The Murder Hollow Bassets in happier days.

Baily’s recently reported that the PSPCA withdrew all of its charges against Wendy Willard, Master of the Murder Hollow Bassets of Philadelphia.

After more than 14 months, all 22 counts of animal cruelty charged against Murder Hollow Bassets master Wendy Willard in August of 2009 by the Pennsylvania Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) in Philadelphia County were withdrawn on October 5, 2010 in Philadelphia Municipal Court. Wendy was also found to be in complete compliance with all applicable statutes.

You may recall that on July 27, 2009, the life of Wendy Willard, a retired social studies teacher and nationally recognized Master of a pack of hounds known as Murder Hollow Bassets, changed forever. That day, using a warrant obtained following a trespass on her property, the PSPCA searched Wendy’s barn, seized 11 of 23 hounds and pressured her to sign so-called “surrender agreements” by threatening to take the other 12 dogs and subjecting her to a heavy fine if she refused.

The search and seizure was performed under the guise of enforcing the Philadelphia “limit law,” applicable only to residential dwelling units, and not a barn inhabited by dogs. However, before Wendy was charged with anything, and without notification to her, all of the hounds were spayed and neutered after their seizure. Worse still one of the hounds was killed as a result of a botched attempt at surgery during the mass spay/neuter operations performed by the PSPCA. The 10 remaining live hounds became infected with a lung virus in the PSPCA’s facility. The PSPCA then sent those 10, with medications, to an unlicensed “rescue” operation that sold them all for “adoption” before any hearing on the charges took place.

Jarndyce v. Jarndyce triumphs again.

The law’s delay, high legal costs, and the passage of time have all rendered the status of the hounds taken and given for adoption to new homes moot, and have brought the case of the PSPCA versus Wendy Willard to a stalemated end.

PSPCA withdrew all of its charges, but will not be returning any of the Murder Hollow hounds. One aged hound, irrationally subjected to a pointless neutering operation succumbed on the table to the tender mercies of the protectors of animal welfare in Philadelphia. The rest of the basset hounds taken from their owner were lawlessly transferred to an unlicensed adoption facility in another state as soon as they had recovered from being neutered and were then sold to new owners for an “adoption fee” long before the right of PSPCA to do any such things had been established in a court of law.

The legal contest has dragged on for well over a year and enormous expenses have accumulated while time has passed to the point where any remedy is both impossible and impractical. The “adopted” (read: “sold”) bassets have undoubtedly over so many months become accustomed to new homes and have developed strong ties of affection to new owners. One poor basset is many months unnecessarily deceased, the victim of mindless PSPCA policy. No useful purpose would be served by uprooting the surviving stolen bassets from their new homes and lives as pets and sending them back after so long an interval to the working life of the pack hound. Their training and condition has been neglected. A quarter century of breeding efforts have been brought to nought. Former hunting hounds have been transformed into pets. There would not be a lot of point in altering their condition now.

Help is still needed however to meet Murder Hollow’s enormous legal expenses. To donate by mail, please make checks or money orders payable to Wendy Willard/Escrow Defense Account and mail your contributions to: Hound Defense Fund, 1229 Chestnut Street, #107, Philadelphia, PA 19107. To donate on line, please go to the web site, www.houndefensefund.org and follow the donation instructions provided.

Murder Hollow Bassets at 2009 Pack Trials

On January 12th, Philadelphia Community Court Judge Joseph J. O’Neill negotiated an agreement between attorneys for Wendy Willard, Master of the Murder Hollow Bassets, and the PSPCA intended to end the litigation resulting from the latter organization’s July 27, 2009 raid on the Murder Hollow kennels in which eleven hounds were confiscated.

Last month’s settlement terms included the return of a retired house dog named Osh Kosh to Willard and an arrangement that Willard would participate in determining the permanent placement of the ten other hounds. In return for which, Willard agreed to make some repairs to the kennels and submit to unannounced inspections over the course of the next five months.

Strangely, it turns out that PSPCA was not in a position at the time to honor this agreement and also seems to have entered into the agreement in bad faith.

The National Animal Interest Alliance (an animal owners’ advocacy organization) reports that ten of the Murder Hollow bassets were subsequently revealed to have been long since transferred to a regional basset rescue organization which placed the valuable pedigreed hunting hounds in exchange for a $225 fee as pets.

Five days before the trial resulting in the settlement it turns out the PSPCA could not fulfill, obviously at PSPCA’s instigation, Ms. Willard was accused by the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections of operating a commercial kennel, issued a cease and desist order, and threatened with $300 per diem fines.

The Murder Hollow Bassets are, of course, a private organized hunting pack, and not a commercial kennel at all, as the L&I department soon discovered. This particular instance of harrassment seems ironic in the light of the fact that Tri-State Basset Hound Rescue, the organization which “rescued” Murder Hollow’s hounds to the tune of $225 apiece, and processes something on the order of 200 basset hounds per annum is itself not licensed as a kennel.

PSPCA was not only unable to comply with the portion of court settlement applying to the placement of ten hounds. PSPCA also proceeded to renege on its agreement to return the 8 year old house dog Osh Kosh, demanding as a condition for the hound’s return a payment of putative costs of $3000, mostly made up of boarding fees!

