could increase his fear and make future training even more difficult. Their aim was to have Scruffy figure out for himself that the door was not a scary thing. They wanted him to enter voluntarily without being dragged against his will.

  In another attempt, Michelle and the volunteer tried a different door to the clinic. But Scruffy would have none of it. His reaction was the same—strong and panicked. Trying not to push too hard, Michelle approached him, talking gently. But Scruffy had grown so agitated and upset, he snapped at her. The assessment, they all concluded, was over for the time being. Scruffy would have to learn to enter the door on his own terms.

  Bottom line: Scruffy had a long way to go.

  “We at least know where he’s at, which is that he needs work,” Michelle said when it was over. “But I enjoy working with difficult dogs, because it challenges me to come up with ideas to help them through whatever is making them uncomfortable.”

  Nothing is known about Scruffy’s life prior to his rescue, making pinpointing the exact cause of his fears unlikely.
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br />   Still, until Michelle could find some way to help him overcome his traumatic past, Scruffy had little chance of ever being adopted. After all, how could he ever learn to live in a home if he wouldn’t come indoors?

  Over the following days, Michelle kept slowly, gently working to help Scruffy get off his lonely island of safety and walk through a door. Once again, she knelt in the doorway of the clinic while a volunteer held Scruffy on a firm leash. “C’mon, Scruffy! Go for it! Give it a try, buddy!”

  But her encouraging words did nothing to help the traumatized little dog. As before, Scruffy struggled and fought against the leash. In another attempt, Michelle tried offering him chicken treats to lure him inside the building, but they may as well have been rocks. Scruffy’s fear of what might happen if he walked through that door was more vivid and powerful than the treats were tempting.

  On a different day, Michelle decided to try a new approach—peer pressure. This time, she was going to try to coax Scruffy through the doorway using an accomplice—one of Scruffy’s dog friends, who could serve as a role model to demonstrate that walking through the door was not the same as walking off the edge of the Earth. This time, when Scruffy was brought on the leash close to the doorway, his dog buddy stood there, also on leash and just inside the door. This time Scruffy seemed torn. His fear and trauma pulled him back; his curiosity and love of company pulled him forward. He whined. He wagged his tail. He whined. Push, pull, push, pull. Forward, back, forward, back.

  Finally Scruffy jumped forward onto the small welcome mat just outside the door and stopped there, frightened to go any farther. The two dogs touched noses reassuringly.

  “You can do it, Scruffy!” Michelle whispered encouragingly. “You can get inside!”

  And then, after days of trying and multiple failed attempts, almost casually—as if he’d never had any problem with it at all—Scruffy marched through the dark entrance to all his fears.

  SCRUFFY AND THE MAGIC CARPETS

  Once inside the building, Scruffy faced a new and unexpected challenge: the linoleum floor. Its cool, smooth surface terrified him. So Scruffy found his safe haven on the rug just inside the door. This fear is not uncommon in dogs; the cold, slippery texture of linoleum or floor tiles can make them feel insecure. Though he had made it through the scary doorway, now he was stopped again, paralyzed by a fear of the new surface. He sat huddled on the little square of carpet like a polar bear on a lonely ice floe. Finally Michelle found another small rug and laid it down on the floor next to Scruffy. After several minutes of indecision, Scruffy made his big move, quickly stepping over to the safety of the second carpet.

  Cheers went up from everybody who was watching this unfolding story of triumph over fear—a profound human story, as well as an animal story, if ever there was one.

  To help Scruffy get used to the floor, three of his dog pals came into the room and reassured him with their presence. The dogs all sniffed each other, and Scruffy seemed to momentarily forget the precariousness of his situation. Things were going so well that Michelle wanted to remove the rugs to see if Scruffy would stay relaxed without them. When the two rugs were pulled up, it was clear from Scruffy’s body language that he was not amused. He crouched low to the floor, almost as if he were trying to vanish into the ground, and he began panting, his tongue hanging all the way out—both signs of fear and stress.

  Scruffy seemed to be so panicked that even the other dogs could not distract him, so Michelle ended the session. “If it’s not positive and we can’t figure out a way to make it positive, it’s not helpful,” she said.

  A poll taken in September 2005 suggests that in the face of a natural disaster, 49 percent of adults would refuse to evacuate from their homes if they could not take their pets with them.

  On succeeding days, Michelle began to work with Scruffy’s small successes and the “breakthrough” of the magic carpets. To see if she could get Scruffy to explore his new world, she decided to lay down a trail of carpets through the hallway of the clinic, like a series of icebergs in a sea of linoleum. “The idea is, he seems comfortable and confident when he’s got the security of rugs, and he seems interested in exploring when he has that,” she said. He was like the neurotic Peanuts character Linus with his beloved security blanket, except that in this case, it was a whole Silk Road of security blankets.

