A dog-eat-dog hell

I heard from the owner of a large dog kennel near here who saw my review of "Dealing Dogs," the horrific HBO documentary airing tonight. I've posted a longer version of the review on the jump, for reasons you'll understand in a moment.

Your headline is a misnomer. Puppy Mill does not apply to Baird. He was our competitor for many years. The USDA has enough rules on the books to put anybody out of business. The problem is lack of enforcement and, they will tell you, lack of personnel. Research facilities feel they are protected if the seller has a license.

Marjorie Brink

HBO shows horrors of 'puppy mill'

The film that helped shut down one of America’s most notorious “puppy mills” is airing tonight on HBO. “Dealing Dogs” (10 p.m. ET) documents the unbelievable conditions at Martin Creek Kennel outside Williford, Ark., near the Missouri border.

The hidden-camera video was taken by “Pete,” an investigator with Last Chance for Animals, a California group that has targeted Martin Creek for years. “Pete” moved to Williford six months earlier in the hope of earning the locals’ trust and getting recommended to the kennel’s owner, C.C. Baird. At Martin Creek, where hundreds of dogs are kenneled at a time, “Pete” cleaned the dogs’ filthy pens, spraying their waste back into their feed dishes and leaving them soaking wet in the January cold. He documented countless dogs dying slow and painful deaths without medical care, dogs going “cage crazy” and mauling other dogs, and the euthanization of one dog on the dubious grounds that it snapped at a kennel worker. The worker had provoked the dog just to get that response.

“Pete,” a vegan activist who says that “animals are like people to me,” spent 41/2 months working at the facility. He took 70 hours of undercover video, witnessing these horrors while assuming the mindset of an uncaring kennel employee. He accompanied Baird on a regular visit to a flea market in Mississippi, where the locals brought Baird their strays and unwanted pets. “Pete” even attended the local Church of Christ, where Baird is the minister, and ate cake with him in the church basement.

Four months after “Pete” quit, Last Chance for Animals took its evidence to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Little Rock, which launched an inquiry. After 15 months, Martin Creek was shut down, and Baird and his family members were eventually barred from the business permanently. “Dealing Dogs” includes video taken by other activists with Last Chance for Animals, including the founder, Chris DeRose, who catches Baird trading in dogs even after the federal bust. The kennel sold an estimated 60 dogs a week to university and private research laboratories. (As a “Class B” dealer, Baird couldn’t sell to the public.) The kennel would then buy 110 dogs to take their place — such was the attrition rate.

“We know there are horrific things that go on at the experimentation labs,” we hear “Pete” say, “but we didn’t expect to see that here, right at the kennel.”

Though Arkansas is not the state with the most puppy mills — that distinction belongs to Missouri, with Kansas in third place — “Pete” said it suffers the same problem that The Kansas City Star recently reported with Missouri kennels: too few inspectors. In Missouri, The Star reported, there aren’t even enough inspectors to pay annual visits to the state’s 1,500 registered kennels.