In the immediate aftermath of the settlement, PSPCA also continued its propaganda campaign against Murder Hollow, releasing through its own media outlet a single photograph showing an unhappy basset with an eye problem allegedly infested with ticks.

I saw that photograph at the time, but having no personal access to Murder Hollow’s side of the story decided to avoid commenting.

My own opinion is that it is extremely easy for a photograph of this kind to be misleading. Any basset hound being dragged off on a lead by strangers is going to look mightily unhappy. Bassets have a talent for looking lugubrious when displeased. Dirty doggie photos also don’t mean much. You can get a photo of my Tazy with a face covered in dirt very easily if you happen to take it anytime after he’s been digging.

Basset hounds do acquire scratches running through the woods, and pack dogs living together pick up minor injuries sometimes in kennels. A photograph of a single dog with something wrong with its eye obviously does not prove that dog was neglected.

The lyme disease claim is clearly suggestive of deliberate fraud. Lyme disease bearing ticks are extremely common in the woods and fields hunted by organized hound packs in the Eastern United States. It would be surprising to find a beagle, or basset, or pack-following human who wouldn’t test positive for lyme disease exposure. Karen caught it last year, and I deny being guilty of cruelty to wives. Pack hounds, of course, are treated for lyme disease when they are symptomatic. Unsymptomatic lyme exposure means absolutely nothing and is exactly the kind of opportunistic phony baloney charge that a corrupt animal welfare organization would fling around to justify its own abuses.

Ticks. The particular basset in the photo seems to have several ticks on its face, and I suspect there is a story there which I don’t know. Perhaps that basset is the aged house dog which just came back dirty and tick-infested from a nice long run on the 340-acre Nature Center in which the Willard home and the Murder Hollow kennels are located.

I don’t live near Philadelphia or hunt with Murder Hollow, but I know that several of the packs I do follow rely on Ivermectin, an anti-parasite medication, which one knowlegable hound breeder assured me causes ticks simply to drop dead shortly after they ingest a little of their victim’s blood. If Murder Hollow routinely uses Ivermectin, a hound coming home with some ticks on him would be meaningless. They’d all be dead the next day.

The PSPCA’s photo is less than probative, and it looks like Murder Hollow and the PSPCA are going back to court. I expect the judge will not be pleased to learn that PSPCA entered into agreements it could not and would not fulfill.

Earlier Murder Hollow posts.

Personally, I think wasting a post on him is a bad idea. L’aigle ne chasse pas les mouches and all that. But I think some readers might be disappointed if I did not respond, so…

Basically, Burns today simply takes the same not-very-informative Inquirer article I quoted and linked, and applies a massive sedimentary layer of subjectivity to it, creating a fantasy of his own in which a real judgment of the accuracy of PSPCA complaints was made by the judge on the basis of firm evidence, guilt established, and PSPCA vindicated.

Hardly.

What obviously happened is the lawyers negotiated a deal involving the return of at least one dog to Ms. Willard, and what is being referred to as PSPCA “consulting” with Ms. Willard on the placement of other dogs, which sounds a lot to me like an unarticulated deal to return dogs originating from a different organized pack to their pack of origin. In return, PSPCA gets to save face by coming back and “inspecting,” thus relieving them of culpability and confirming their legitimacy and authority.

To believe those inspections are really necessary, you have to believe that organized hunting packs with ten person staffs and dozens of active members need external supervision to make them clean their kennels, give hounds water daily, or assure veterinary care.

You have to be inclined to accept the validity of violations charged by persons in authority trained to intimidate people into surrendering some of their animals by threatening to take and euthanize all of them, who achieve submission by threatening to apply enough complaints to cause someone to lose her home.

You have to be the kind of person who sneers at other sportsmen for being overweight and aged (when you look like Pat Burns) and who ridicules organized hunting by hound packs in uniform from the superior perspective of the glorious pursuit of vermin with pick and shovel.

Mr. Burns’s mention of a “Mad Woman of Shiloh” [since corrected… ha!] was clearly an inept attempt to allude, in a defamatory comparison of a person he does not know, to Jean Giraudoux’s La Folle de Chaillot [Madwoman of Chaillot]. In that two-act play, the senile and eccentric heroine, “the Countess,” rallies her bohemian neighbors to defend their Parisian suburb against corrupt authorities and opportunists proposing to turn it into a polluted oilfield. Since the madwoman is the heroine and in the right and the authorities are malevolent and corrupt and in the wrong, perhaps Burns’s illiterate attempt at metaphor comes accidentally closer to the mark than he could possibly have realized.

Baily’s Hunting Directory available via on-line subscription is rather new. I only heard of it myself this month, so few of those following the Murder Hollow Basset affair are likely to have found the news release of December 16th announcing a trial date of January 12th.

