Nick Hasty, Muscatine Journal Correspondent

MUSCATINE, Iowa — A puppy mill poodle with a funny walk not only found a home, but a friend for life who helped it overcome a condition brought about by mistreatment.

Nancy Pagel of Muscatine adopted Willoughby, a standard apricot poodle, from the Muscatine Humane Society, which had purchased the dog from a puppy mill auction in central Iowa..

Puppy mills are places where puppies are bred and kept. However, living conditions in the mills are often substandard. Sometimes auctions are held to encourage people to adopt dogs from mills.

“I encourage people to do an on-site visit to see where the dog is coming from,” said Pagel. At first glance, Willoughby, who is about 7 years old, looks like a normal poodle, but upon closer inspection, it’s evident that his legs are bowed and his paws point outward.

This is a result of his living conditions at the puppy mill, according to Poggel. The elevated wire cage caused the puppies to stand awkwardly so they didn’t fall through the bottom of the cage.

Pagel and Willoughby take walks at Discovery Park nearly every day. Lots of people know the high-stepping white poodle from a distance because of his unusual gait.

Sometimes they go to the Canine Activity Center of Muscatine at 920 S. Houser St.

There, the two practice stunts such as jumping hurdles, zig-zagging around poles and running through tunnels.

Willoughby's favorite stunt is jumping over hurdles, which are normally set at 12 inches high, Pagel said. He is able to gather his legs together and clear the jump, despite his wide stance.

“We just pick and choose the obstacles we’re able to do,” she said.

A six-week training course at the Humane Society helped to teach Willoughby how to clear obstacles.

Pagel and Willoughby enjoy spending time with other dogs at agility fun matches held at the Center.

Pagel said she doesn’t want to enter Willoughby into any agility competitions or push him too much. She said the main reason to get involved in agility activities is to get Willoughby some exercise and work on his mobility.

However, when Willoughby does have an audience, “he gets a smile on his face from the clapping,” Pagel said. “He likes to hear the crowd clapping and cheering.”

“He loves meeting people and other dogs,” said Pagel. She said that Willloughby also loves hanging out with his “big brother,” Baron, a 110-pound Doberman.

“He overcame and he’s just been a great dog,” said Poggel.

The main difficulty in these studies is that the past histories of the dogs are rarely known to those of us studying and attempting to heal them. In many types of trauma – such as dog-fighting, inhumane puppy mill operations, and physical abuse – at the time the dogs are rescued the people who were "caring" for the dogs are now in trouble with the law, and hence not cooperative and forthcoming with the details of the dogs' living situations. (In providing us with the facts of the dogs' care they are likely to incriminate themselves.)

Thus we are left with many questions about the true nature of the trauma to each dog. Was a dog rescued from Michael Vick's property treated abusively, such as being forced to train on a treadmill to the point of exhaustion? Or beaten? Did the dog fight in one fight or dozens? In dogs rescued from a life in a puppy mill, had the breeding female been cooped up in the little cage for 3 weeks or 6 years?

Unlike in people who have endured psychological trauma where the victims can describe what happened to themselves, we can't ask the dogs what they went through. Because of this we have to use just what we know to be true: for example, that these dogs were rescued from a dog-fighting operation and some have scars indicating that they fought. Sometimes there are other clues, such as the fact that poorly socialized dogs tend to fear people and withdraw when a person approaches whereas an abused dog may fear people but still show a conflicted effort to gain human attention and affection.

In other types of psychological trauma, we may know exactly what the animals went through but then not know what their lives—and their personalities—were like before the trauma.

We encountered much of this type of trauma in the animals Best Friends rescued after Hurricane Katrina. For those many unfortunate pet animals who never reunited with their human family, we were not able to learn anything about what their lives had been like before the hurricane. Studying emotional scars when we don't know what the animal was like before the traumatic incident is very difficult due to the relative inability to recognize what, if anything, of the dogs' psychological make-up was changed by the traumatic events.

Now consider these two facts together as they apply to the dogs we are working with to heal their emotional wounds:

(1) their avoidance and fear of people and surroundings have a variety of potential causes, and (2) we don't know what happened to them prior to their rescue.

So what do we do? Do we throw up our hands and just proceed to deal with the fears without seeking the cause? Can a dog who fears people simply be treated as a case of "fear of people" without knowing what caused the fear? Does knowing the cause help us to determine the best form of treatment? And does knowing the cause of the fear allow us to give a more accurate prognosis for recovery from the emotional wounds?

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BUT THAT'S OK, the breeder tells us; "They were outside for a million years. It's only the last 200 that people have been putting 'em in the house."

IS THAT OK
WITH YOU?

IT'S
NOT OK WITH US!