HBO's 'Dogs': A Gnawing Portrait of Despair
By Chip Crews Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 21, 2006; C01
A dog's trusting, imploring face is a tragic sight if you know the trust isn't going to be rewarded. But that's just the first layer of the tragedy in "Dealing Dogs," a fierce and unsparing documentary airing tonight on HBO. This 75-minute film begins by informing us that research labs and veterinary schools buy 65,000 dogs a year. Of those, 42,000 come from pounds, shelters and small breeders -- rounded up and sold by what are called Class B dog dealers. "Dealing Dogs" then tells the story of a six-month undercover investigation of the kennel owned by a man described as America's most notorious Class B dealer.
At the outset, it's 2002 and a young man called "Pete" has arranged for a job at the Martin Creek Kennel in Williford, Ark. As he walks down a very long row of overcrowded pens, certain dogs try to connect with him, pleading for freedom or food or maybe just a little reassurance. But if he's to do his job, he needs to remain indifferent to them and the many hundreds of others he'll encounter there. All of the dogs are doomed; the only question is how much abuse they'll endure before they die.
(Class B dealers are licensed and overseen by the Department of Agriculture through the Animal Welfare Act, we are told. But officials of Last Chance for Animals, the small animal rights organization that sent Pete on his mission, assert that the USDA does little or nothing to ensure that these dogs are treated humanely. In addition, they say, many of the dogs sold by Class B dealers are stolen pets.)
It's winter when Pete starts his job at Martin Creek. Part of his job is hosing down the pens, which sprays water and filth all over the dogs and their food and leaves them to dry slowly in the cold. Pete cannot let on, but the conditions appall him. "They have nothing to do but sit in the same pen with three other dogs, fight over food and live in [bleep]," he says. "I mean, they're going cage-crazy."
Filmmakers Tom Simon and Sarah Teale never flinch in their depiction of this hellhole, which federal authorities shut down for good last year, partly on the strength of Pete's undercover work. Some of the footage straddles the line between painful and sickening. Dead dogs, dying dogs, dogs in various stages of starvation, dogs covered with hideous bite wounds, dogs with their ears half-chewed off -- all are prominent in the eye of Pete's hidden camera. Dogs with heartworm are shot so that the worms can be harvested for sale to researchers; apparently they fetch a higher price than the dogs themselves.
Dogs that are deemed to be biters, however scanty the evidence, are put down. We see a perfectly friendly cocker spaniel shot to death for just that reason. After pulling the trigger, the shooter shrugs and says, "Oh well, what the [bleep]." After lobbing the body onto a pile of carcasses, the man cries out jauntily, "Ex-dogs!" Pete's camera also records visits from "bunchers," who come to the kennel three times a week to sell dogs. Nobody asks where the dogs came from, but given the number of purebreds and the number that look to humans for kindness and caring, it seems apparent that at least some of them were pets. Bunchers receive $10 to $15 a head -- yes, they use livestock terminology -- and the kennel in turn sells the dogs for about $250 each. This is hard material, and by the end, the parade of hopeless suffering becomes a strain to watch. It's easier to read about 65,000 dogs coming to various grievous ends than it is to watch just one of them wincing and limping through open wounds and malnutrition, and this film shows us many scores of victims. There's a double sense of hopelessness here, of course: Pete and his allies are striving to bring about proper care for dogs that are going to be sold for various forms of research. "We knew there were horrific things that go on at the experimentation labs where these dogs go to, but we didn't expect to see that here right at the kennel," he says. In other words, it's a kind of half-victory they're seeking -- some trace of decent care before the later, seemingly inevitable terrors begin. The film is poky in places; we could take Pete's search for housing on faith and dispense with his tour of the trailer he settles on. And the legal marathon that ensues after his evidence is presented to the authorities comes at us in rather tedious detail. Clearly the filmmakers wanted to honor this mission, but their methods do a minor disservice to the documentary. That said, if you have felt the trusting-searching-adoring glow of a dog's eyes -- one of life's very special joys -- you might take a vital interest in the endeavors of these dedicated animal lovers. Just be aware that watching this powerful film could make you awfully, achingly sad.