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I certainly would have preferred a more definitive conclusion, but I expect Wendy Willard and the members of the basseting community supporting her in this case were strongly motivated by the prospect of liberating some of the long-incarcerated hounds, as well as by the ten thousand dollars per month legal efforts have been costing since last August, to agree under advice of counsel to allow PSPCA a face-saving compromise outcome.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today:

Animal-cruelty charges filed against a woman known for running a successful pack of sporting dogs have been continued until June and will be dropped if she complies with an agreement to clean and maintain her kennel in Roxborough. …

Philadelphia Community Court Judge Joseph J. O’Neill negotiated the agreement between Willard and SPCA officers.

O’Neill said from the bench that Willard must install a drainage system, keep her property “reasonably free from feces,” repair the kennel ceiling, change standing water the dogs drink from at least once a day, and have the dogs checked for parasites.

O’Neill said the SPCA would have to consult with Willard over where to permanently place the dogs removed from the property.

“This is something that will benefit everyone,” O’Neill said. …

“You’re entitled to have your dogs,” O’Neill said to Willard, “and she is entitled to inspect,” the judge said with a nod toward SPCA Officer Tara Loller.

On the day of the raid, Willard was accused of throwing stones at vehicles driven by SPCA and state dog officers.

O’Neill said the SPCA would make monthly, unannounced inspections to ensure that Willard was following the negotiated agreement.

Willard declined to comment, but her attorney, Charles Geffen, said the SPCA also had agreed to return to her a dog named Osh Kosh, who lived in her house.

Earlier postings can be found via this category link.

I expect there may be some additional news on all this before too long.

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My apologies. WordPress devoured an earlier version of this posting, and I had to re-assemble the whole thing.

Burns is the dumb-looking one in the middle

When NYM published the first blog coverage last week on the Murder Hollow Basset raid by the PSPCA, fellow field sports blogger Pat Burns of Terrierman’s Daily Dose, went into investigative mode, took Amy Worden’s essentially PSPCA-dictated damage control press release in the Inquirer as gospel, and proceeded to dismiss me as a paranoid rightwing blogger and Murder Hollow’s Master Wendy Willard as a “nutter” and a dog abuser. Burns’s publicly-performed Snoopy dance of triumph on this one was sufficient to make readers think he had the Pulitzer Prize in the bag.

He certainly made points with the PETA crowd, who happily began quoting Burns as the party line on the story.

I was personally disappointed because I actually read Burns’s blog regularly, but I merely noted in my response that Burns was relying on a single, obviously partisan source, repeating the PSPCA version of circumstances and events. I also identified some reasons why I think PSPCA’s word is not to be trusted.

Naturally, since I had received so much attention in Burn’s blog, I tried forwarding a link to my own posting in response. I had to go through a major log-in procedure to try posting a comment, and in the end my comment was merely forwarded to Burns for approval.

Several days later, it had not gotten into TDD’s comments, and I was rather displeased at what seemed to be a policy of censoring rejoinders at TDD, so I sent Burns a short email commenting negatively.

He responded, claiming to be “away from keyboard,” answering via cellphone, and he and I wound up arguing about all this by email much of the day on Sunday.

I didn’t publish our email correspondence myself, but Burns took a really stupid point of argument which no rational response could persuade him to relinquish as the occasion for another blog article.

I have challenged Mr Zincavage and the 11 “staff members” of the Murder Hollow Bassets to pay for three or four years worth of private (and legal) kenneling for those seized Philadelphia dogs.

There are many commercial kennels in Pennsylvania, and I am sure the the SPCA will have no objection to the dogs being placed in a good private kennel provided that three or four years worth of kennel fees are paid up in full and in advance, plus any veterinary bills accrued.

No, not a month. No, not four months. Three or four years.

After all, these dogs deserve continuity of care, and with 12 people to shoulder the cost of kenneling, it shouldn’t be too big a deal for everyone to pony up the price.

Talk is cheap.

But, of course, so too are most people — a point missed by many conservatives.

They will tell you they are against taxation, preferring instead that everything be done by some mysterious thing called “a Thousand Points of Light.”

Fine. Here’s a chance for Mr. Zincavage and the Murder Hollow “staff” to be a Point of Light. Pay for the veterinary costs plus three or four years of private kenneling for Wendy Willard’s basset hounds. She will still own them — the donors will simply be making a charitable gift to make sure things are done right by the dogs.

As I explained in our emails, nobody wants to lock up 11 hunting bassets away from their home, their owner, their pack, and the out-of-doors in a commercial kennel operated by strangers for three or four years. (How long does Burns think hounds live, do you suppose?) No rational reason or necessity proposes such a course.

Ms. Willard, her ten staff members, and the dozens of residents of the greater Philadelphia area who hunt with Murder Hollow Bassets are perfectly able to provide for those hounds, and if some imaginary tragic circumstance arrived to eliminate from the world every person affiliated with Murder Hollow, that hound pack is part of a national organization of affiliated packs. There are plenty of packs and individual basset hunters out there who could and would give all of Murder Hollow’s hounds new homes.

There is no need to do what Mr. Burns insists on proposing as his own subjective test of bona fides. No one wants such an arrangement. The PSPCA wouldn’t agree to it. And it would not, in the least, be in the interest of the hounds.