  In the parking lot outside the clinic, on leash, Scruffy hesitated at the doorway a bit, until Michelle lured him through the dreaded door with chicken treats. Then he began stepping gingerly from one rug to another, as if frightened that the carpets might capsize. When he got to the edge of the last carpet, he peered over the brink as if he were looking into deep, dark water. “One of Scruffy’s adoption requirements will be wall-to-wall carpeting,” one of the volunteers remarked dryly.

  But now, for the first time, Scruffy gradually rose up out of his crouched position and began to wag his tail. He was showing that he was excited to be someplace new. He was discovering the adventure of his own life.

  “You can almost see him saying, ‘OK, I’d like to go over there—could you put a rug there?’” Michelle observed. “So even though he’s not confident to do it, you see the desire to do more. It’s really fun to see that.”

  After two months of training, Scruffy had made enormous progress. He could now enter buildings seemingly without fear. And the key to his progress? Rugs. He’d even been able to use them to enter an entirely new place for him—a car. Michelle laid a row of rugs across the parking lot to her car, and then, using cat food, managed to coax him all the way inside the vehicle. Once inside, Scruffy turned around a couple of times and then exited without panic, a very cool customer indeed. “He made the decision to get into the vehicle on his own, which is what we wanted,” Michelle said. “The more confident he becomes, the less he’ll need to depend on crutches like rugs.”

  But for now, the carpets across the parking lot, like a trail of ice floes across the ocean, were a way for a little dog traumatized by a hurricane and his former life in New Orleans to come back to life. Today, Scruffy is still living at Dogtown and working to overcome his fear of new situations. Since his appearance on DogTown, there have been many applications to adopt the fluffy golden dog, and Best Friends is working to find the best place to roll out the red carpets for Scruffy.

  VIVIAN: RED COLLAR RESCUE

  John Garcia and others at Best Friends rescued Vivian in the fall of 2005, during the Katrina operation. Vivian’s history before the storm remained a complete unknown. Unable to locate her family, Dogtown first placed her in a rescue group in New York. There she acted out her fear by showing hostility and aggression toward everyone, even people trying to help her. She would not stop barking and lunging at the enclosure fence when anyone came near. At one point she cornered a caregiver in a dog run, and when the caregiver reached out, Vivian lunged and snapped at him. After two years, the shelter staff felt that they couldn’t give Vivian the help she needed, so they reached out to Best Friends to see if she could have a place at Dogtown. They hoped that the expert staff there could work with Vivian and make some progress on her aggression.

  Unlike Scruffy, whose fear manifested itself in less threatening ways, Vivian was an intimidating presence. She was a powerful, medium-size dog, with a heavily muscled chest and shoulders and a squared-off fighting stance. She had a stiff, straight, short-haired tail, and was mostly tan with brushstrokes of white on her chest, throat, feet, and the sides of her face. But there were a few other mysterious genetic ingredients tossed in for good measure. Her body and shoulders resembled those of a Staffordshire terrier (one of the breeds associated with pit bulls), while her large, erect ears looked like a German shepherd’s. Others saw in her a bit of Akita, a Japanese breed that in ancient times was used to hunt bears and later was used as police dogs. Like most of the other dogs that came to Dogtown, the scent trail of Vivian’s exact pedigree had been lost in the swamps of the great canine gene pool.

  When Vivian first ar
rived at Dogtown, the staff there got a firsthand look at her threatening behavior. When anyone approached her run, she quickly bounded up to the fence. Her ears back, her body tense, her tail erect, Vivian would let out a throaty growl before beginning a torrent of barking punctuated with snarls. Lunging at the fence, she was clearly saying, “Stay away from me!” Vivian’s behavior indicated that she needed careful handling. She wore a red collar, signaling that she could be handled only by Dogtown staff.

  As with Scruffy, it was impossible to know what terrifying experiences Vivian had lived through on the flooded, putrid streets of New Orleans. But her behavior seemed to say it all. Vivian’s tough act probably had served her well in the past. It had kept frightening strangers and situations away from her. But now it was serving as a barrier to Vivian, keeping her from helpful people and new situations—the kinds of things that would help put her experiences in Louisiana behind her and move on to a happier, more fulfilling life.

  Michelle Besmehn was one of the first trainers to begin working with Vivian when she came to Dogtown. Even someone as experienced as Michelle was a little intimidated by Vivian’s show when she first met her in New Orleans: “When I first met Vivian, she was lunging at me through the kennel door, so at first I was a little bit nervous about spending time with her. I wasn’t sure what to expect of her, and I had to really challenge myself to be in the right frame of mind to work with her.”

  Michelle knew she was up to the challenge because she could see that underneath all her bluster, Vivian had a lot of potential to be a great dog. As a young person herself, Michelle had been very shy, so she had a special affinity for animals whose overt hostility was actually masking insecurity and fear. Michelle could relate to Vivian’s defense mechanisms. “I don’t think Vivian is a mean dog,” Michelle said. “She just gets insecure in new situations and with new people, and she’s trying to tell people that.”