They came like cowboys for
the roundup from faraway places with familiar-sounding names. Reno.
Seaside. Crescent City. Fremont. Salinas. The Oregon border.
They gathered just south of Red Bluff at the Petro Truck Stop in
Corning. Amid the big rigs nestled the steeds of the rescue posse - here
a horse box hitched to a pickup, there a dog bus from Silicon Valley,
nine SUVs.
It was 11 a.m. on a gray day before Christmas. The Paladins from as
far south as Salinas and as far east as Reno had been on the road since
before 6 a.m.
The Great Basset Hound Rescue had begun.
This was to become not only the greatest basset rescue of the new
century, but as far as historians of the Basset Kingdom of North America
can divine, the biggest basset hound rescue, ever - 61 dogs at once,
taken from a broken puppy mill in Red Bluff and by midnight that day
placed safely in foster homes across the length and breadth of Northern
California.
By noon the rescue convoy reached its destination, 40 minutes off the
highway down miles of two-lane dirt road that gave way to gravel for
another five minutes - and there was the "X" marked on the map.
Leading the way
A gray-haired lady in an idling pickup was waiting for them, and
silently turned around and led the way down a small road unshaded with
fading trees and dotted with potholes. This desolate place, almost an
hour off the nearest highway, gave new definition to the phrase "in the
boonies."
The lady in the pickup stopped at a compound of sorts - low-lying
buildings fronting on outdoor pens secured by chain-link fencing, which
was in turn secured by forbidding iron crossbars. The surprise was that
there were no watchtowers because to the rescuers it looked like a
prison built under budget restraints. It resembled most a Gypsy compound
without the gaiety, or a migrant camp in some doggie "Grapes of Wrath."
There were the sounds of low, lonely howling and the pings of the
basset hound equivalent of crying, a sharp whine that resembles a chime.
The rescuers, now 20 strong, set up card tables on the ground and
stacked them with collars, ID microchips and name tags for the dogs yet
to be named, and the bassets came out, dozens of bassets, some single
file, some huddled in little packs. One was named Bunches, a mother who
had just given birth six weeks ago, her teats, still filled with milk,
kissing the ground. All were very, very dirty and very, very afraid,
bassets from monthlings to an 8-year-old known as Benny, dogs who had
never had a life out of the crowded dog runs, never had a human to
cuddle with, never a treat.
The first thing the rescuers did was to give the dogs a bath. To my
nostrils, a basset in need of a bath smells like a Rum Crook cigar, but
to the basset-loving rescuers they had another scent entirely. "They
smell like warm Fritos," said Addy Dawes, the secretary of the Golden
Gate Basset Rescue, who was riding shotgun with the posse to Red Bluff
and had organized the volunteers.
One might want to give what-for to a villainously neglectful basset
farm proprietor, but this story is not that sort of a story.
Victim of economy
The basset people saw the failed puppy mill owner as a victim of the
economy. Like the old lady who lived in a shoe, she had too many
children and didn't know what to do - because of the recession she
couldn't sell her dogs and could no longer afford to feed them.
"Her husband has been sick and lost his job and she took a job on a
midnight shift to help out, then she broke her foot and it all became
too much to handle," said Cindy Marsh of Salinas, who heads the Golden
Gate Basset Rescue volunteers and was in Red Bluff with the rescue
posse.
Bassets are natural aristocrats and comfort seekers, and by midnight
that same day the dogs were happily ensconced on their foster couches
in more than 30 foster homes, looking adoringly at their rescuers.
Dawes said they seemed to know how lucky they were to be rescued from
this layer of dog hell, and "returned the love 10-fold."
The Golden Gate Basset Rescue of
Petaluma is a virtual organization that does not have a physical kennel
or shelter, but through the Internet connects needy dogs with willing
owners. This month, it will go to work to place its newly rescued batch
of bassets in permanent adoptive homes and is, of course, seeking
donations to help pay for the many medical expenses incurred for the
imperiled dogs, their now-cured indicia of neglect, ranging from
glaucoma to hernias to eye and ear infections.
"We rescued as many bassets in one day than we usually do in a year's
time. We're very proud we could pull this off," said Gloria
Tannehill-Carlsen, the group's president.
And proud she might be. The pre-Christmas expedition will go down in
doggie lore as the basset rescue equivalent of the Great Train Robbery.
This article appeared on page
E - 1 of
the San Francisco Chronicle