One really wonders, reading this kind of idiocy, what kind of understanding of hunting dogs, or dogs in general, the Terrierman possesses. Burns seems to look upon dogs purely as a cost center, a kind of tool requiring fixed costs that anyone can cheerfully stuff away in a warehouse setting for 3-4 years in order to prove a point.

But there is no point. The Murder Hollow Bassets have been an organized hunting pack chasing quarry in the field since 1986, and participating and competing in hound shows and pack trials since at least 1994. If they didn’t meet all the costs Mr. Burns’s fantasy is intended to project, they would hardly still be in operating existence, nor would they be accepted as a recognized basset pack by a knowledgeable community of hound lovers and keen sportsmen or be permitted to be part of the national organization.

Beth Brelje reports, in the Pocono Record of December 21, 2008, of a truly horrifying, but only too recognizable, case featuring the same pattern of less than accurate accusations, owner intimidation, and forced surrender of animals by PSPCA officers, with real victimization of helpless animals as the result

And the end of this article describes exactly what has happened to the Murder Hollow bassets. They have been reduced to being warehoused as live evidence by an arrogant, systematically dishonest, and callously cruel organization with an appalling record of animal mistreatment of its own, which poses before the public, in its insatiable quest for money and power, as the protector of the very animals it mishandles and not infrequently kills.

They should be investigated and prosecuted by the Commonwealth’s Attorney General and the United States Attorney. It is long past time in Pennsylvania to bring key PSPCA officials and officers responsible for this reign of terror to justice, to put PSPCA out of business, and to turn its legitimate functions over to responsible individuals and groups.

Miss Kittipie’s owner, Linda Jones-Newman, watched in horror as her 13-year-old quarter horse was killed by lethal injection under the direction of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. …

Miss Kittipie, was a former racer who received an injection of medicine in her injured knee when she was 2. The medicine caused the knee to swell and it stayed that way. The horse managed normally with the knee for 11 years and even brought eight foals to term as a brood mare. Miss Kittipie had been with the Newmans for nine months.

Johnson saw the knee and thought Miss Kittipie was crippled. She tried to convince the Newmans to put her down. They would not agree. When she left the farm Jan. 9, Johnson, who was later found to be working without a veterinary license according to court papers, called the PSPCA.

Johnson later admitted, at a preliminary hearing in court, that Miss Kittipie’s condition was chronic rather than an emergency.

Three days later, with no warning, PSPCA humane police officer Chad Weaver served a search warrant and issued a threat to the Newmans.

“He said, ‘This can end right now. If you give me all your animals, this can end.’ He said they would drop the animal cruelty charges if I cooperated and gave all my animals over,” Kevin Newman said. The animals had food, water and shelter. Newman did not agree to give them up.

This tactic is part of PSPCA humane officer training statewide.

“We were taught to intimidate people into giving their animals up. We were told to tell them ‘in lieu of charges, surrender your animals,'” said one former PSPCA humane officer.

Some former officers say there was a quota.

“My Christmas bonus depended on how many animals I brought in,” said former PSPCA humane officer Tammy Kerr.

That’s false, says Howard Nelson, PSPCA chief executive.

“There is no such quota. The majority of our cases are resolved by leaving the animals in place with some education,” he said.

Kevin Newman says that without discussion and with no opportunity to get another vet’s opinion, humane officers walked Miss Kittipie out of her stall the day of the raid and instructed Johnson to kill her, right in front of the owners.

“I was really hurt. She was a sweet horse,” Newman said. …

After killing Miss Kittipie, the PSPCA humane officers were not done. They loaded up many animals: six ducks, two guinea hens, 15 chickens, seven geese, one parakeet, four cats, five dogs, five pigmy goats, one mini pony, two mini donkeys, two llamas, one miniature cow, three sheep, 16 horses and one grade pony. The seized animals became evidence. Some of the evidence was destroyed. The miniature cow was later killed by the PSPCA, which claimed it was dehydrated.

Humane officers also removed a macaw from the house in the middle of winter and left the tropical bird in a cold vehicle for hours during the seizure, according to Kevin Newman.

True to his word — since the animals were not given up freely — Weaver charged Linda Jones-Newman with 25 counts of animal cruelty and deprivation and Kevin Newman with two counts.

A judge later dismissed all charges against Linda and one against Kevin. He paid $75 in a total fines for faulty sanitary conditions of four dogs. The PSPCA was ordered to give the animals back. …

Some of the animals that lived through the ordeal were returned from the PSPCA in deplorable condition, according to Newman. The dogs and cats had fleas, ear mites and hair so matted that it had to be cut.

A tricolor Australian shepherd’s white fur was stained yellow from months of living in the PSPCA’s urine-soaked cage.

“He was lying in urine when we went to get them,” Newman said. …

Publicity for this and other high-profile seizures boosts PSPCA donations while simultaneously smearing the reputation of animal owners. …

Live evidence kept in storage cages for months and sometimes years while court cases drag on cannot be adopted out. It would seem to create a storage problem at the crowded shelters.

