Dog Who Spent Her Entire Life In Basement Finally Sees The Sky
B.B., the poodle was first found trapped inside a wire-bottomed cage in the basement. The cage was filthy and covered in dust, and the basement had no ventilation.
B.B. was housed at a puppy mill in North Carolina, which a team from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) raided last September. The team couldn't tell how old B.B. was, but they could tell by her swollen mammaries that she had been nursed over and over again, and that she had bred many litters of puppies, whom the owner sold for a lot of money.
The rescuer also suspected that B.B. had lived her entire life in this tiny cage in the basement. The small dog cowered and squinted against the bright light when she finally made it outside.
By her swollen mammaries, the team could tell B.B. had been bred over and over again.
“She was very tiny, and she looked like this helpless creature,” Jessica Lauginiger, animal crimes manager at HSUS, told The Dodo. “I put my hand up to the cage, and she’d come up and sniff a little bit. She was very hesitant for human attention, but she wanted it.”
“I remember how tiny and frail she was in my hands,” Lauginiger said. “I pulled her close to my body, and she leaned into me.”
B.B. was taken to Cabarrus Animal Hospital, where Brenda Tortoreo, a former receptionist, decided to take care of her.
"B.B. was in a corner. She looked pitiful. She was scared to death. She wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t drink and I felt so bad for her. And I said, ‘That’s the one I’m going to take home."
"I put B.B. down on the floor, and she kept going in circles — not running, but walking."
"She never knew what sun was," Tortoreo said. “She didn’t know what grass was, and she was terrified of it."
Having spent all her life in the tiny cage, B.B. seemed confused at her new place.
But little by little, B.B. found things that could make her comfortable in her house. “She runs around the house.” "She’s got three big baskets of stuffed animals," Tortoreo said. "She takes certain stuffed animals, and she’d bring them to bed, and she would line them up like she was nursing them, and she’d lick them, lick them and lick them. It was just so heartbreaking."
"She’s eating like crazy - she was originally about 3 and a half pounds, but I think she’s maybe about 10 pounds now. She loves the grass now, and she loves playing with the other dogs in the backyard."
"About three weeks ago she started licking me - she’d never done that before," Tortoreo said. "She’s really come out of her shell. She’s my little princess."
Her first time seeing the sun was really a beautiful moment.
B.B. was not the only animal at the puppy mill. It is estimated that there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the United States, and tens of thousand of dogs, goats, and cats that are born into filthy conditions nationwide. Some of them would have been kept for breeding purposes, but others would have been sold to buyers.
“Almost every pup sold in stores in America comes from this kind of suffering - or worse. If you buy a puppy from a pet store, this is what you’re paying for and nothing else: a dog raised in puppy-mill evil.” According to John Goodwin, the director of the puppy-mills campaign for HSUS.
Solving the puppy-mill problem will be a long-term struggle. If you love dogs, you could help end the horrific “business” of puppy mills by choosing a pet from a shelter or rescue, or from a responsible breeder.
