Rescue Hoarding: Excerpt from Memoir, Cats in the Cradle and Bullies in the Belfry

The following is an excerpt from my memoir-in-progress, Cats in the Cradle and Bullies in the Belfry, detailing the year-and-a-half that I spent with a man later convicted of animal hoarding, when he was found with 362 animals - some alive, some dead - in an elementary school he purchased in Kentucky when we were still together. It is my hope that by telling some of these stories, other individuals who find themselves involved with hoarders will be able to recognize the signs, overcome the guilt and conflicted emotions inevitable in such a situation, and rise to help the animals locked in such tragic circumstances.

Three weeks after our first meeting through an online dating service in Portland, Oregon, Dave asked if I would like to go with him to California, where he was readying his house for sale. My family was horrified. My Portland friends were likewise appalled. I knew very little about him – the things I did know were certainly enough to give one pause. I’d never seen his place in Oregon, never met any of his friends. I knew that he ran an animal rescue from his home, but had only seen photos from his website. We'd been on dates, talked on the phone, exchanged e-mails... After a lengthy internal debate and an even lengthier external one with all those warning me that I would likely be killed and dumped in a ditch somewhere, I made my decision:

I’d moved to Oregon for new experiences. To be brave, step outside the narrow boundaries I’d set for myself over the years.

I would go to California.

We were to leave on the first of June, 2006 – a Thursday. That afternoon passed with no word from Dave. The evening, likewise, passed. That night, Dave finally called.

“Boarding fell through for the dogs, so we might have to take a couple of them with us.” He sounded tired. My reservations began to fade; I imagined the two of us in his mysterious Marin home with a couple of homeless pooches lying contentedly at our feet.

“That’s all right,” I quickly reassured him. “Take your time getting everything ready, and try to get some sleep tonight. We’ll leave tomorrow. And it’ll be fun to have some dogs around – don’t worry about it.”

The next day came and went. In our next phone conversation, two dogs had magically turned into ten. My reservations returned. Friday night at eleven o’clock, Dave called to say that we would definitely be leaving on Saturday afternoon. Our ten dogs might be as many as thirteen, but certainly no more than twenty.

I went to my cozy little kitchen and began preparing thermoses of calming tea, in anticipation of a long weekend of panic attacks and general insanity.

Saturday night at nine o’clock, Dave pulled up in front of my apartment building in upper Northwest Portland, in his green Dodge van. The Rose Festival had just begun: pretty girls in pretty dresses and trendy boys with hipster hats walked hand-in-hand on the sidewalk. It was a warm evening, the air scented with the blooms of spring: Roses and lilacs, a residual trace of cigar smoke from my upstairs neighbor.

Those scents vanished as soon as I opened the door to Dave’s van, replaced with the overpowering scent of wet dog, a vague undercurrent of eau de livestock to add punch. I handed Dave my backpack, clutched my thermos of calming tea a little bit tighter, and climbed in.

Barks and whines began in earnest the moment I closed the door. A particularly shrill yelp came from a crate closest to my seat – I tried to peer inside, but could see nothing but a pair of shining eyes in the dim light of the van.

“That’s Puppy,” Dave explained. “He doesn’t like crates.”

I hesitated. “Can I let him out?”

Dave glanced at me. Half the neighborhood was blocked off for the Rose Festival; he was having a hard time navigating the myriad of one-way streets to get us back on the highway.

“Once he gets in your lap, he’s never getting out – he’s a big baby.”

That didn’t sound like a bad thing. In my experience, puppies trump calming tea every time when coping with anxiety. I opened the crate, and a wriggling black and tan pup with big ears came leaping out. I scooped up the sleek little man and cuddled him on my lap. Moments later, his nose resting on my arm, the little dog was asleep.

We arrived at Dave’s home, a ranch-style house in the much-sought-after county of Marin, at 10 a.m. the following morning. I’d gotten no more than an hour of sleep during the drive, while Dave hadn’t slept at all – insisting that it was better for the dogs if we drove straight through. Though clearly exhausted, he shrugged off my suggestion of a nap with an eyebrow tipped north and the clear implication that I must be mad.

“Now? But we just got here.”

A nap was out of the question anyway, as we had eleven dogs who’d been stuck in crates for more than twelve hours. Working in tandem, we managed to get all of the dogs out for a quick bathroom break, with Dave providing color commentary and one-sentence bios on each of the residents.

“That’s Stache – hold onto him, we’ll never catch him if he gets away. And keep him away from the other crates, he’ll fence fight with anyone he sees.” This was delivered with a nod toward the charge I held on a short lead: A beautiful, dark grey guy with the softest coat I’d ever touched, and a curly tail. “He’s from Taiwan, so he’s a little shy.”

Dave quickly pulled out Stache’s crate, cleaned it in the driveway, and carried it inside. The front yard was overgrown, and the inside of his home equally neglected. A drum set, guitars, and amps that I later learned belonged to Dave’s stepdaughter, were set up in the otherwise-empty living room. Paint was peeling, and there were stains on the walls and holes in the flooring. An open case of laminated flooring had spilled in the entryway, covered in dust and dirt.

