Authorities removed 276 dogs, some of whom had serious infections and almost all of whom were crammed into filthy cages, stacked one on top of one, other from Mason Creek Kennels, an operation run by Bill Thomas Allen, in the northwest corner of the state. The similarities to the puppy mill I wrote about in Saving Gracie didn’t stop there.

Like the dogs at Michael Wolf’s Mike-Mar Kennel in Upper Oxford, Penn., where Gracie and 332 other dogs languished, the North Carolina dogs were mired in their own feces, their paws tender and sore from having stood on wire cages their entire lives. The cages were so small the dogs had trouble turning around.

Many of the dogs had teeth so rotten they were decayed down to their jaws. A French bulldog named Jack had a hernia so advanced his bladder and colon came through his torn flesh. Another French bulldog had parasites and fungus so severe her ear canal was swollen shut. Somehow, those dogs had managed to survive. When officials arrived at the scene the carcasses of two other dogs lay there in plain view. The week before the raid, Allen turned over 37 dogs in such bad shape they had to be euthanized.

Like Mike-Mar Kennel, Allen’s Mason Creek Kennels had a website guaranteeing the health of the Yorkies, Pomeranians, Boston terriers and French bulldogs it was peddling. It boasted a “brand-new state of the art facility … designed ideally for the rearing of happy, healthy, exercised and socialized adult canines and puppies.” Allen bragged about having 28 years of experience as a dog breeder and assured readers that his puppies were AKC certified. Of course, if you’ve read my book you know that AKC certification doesn’t guarantee diddly.

In the weeks since, North Carolina newspapers have been full of stories about the Mason Creek dogs. That’s because at least five shelters in North Carolina and Virginia have taken in the ailing dogs, then had to rely on the generosity of hundreds if not thousands of animal lovers to provide donations, supplies and the kind of care needed to turn these dogs’ lives around. The same thing happened when Gracie’s kennel was busted in 2006.

Allen goes to court this week on 104 misdemeanor animal cruelty charges and two charges of failing to dispose of dead dogs. A diabetic who gets around in a wheelchair, he’s blaming his employees for failing to take care of the dogs (even though a number of the dogs, including Jack, lived in Allen’s home).

By last week, things were looking up. A number of the dogs had been adopted out to new homes. And a shell-shocked public has responded in droves, asking how they can help.

They can help by lobbying their state legislators to pass a law cracking down on egregious breeders. Twice North Carolina’s legislature has rebuffed such measures.

Three young girls from Durham — Jen and Elizabeth Spores and Alex Middleton — are circulating a petition that would impose tougher laws on commercial kennels, requiring outdoor exercise and bigger cages for dogs. It’s obvious to these girls, and to many North Carolinians, that an overhaul is needed. The state’s  lawmakers need to wake up and smell the ammonia-pierced fumes and tackle a problem the public is demanding they solve.

November 10, 2010

Amazing Gracie: An Interview with Author Carol Bradley

In her book “Saving Gracie,” journalist Carol Bradley tracks a rescued puppy mill dog, exposing a cruel industry along the way

All Animals magazine, November/December 2010

by Jim Baker

How do you put a face on the immense suffering caused by puppy mills for people who’ve never heard of these cruel mass breeding operations?

In Saving Gracie: How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills, Carol Bradley delved beyond the overwhelming statistics by telling the story of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel who’d languished in a cage for years before becoming a cherished pet.

Initially known only as “No. 132,” the animal who would later be called Gracie was one of 337 puppies and breeding dogs rescued in a 2006 raid of Mike-Mar Kennel in Lower Oxford, Pa., by the Chester County SPCA and local lawenforcement. Bradley recounts the raid, the ensuing legal wrangling as the kennel was shut down and its operators were charged with cruelty, and the happy ending for Gracie.

This is the first book for Bradley, a reporter who became aware of dog welfare issues when she covered a major case in Montana in 2002. She went on to study animal law as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

In this edited interview with HSUS writer Jim Baker, Bradley talks about the genesis of her book and what she hopes readers will learn from it.

Q :  Why was it important to reconstruct the raid in great detail?

BRADLEY:  I wanted the book to read almost like an episode of Law & Order, where you start with the beginning of the case and go all the way through. I wanted to show people that puppy mills and puppy mill busts don’t just affect the dogs; they land on an entire community. Whole towns are sometimes stuck with 300 dogs. I’ve always admired animal control officers, the people who really have to get in there and do the hard work. I wanted to show how difficult it was for them because I think we sometimes forget. I was just looking for any possible way to tell the story in a way that would not make people want to throw the book across the room.

Q:  What would make them want to do that?

BRADLEY:  Too much graphic detail. I waited until the second half of the book to get into other instances of puppy mills. I hope by the end of the book, people have a real sense of how awful these places are, and how prolific they are. But I didn’t want to hit them over the head with that too early on because I didn’t want to lose readers, to be honest.

Q:  So tell me how you found Linda and Gracie.

BRADLEY:  I wound up finding Linda because I just stumbled upon a letter she had written to the Lebanon, Pa., newspaper. She said, “I adopted one of the Chester dogs,” and she’s expressing her fury at puppy mills, but this is all very new for her. And then I thought, “How much more interesting would it be to have a book about not just a dog that gets changed, but a person who gets changed because of the dog?”

Q:  What do you hope readers come away with?

BRADLEY:  The best thing someone can say to me when they read the book is that they finished it; they read it. And they will often say, “I had no idea.” I want them to be astonished and galvanized. To say, “I’m never going to get a dog at a pet store again. I’m going to tell everyone I know never to do that.” I often tell people, “Write your state legislators, and tell them they need to pass a law.” I wanted to get to people who like a good story and like one where there’s a happy ending.

Q:  Gracie’s story certainly ends on an optimistic note. Are you equally optimistic about the progress being made to regulate these cruel operations?

BRADLEY:  I’m glad to see that people are starting to get galvanized. These things never happen quickly enough, and there’s a difference between passing a bill and enforcing it, and putting the money behind it. Ideally, in this country we wouldn’t have such a patchwork approach. I guess I wouldn’t really be satisfied until the federal government passed a law and funded it and took the whole issue of commercial dog breeding out from under the Department of Agriculture, which always has a bias toward producers.

» Learn how you can help an adopted puppy mill dog adjust to a new life 

» Read more from the current issue of All Animals