The day her dog went missing, Shanna Phillips lost her mind. Her first week at a bakery in Fairview, North Carolina, she dashed out, mid-shift, to scour the woods. In the three months since she’d found and adopted Sassy, that dog had salved her soul and heart after her mother died young of cancer. Effectively, Sassy had done what counseling alone couldn’t: roll back Phillips’ fear of dropping dead at 22. Now Sassy, who’d come through hell herself, was lost in a town she barely knew.
went the leaf pile as she spin-cycled through the turns. She stopped for a belly rub and a stick of pepperoni, then charged off to scare the bejesus out of a rabbit. Here was a dog in Disneyland, so struck by joy you could plausibly call her stoned. Often after a seizure by the ASPCA — or “the A,” as staffers call it — there are criminal charges pending against the owner and a scrum over custody of the dogs. In this case, however, the hoarder dodged jail time by agreeing to release her pets. The ASPCA had already pivoted to phase two of rescue, installing a temp shelter in a warehouse. Domiciled for weeks there, the dogs were seen by vets, who performed surgery on the most badly injured patients.
In the years since the ASPCA began tracking abusers, it’s either assisted in or led massive takedowns: the arrests of 10 gangsters in 2013 and the seizure of 367 dogs, the second-biggest dog-fighting bust on record; the rescue of the so-called Missouri 500 dogs — the biggest dog-fighting bust on record — and the arrests of 26 people; the removal, care, and placement of more than 500 dogs from a fetid puppy mill in Iowa in 2021.
A year later, Collins got a call from a district attorney in Kentucky: 120 dogs had come out of a puppy mill in Morehead in deplorable condition. By then, the ASPCA had its response team ready. Collins worked for weeks at its temp site nearby, throwing everything she’d learned in 10 years of training at those dogs.
So she and her trainers took it beat by beat. In those first days, all they did was show the dog a leash while feeding it treats and rations. Next, they let the dog sniff the drag line, a thin cord that clips to collars. Then, they attached it and played follow me, in which the trainer dropped cheese cubes and stepped off quickly, inviting the dog to chase. “She feels the weight of the line and gets used to it,” says Collins.
Young, who’s 49, is an outlier on staff. He and his wife, Christine, owned an IT company and volunteered at New Jersey shelters. In 2013, they launched a project to house homeless pit bulls and connected with the ASPCA’s temp site in Madison. There, they got so invested in the work that they studied to become trainers themselves. Hired by the ASPCA, they sold their house and firm and moved to North Carolina with the BRC.
Can we instead put this kind of effort into the humans that need it? Or even better, both, but start with the humans
lisa_simonetti I have a rescue puppy mill momma and she was traumatized when I got her at age 8. She was obese & filthy with a mouth full of rotten teeth. She had never walked on grass and won't play with toys. It took a long time for her to trust me, but she is the sweetest dog ever!
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