Unvarnished look at unscrupulous kennel
With a hidden camera, "Dealing Dogs" reveals abuse at a site that sells animals to labs.
By Mark Sachs
Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2006
Last week, the USA Network aired the 130th edition of the renowned Westminster Dog Show, the annual competition bringing together all manner of pampered and pedigreed pooches. Tonight at 10 on HBO, you'll see how the canine world's other half lives — and dies.
The imperiled stars of the documentary "America Undercover: Dealing Dogs" have no blue ribbons in their future. Their fate lies in research labs and veterinary schools, where they'll serve their masters in ways that may result in longer, healthier lives for humans. But however one feels about medical experimentation on animals, it's how the dogs get to the clinics that's the issue tonight.
This powerful film by Emmy-winner Tom Simon and Sarah Teale takes viewers inside Martin Creek Kennel in Arkansas, one of the nation's largest Class B providers of dogs for research. Believing the family-run facility to be guilty of criminal mistreatment of its charges, the rights group Last Chance for Animals hooked up with the filmmakers to infiltrate the kennel with a worker whose hidden camera would document the activities inside in the hopes of shutting it down.
Thus began a six-month project to develop and maintain a new identity for the man who would be known as "Pete," a Last Chance member who throws off his longtime vegan ways to better mix with the locals in and around Williford, Ark. Pete takes a job at McDonald's, rents a small trailer to live in and begins throwing around hints in town about his experience working in kennels. At night, he rehearses gearing up with the ingenious hidden-camera rig that he'll have to wear while pondering what might befall him if his ruse is discovered.
Detailing the exhaustive prep work for Pete's undercover mission seems to drag on a bit, yet it also effectively ratchets up the level of suspense and dread in viewers who can already imagine the horrific images that await them once he's inside.
Eventually, Pete secures a low-level job at Martin Creek, run by C.C. Baird, a small-town big shot who also happens to be minister of a local church. Baird's wife is initially suspicious of the new hire, nagging the boss into asking Pete straight-out (captured on hidden camera) if he's an animal-rights activist.
Yet the worst is yet to come. Once inside the facility, which holds about 600 dogs at any given time, the camera chronicles in nightmarish, skittery "Blair Witch" fashion what Pete describes as "a little piece of hell on Earth." Sick, starving dogs with jutted-out ribs and defeated eyes, others covered with raw bite wounds, are relegated to bare concrete-floor cages, four to an enclosure. Pete's job is to hose down the cages daily, which leaves the dogs soaked and exposed to the freezing Arkansas nights.
The facility loses around eight dogs a week, but not all to wounds or disease. "We got a biter here," says one worker as he chokes and backhands the animal, which is then taken out back and shot through the forehead. Soon, the carcass joins hundreds of others in a maggot-infested open trench on the property.
With the hidden camera, the documentary also reveals how Baird collects his animals, primarily buying them from "bunchers" at $15 or $20 a head and then selling them to research labs for upward of $200 apiece. Baird would commonly sell 100 to 150 dogs a month. While Class A dealers breed their animals specifically for the labs, Class B dealers can collect them from shelters, pounds and individuals who are supposed to sign paperwork pledging that the animals are theirs.
But as we see with Baird, the paperwork is often ignored. One of the bunchers, who might come to the kennels three times a week with six to 12 dogs per visit, brags of "going into rich people's neighborhoods" and stealing pets from yards. "That could be a child's dog," says his wife later with some remorse while husband Bob is off closing the deal with Baird. "But Bob don't care. He likes the money," she says.
Pete anguishes over having to stand by helplessly as he documents the offenses, but his efforts eventually bear fruit. Baird is brought to justice, the kennel is shut down and the surviving dogs of Martin Creek Kennel are adopted in joyful scenes that help soothe the eyes and soul of those sturdy enough to survive an often-harrowing 70 minutes.
'America Undercover: Dealing Dogs'
Where: HBO
When: 10 to 11:15 tonight
Ratings: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17)Won't anyone help us get Humane Treatment and Compassion Education to the Youth of AMerica to prevent things like this or worse from happening. Please ask for our Human/Animal Abuse Correlation REsearch.