“It is the same process the police go through when they suspect a crime. In any search warrant process, the evidence is always seized. You have to secure the evidence to put on your case. The difference with a living, breathing animal is that we have to provide care. We are required by law to do everything we can for the animals so they are ready for adoption when we win the case,” Nelson said.

When confiscated animals die of sicknesses, the blame is often allocated to the allegedly abusive owner, even after the animals have been in PSPCA care long enough to develop new illnesses.

Half of the cats seized in a Venengo County case died under PSPCA care. (The humane officer’s authority to have animals surrendered was challenged in court in that case and a judge ruled in favor of the PSPCA).

The PSPCA made its case in a statement to the Pocono Record:

“When animals are seized as evidence, they are just that — evidence for the case. Until a judge makes a determination of guilt in the case, the animals are still property of the defense. We cannot adopt the animals, but we can make a determination, with veterinary guidance, to euthanize suffering animals.”

Animals that don’t die in PSPCA custody can be penned up so long that they go stir crazy.

Once an animal’s behavior is negatively affected, it may likely be considered not adoptable and become marked for death row.

Animals cleared for adoption pay their own way. They are not adopted out until a new owner gives a cash donation to the PSPCA.

Predictably, the PSPCA supplemented their web-site’s announcement of new violations lavished on Wendy Willard to punish her for public questioning of their actions and for inquiries about the fate and whereabouts of the Murder Hollow bassets with an Inquirer “news report” from their faithful mouthpiece reporter Amy Worden.

PSPCA cites Basset breeder for lack of vet care, sanitation

A Philadelphia woman, whose illegal kennel was the subject of a raid last month, has been charged with failing to provide vet care and for poor sanitation.

Wendy Willard, owner of Murder Hollow Bassets in Roxborough, was issued 22 citations during a follow up inspection on Friday, according to the Pennsylvania SPCA.

Willard, who competed her hounds at prestigious sporting dog events around Philadelphia and in Virginia’s fox hunting region, surrendered 11 dogs to humane officers on July 27. The officers found filthy kennel conditions and dogs covered in feces and infested with parasites, the PSPCA said. The agency removed the animals because there were 23 dogs on the property, 11 more than are allowed under the city’s animal ordinance.

Willard was given two weeks to make improvements and get vet care for the remaining animals, but the PSPCA said in press release that when the officers returned last week “overall living conditions remained poor.”

Willard was issued 11 citations for unsanitary conditions, 11 citations for lack of veterinary care and two tickets for barking. Graphic photos of the dogs detailing their condition and their housing have been turned over to the district attorney’s office. Efforts to reach Willard were unsuccessful.

Agents first went to the property on July 21 in response to neighbor complaints about noise and order. When they found no one at home they left a card telling the owner to contact them. When Willard failed to contact them, they returned on July 27 to inspect the property. Willard refused and threw stones at the officers’ vehicles as they left, said George Bengal, the PSPCA director of law enforcement. They returned later that day with a warrant to search the property.

The dogs were turned over to Basset hound rescue groups, the PSPCA said.

It is perfectly obvious that they lied previously in promising that hounds surrendered to them could be reclaimed.

They have lied repeatedly about the bassets being moved from their holding center and delivered to a basset rescue organization.

They have misused their authority to threaten, harass, and opportunistically level charges against Ms. Willard. Either those kennels were unsanitary and the hounds lacking veterinary care, or they were not. When the PSPCA is applying the law in Philadelphia, every animal owner is in the position of the cafe owner being shaken down by the crooked cop. The cop looks around and spies a speck of dust, bam! he writes a health code violation. The cop throws a plate on the floor and smashes it, bam! he writes a safety violation.

It is also obvious that if Mrs. Parks had never phoned PSPCA, if people on the Internet had never reported what happened on July 27th, and Ms. Willard surrendered 11 dogs to be sold for $200 apiece and neutered most of the rest (in compliance with international Animal Rights philosophy, which desires to eliminate pet reproduction as a step toward eliminating pet ownership) and kept silent, none of those 22 violations would ever have existed. Nor would Ms. Willard’s remaining bassets have been ticketed for barking at PSPCA intruders.

Here’s due process PSPCA style.

The PSPCA arrives in a massive raid expecting to find what?… an illegal puppy mill? A ring of illegal immigrant bassets importing cocaine in their collars? a group of fanatical Islamist basset hounds plotting terrorist acts?

Whatever it was, they don’t find it. But the PSPCA is never wrong. They do find a grievous breach of public order actively underway.

A middle-aged, retired school teacher residing at a home located on a 340-acre nature center, the largest privately-owned tract of land within the city limits of Philadelphia, is found to be housing 11 basset hounds possibly in excess of the residential dwelling limit prescribed in the Philadelphia Code Animal section § 10-103(8).

Whether, in fact, a kennel attached to a barn on the property is “a residential dwelling unit” is open to question and interpretation.

There is also some question about whether the City of Philadelphia by accepting fees and licensing Ms. Willard’s basset hounds for all those years, since 1986 when the 12 animal limit was imposed, and in which same year Ms. Willard founded the Murder Hill Bassets, without demurral over the number of licenses it was issuing, had not implicitly authorized her possession of those hounds.