Stache went back into his crate, and was relegated to a room in the back of the house where Dave’s old office had been. A desk and piles of computer equipment remained, along with posters and flyers of political causes I’d never heard of. I tried to imagine this place as a home – the house where he’d been married, raised two kids, run a successful business for nearly twenty years. He told me that when his ex-wife had lived there, the place had been filled with antique furniture, immaculate and tastefully decorated.

Looking around, I couldn’t even imagine it.

As Dave and I cleaned crates and tried to organize the dogs to maximize safety and harmony, stories began to emerge.

Underdog, a lab mix rescued from the put-to-sleep list at a county shelter in California, was thin to the point of breaking, his stomach bloated like the malnourished children in UNICEF ads. “He looks a hell of a lot better than he did, though,” Dave assured me. I wasn’t sure how that could possibly be true. His backside was nearly bald from a case of demodectic mange, and his spinal column stood out starkly against his frail frame. Undie didn’t seem to be lacking in energy or enthusiasm, however; we released him in Dave’s fenced backyard with three similarly-sized dogs – Puppy, Toast, and Emily – and all four pups were quickly oblivious to our presence.

Next came Heffalump. She sat whining piteously in her crate, her wide cattle dog face nevertheless grinning at our approach.

“Watch her,” Dave warned me. “She can be a grumpus bear sometimes.” I raised my eyebrows at his words, but said nothing. In time, I would become well-acquainted with the term – it was something I was accused of myself on many occasions, when the days grew long and tempers proportionately shorter.

Heff came out of her crate like a barrel-chested bullet. Once I had her in hand, I realized that she was missing a hind leg. Despite this, she managed to propel herself with startling speed; I clung to the end of the leash, amazed at how one hind leg could support such a dense little body.

Those were the “easy” dogs. Dave handled the rest while I looked on, watching curiously as he interacted with a class of dog I’d had little experience with: the bullies.

There was Piglet, a scrawny little black pit bull/lab mix who, Dave said, had been chained to a barrel for the first three years of her life. She was finally rescued by the famed Best Friends; from there, she and two of her fellow so-called “pocket pits” were transported to Dave’s place. The others found homes without a problem, but Piglet – with her hyena-like bark, aggression toward all things smaller than she, and lack of socialization with humans – had proven to be a much more difficult placement.

There was Cookie, a beautiful brindle pit mix who loved everyone – dogs, people, the world at large. She had come from another county shelter in California. She came out of her crate and nearly knocked me to the floor; I felt the power in her shoulder muscles, saw the definition in her hind legs, and melted at the wide bully grin I’d soon come to know so well. Cookie quickly abandoned me in favor of Dave, leaping ecstatically in the air with a high-pitched squeal and then barking frantically when we returned her to her crate after her all-too-brief walk.

Next came Jellybean.

“She’s the one you told me about, right?” I looked on curiously, from a distance. Jellybean was black and white, and – though not emaciated like Underdog – was clearly underweight. She panted heavily in her crate, her eyes following our every move.

“Yeah – Jelly here’s been having some trouble lately.”

Dave was master of the understatement. Jellybean had been involved in two serious fights with the other dogs back in Oregon, and had attacked one of the llamas on the farm – clamping on so tightly that Dave said he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to get her off.

With the sound of growls, barks, and whines as background music, we made sure everyone was secure before releasing Jellybean in yet another empty back room. Her tail whipped back and forth at sight of Dave, but she remained aloof when I approached. With time and space, she soon came around. She sniffed me cautiously and nuzzled my hand. Within a few minutes, we were fast friends.

And then there was Cara. Cara was a 60-pound pit bull mix with a skin condition so severe she’d lost most of her hair. Her skin beneath was pink and raw, her ribs showing starkly beneath. She was isolated from the others for fighting issues. She looked at me through her crate door with oversized amber eyes and a wide bully grin.

Dave was quick to explain away the dogs’ conditions: He and his foster partner had taken on cases nobody else would take. They’d come to him this way. Everything would have been fine, the dogs would have been healthy and happy, if his partner hadn’t bailed on him. It was better than being dead, wasn’t it?

I wasn’t so sure.

My final introduction was to Donna – the dog who would change everything for me, from start to bloody finish.

Dave carried her crate inside without taking its resident for a walk, explaining as he went.

“She’ll have to be isolated for now – she’s a fear biter. If she gets out, we’ll never catch her.”

She was another street mutt from Taiwan, completely unsocialized and terrified of humans. We took her to a room with a sliding glass door at the far side of the house, looking out over the little courtyard out back. The room was piled high with boxes, newspapers scattered in every direction. Dave opened the crate and I peered inside.

Crouched against the back wall, a little blonde dog with long hair and a pointed, elfin nose stared at me. Though she had been with Dave for nearly three months already, her hair was matted and her eyes runny.

“I don’t push it with her,” Dave told me. “I figure if it’s not life threatening, it’s better that she gets to trust me first than force the issue just so she looks good. She won’t be adoptable for a long time, anyway.”

We set bowls of food and water in a corner of the room. Donna didn’t move; we stepped back and waited silently. Finally, after a couple of minutes, she hesitantly took her first steps into my world. As soon as she was out of the crate, she looked at Dave and me and raced for the hills. Glancing around at the layers of debris around me, I was convinced we’d never see her again.