But, let’s leave all that aside. Suppose Ms. Willard was guilty, caught red-handed in possession of eleven more basset hounds than the Phildelphia Code permits? What does the Law say?

It says § 10-105(8a):

The penalty for the first violation of any provision of this Section shall be a minimum fine of $100.

As I read over the law, I see nothing about confiscation. I see nothing in this provision specifying forfeiture of animals as a penalty for this kind of violation.

As the new PSPCA release demonstrates quite vividly, Wendy Willard is not in trouble for the basically trivial offense of (perhaps) violating a number of hounds limit. She is in trouble for failing to adequately and unconditionally surrender and grovel before the authority of the thugs and bozos of the PSPCA.

The scope of the tyranny we’re looking at here can be seen in reference to the reality of the situation. Wendy Willard actually did surrender completely. She signed the papers they intimidated her into signing (giving away 11 hounds). She agreed to neuter all but 4 of her carefully-bred, twenty-year-old pack. She kept silence.

What got Wendy into more trouble, and what is causing her bassets to be kept locked in tiny cages, is PSPCA retaliation for that anonymous person posting the original story of the raid on the Internet, and other people, Betsy Parks, me, all the people discussing this on bulletin boards, email lists, and blogs. We questioned PSPCA behavior and authority. We asked about those basset hounds, and here is the result.

PSPCA news release, August 10, 2009, Murder Hollow Basset Hound Update:

On Friday, August 7, 2009, Humane Law Enforcement officers from the Pennsylvania SPCA conducted a pre-arranged follow-up inspection of Murder Hollow, the location of an illegal basset hound kennel in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, PA. The owner had previously surrendered 11 dogs during the officers’ visit on Monday, July 27, 2009, due to unsanitary conditions, lack of veterinary care and more dogs than allowed by law.

Despite the time allotted to the owner to make improvements, overall living conditions remained poor at the second inspection, resulting in 11 citations for unsanitary conditions, 11 citations for lack of veterinary care and two tickets for barking. Graphic photos of the dogs detailing their condition and their housing have been turned over to the district attorney’s office.

We appreciate the continued outpouring of support for these dogs from the Bassett community.

In this PSPCA promotional video, we see the holding facility where any survivors of the eleven basset hounds taken from the Murder Hollow kennels are still sitting in cages more than two weeks later.

0:44 video

NYM was informed on Saturday by the regional Basset Hound Rescue group working with PSPCA that they had originally been scheduled to receive ten of Murder Hollow’s basset hounds to be distributed to new owners in exchange for a $200 per dog adoption fee.

Either the first appearance of accounts of the PSPCA raid on the Murder Hollow kennels on canine-oriented bulletin boards early last week or attempts by Mrs. Parks to contact by telephone PSPCA officials around the same time were sufficient to cause PSPCA to go on full defensive alert. The Murder Hollow bassets were described to me as “locked down,” their status “frozen,” as PSPCA prepares to fight any recovery attempts by the hounds’ owners.

In that state of affairs, there will be no transportation to Basset Rescue, no foster homes, no adoptions, and certainly no returned bassets.

Instead, despite PSPCA’s own complaints about both its shelters being “full too capacity” and pleas for assistance, this is all about power and who is boss. PSPCA will not discuss the situation and will not even consider relinquishing the surviving bassets it confiscated into the hands of their owners or even alternative care providers (including veterinarians) offered by the scent hound community

I say “surviving bassets” because the Basset Rescue organization told me on Saturday that they had been told that ten bassets would be coming their way. Eleven were taken by PSPCA. It is impossible to know the truth, but people who care about those hounds are very worried that Sappho, in particular, a 12 year old bitch enjoying an honorable retirement as a pet, may not have survived being rescued.

Two of the seized bassets were elderly, and animal welfare organizations like PSPCA are commonly committed to rigid and inflexible patterns of operation. They may have proceeded to spay and neuter every basset hound they took away from Murder Hollow, and it seems not unlikely that the stress of an elderly hound’s removal from her home and familiar people, and the trauma of a pointless neutering operation, could have resulted in the death of an older hound.

They took eleven basset hounds. They had not moved the dogs out of the cages in that holding facility over a week later, but they intended eventually to transfer ten.

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You can get some sense of what these people are like by looking at this video of Howard Nelson, one of the former CEOs of the scandal-ridden PSPCA (since replaced himself), who delivers a characteristically arrogant and self-righteous mission statement, tossing around the usual wild accusations of abused animals everywhere in Pennsylvania in the process of justifying whatever it was that he was planning to do.
2:24 video

Wendy Willard, M.B.H.

Cat, the administrator of Basset Town Hall, quoted this statement by Wendy Willard, which she says she found on “one of the basset boards.” (I’m still trying to find which that was.)

One of NYM’s own commenters, Denise, posted it this morning, in the comments on the first Murder Hollow Bassets posting.

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First a huge thank you for all your words of support and everything that you have done! I had my third visit today from the PSPCA and again threats of multiple citations if I didn’t cooperate with these lovely folks. I can fill you in the details, but more important fish to fry (sorry, Jeep [the reference to “Jeep” is a private comment addressed to a friend of Ms. Willard’s: Mrs. Peyton S. Cochran, Master of the Calf Pasture Bassets of Maryland]).

Good news is we got a very sympathetic article in one of the two major papers today. A reporter has also called from the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as the AKC and the Chronicle of the Horse (Molly Sorgi? [Molly Sorge] 804-994-2349). My problem is that if I respond personally, the SPCA has made it clear that I must “cooperate or multiple citations will be issued and there would be no PA Kennel License”.

5. When forced to sign release papers for the now 11 hounds, I explained that Betsy Park [Mrs. James M. Park, Master of the Sandanona Hare Hounds of Millbrook, New York] was the technical owner of three and wrote her name at the bottom of the forms. (Betsy, sending you copies.) Officer Loller assured me that Betsy Park would get first consideration for adoption.

Wendy

[The posted text also includes at the very bottom the name Julian Praeger, an attorney who may be representing Ms. Willard.)

These dog cages are empty, but the PSPCA’s are full

What is the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals?

Like you, yesterday I assumed that the PSPCA was a private humanitarian organization. I kept wondering why its representatives kept talking like they were law enforcement officers. How does a private humanitarian society, funded by donations from foundations and animal lovers, get to invade homes, seize pets, and ignore requests for explanations and information from the public?

Well, it’s like this… the PSPCA is not only funded by dollars provided by private cat-and-dog lovers. It is also a business. The PSPCA is really in essence an animal prison and execution facility, which manages to help write laws in its own favor, while successfully posing as a charity.

PSPCA contracts its services, consisting of locking pets in cages (or chaining them to cages when the cages are full, as is not infrequently the case) in loud, smelly rooms, then euthanizing many of them, to the city of Philadelphia.

Philly.com:

Pennsylvania requires shelters to hold stray dogs for 48 hours before euthanasia, to allow time for owners to find them. ACCT (the Animal Care and Control Team division of PSPCA – jdz) recently extended the “hold” time from 48 to 72 hours. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. But it has bad consequences. It means animals cannot be adopted out or released to rescue groups for an extra day, which ties up cage space. Insiders told of dogs tethered to the outside of cages, and cats stacked up in carriers.

If all cage space is filled with stray “holds” and an owner surrenders an animal, that animal will be put to death immediately because there is no mandatory “hold” on surrendered pets. (The Murder Hollow Bassets were surrendered just that way. Are they really still alive? Who knows? -jdz) Health got complaints that that was happening to these adoptable pets – just as in 2004, when I first wrote about tragic PACCA practices. Who turned the clock back to a dark past?

PSPCA competed successfully earlier this year against a rival similar organization for the city animal control contract, but then experienced a lot of internal turmoil.

ACCT, a division of PSPCA, took over the city animal-control contract Jan. 1. Chaos ensued a mere six weeks later, when PSPCA CEO Howard Nelson, who had sought the contract, quit in a huff. Board member Beth Ann White, a former banking executive with no kennel experience, was thrust into the breach, with almost predictable results.

I’m glad that the Health Department, which oversees the contract, responded quickly to complaints. I’m less glad that Melhem says that he is again satisfied by reassurances. What did Ronald Reagan say – trust, but verify?

With almost 3 million taxpayer dollars funding the contract, the public has a right to expect better – not worse – performance from PSPCA than it got from the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association, from which it wrested the contract.

Stu Bykovsky:

Cosby is the third PSPCA CEO in four months, following Howard Nelson, who fled under fire in February, and interim CEO Beth Anne White, who spent three months in the free-fire zone battling accusations of fudged “save” rates and botched medical protocols that resulted in vast numbers of sick dogs and cats.

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Is PSPCA an honorable steward of animals? Can its allegations about unsanitary kennels be relied upon?

Or does PSPCA have a proven record of lying and a shamefully deficient animal care record of its own?

The same way the PSPCA would not answer questions about the fate or whereabouts of the Murder Hollow Bassets yesterday, the PSPCA has used a closed database to conceal the numbers and percentages of animals euthanized.

Philadelphia Weekly reported in May:

The PSCPA runs two shelters within a couple of miles of one another. The larger shelter, called ACCT (Animal Care and Control Team) on Hunting Park Ave. in North Philadelphia, is where roughly 31,000 homeless animals funnel into after being saved from the streets or given up by their owners. The animals are processed at Hunting Park, then either pulled by rescue partners, euthanized or sent to the second shelter, on Erie Ave., where PSCPA’s statistics had categorized such animals as “adopted.”

The ACCT database is “open” to the Health Department, which oversees the contract, while Erie’s database remains closed. As PW recently reported [The (Scary) Truth about Cats and Dogs, April 21], critics were concerned that not all of the animals shipped from Hunting Park to Erie were actually being adopted. In fact, they worried that some animals were being euthanized at Erie and not being properly accounted for in the PSCPA’s official save rates.

They were right.

PSPCA board members say they are now working to calculate “more accurate” numbers and will adjust January and February’s statistics accordingly. Between January and February, 786 animals were shipped to Erie and counted as “adopted” and save rates—72.4 percent for January and 80.9 percent for February—were admirable, especially for an organization just transitioning into the municipal animal-control role. PSPCA was also besieged by problems such as CEO Howard Nelson’s abrupt resignation six weeks into the six-month animal-control contract—a contract the organization had feverishly pursued.

March’s statistics, published after PW’s story ran, were presented online with a new section called “Outcomes of PSPCA Transfers,” which itemizes what the PSCPA board says is the true outcome of those animals, though they do not admit that prior stats had been favorably skewed intentionally.

“The numbers were not broken out in that way [in January and February] because that’s not what the city had first requested,” said Beth Ann White in a recent interview at Hunting Park Ave. “Then we all decided to go to the new format to make it more transparent.”

The newly presented numbers assert that, counting euthanasia at Erie, March’s save rate is 62.3 percent and April’s—just published—is 59.6%.

White says there is a team currently working to “redress” January and February’s save rate statistics, and that the new numbers will be published online “soon.”

If January and February’s “Outcomes of PSPCA Transfers” follows March’s pattern, about 118—roughly 15 percent—of the 786 animals previously identified as “adopted” would have been euthanized at the Erie facility.

Yet with Erie’s database still closed, it’s unclear where these new numbers are coming from.

But not only cats and dogs being deliberately euthanized are dying at PSPCA shelters:

It’s been a bad year for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — but not as bad as for Philadelphia’s homeless animals.

After fighting tooth and nail for Philadelphia’s animal control contract, the PSPCA won a six-month contract that began January 1. Then, as controversy haunted the organization all over Pennsylvania, CEO Howard Nelson suddenly resigned and vanished into the ether, leaving the job in the hands of the part-time volunteer board. Then animals reportedly got so sick rescue partners began to refuse to accept more cats or dogs from the shelter.

PW reported on rescue organizations’ allegations of sick and dying animals, ongoing vaccination delays — and questioned the real outcome for cats and dogs shipped from the shelter on Hunting Park Avenue in North Philadelphia to one a couple miles away on Erie Avenue: Were all of those animals actually adopted? Or were some euthanized, then not calculated into the final save rate?

Barry Watson, a Philadelphia animal rescuer with experience dealing with PSPCA, also commented on the death rate last May.

The PSPCA has failed me miserably since January 1. Virtually every program that allowed me to pull high volumes of cats from Hunting Park is gone. Baby kittens have been dying by the dozens and virtually all adult pulls have come down with the calici virus or other serious upper URIs.

Going back over six years, to the day I pulled my first cat from Hunting Park, I have never experienced more widespread illness, infecting almost every cat pulled, than I’ve experienced in just the first four months of 2009. Had I experienced mortality rates like this in 2003, I would not have returned in 2004. It is important to point out that the ACCT Lifesaving Staff is fully aware of these problems and has made every effort to implement effective changes, but kittens continue to die and adults get terribly sick.

Tara Murtha reports:

(I)nsiders say, shelter conditions have gotten so bad that animals need to be saved from the very place they go for protection.

Since the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) reassumed Philadelphia’s animal control contract in January, reports of intake backlog, overcrowding, fuzzy numbers and infectious disease outbreaks have oozed out of the shelter in a steady stream.

Insiders allege that shelter conditions and protocol are crumbling. Rescue workers (who regularly pull animals out of the shelter and place them in homes) and volunteers say they’ve never seen so many sick animals come out of the Hunting Park shelter. One foster parent with more than 20 years experience says that in the last few months, all 18 of the kittens she rescued from ACCT have died.

“They might seem fine the day you pull them, but within two weeks, they’re gone,” she says. “My backyard is like a graveyard.”

So, tell me, Mr. Bengal, how clean are your kennels?

The Philadelphia Daily News responded to the Inquirer story with a more neutral article.

Unlike the Inquirer, the Daily News actually talked to Wendy Willard and quoted NYM.

(H)unting rabbits, in special dress, following a pack of howling basset hounds, isn’t exactly a pastime of the masses.

It has, however, stirred controversy on the Web after a recent raid on the quarters of Murder Hill Bassets in Roxborough, home to nearly two dozen bassets used in foot pursuit of cottontail rabbits on privately owned land.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said on its Web site yesterday that late last month its agents visited the property on Hagys Mill Road where Wendy Willard lived with 23 bassets.

A PSPCA agent said they went in response to noise and odor complaints, and obtained warrants when they couldn’t get in.

Willard surrendered 11 of the dogs after the July 27 raid, said George Bengal, chief investigator of animal cruelty complaints for the PSPCA.

A long-standing Philadelphia statute forbids keeping more than 12 animals per household.

Although the PSPCA contended complainants drew them to the Hagys Mill property, critics charged that the animals were taken because many in the animal-rescue field frown on hunting.

Many basset clubs hunt rabbits, not to kill them but to test the dogs’ skills.

Willard didn’t want to talk about her troubles yesterday, but she did say that three of the animals surrendered actually belonged to a New York woman who has been unsuccessful in learning where the PSPCA placed them.

“They are my family,” a distraught Willard said of her dogs.