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skin problems (everything from dermatitis to mange) and eye ailments ranging from glaucoma to cataracts to severe dry eye. They had missing and rotten teeth and gingivitis, an infection of the gums. Some of their teeth were so infected that merely touching them was enough to make them fall out. The dogs’ ears were inflamed and infected, and they were rife with whipworm, roundworm, and other intestinal parasites. Two of the Papillons had untreated broken bones that had healed badly, twisting their limbs. All of the dogs would need to be treated for fleas, ticks, and lice.
    Among the first dogs Dieter treated was a Cavalier who had given birth to two puppies. Inside her uterus he found a third puppy, dead. The Cavalier also had a noncontagious form of mange, a cloudy eye, and a growth on her back that was either an old wound or a skin problem that had healed over and left a scaly mass. Dieter later treated a female English Bulldog suffering from pyometra, an abscess of the uterus, a potentially fatal condition. To remedy the problem he needed to spay her. When he opened her up, he found a dead puppy inside.
    Aside from their physical ailments, the dogs were starved for attention. Even in horrific conditions, a little kindness would have gone a long way to make their lives tolerable, Dieter thought. It was clear to him that, despite Wolf’s protests to the contrary, these dogs had been neglected not just physically but emotionally, too. Their ordeal reminded him how remarkably forgiving dogs could be. Despite their torment, these animals probably still clamored for Wolf’s attention. “You can do a lot of things to the animals and they’ll still come back and want to wag their tail,” Dieter said.

Chapter 7: A Safe Place for Dog 132
    The first thing that struck Pam Bair was the smell, an odor equal parts barnyard and sewer that assaulted her the instant she stepped into the hallway of the Berks County Animal Rescue League.
    “Whoa! Is that you, Alison?” she asked with a sardonic grin.
    Humane society police officer Alison Rudy acknowledged her with a rueful grimace. Rudy and fellow humane officer Katie McGlory had just arrived with a dozen puppy mill rescues from the Berks County Humane Society in Reading. The Humane Society had agreed to house twenty-five dogs from the Chester County SPCA, but quickly decided that the maximum number it could handle was thirteen. The Animal Rescue League had offered to house the rest.
    All Bair knew was that the dogs had come from a high-volume breeding operation in Lower Oxford that had been busted five days earlier. The dogs had now taken their third road trip in as many days. “The journey had to be intimidating for those dogs,” Bair thought as Rudy and McGlory carried in the last of the crates.
    Bair ran the Rescue League’s boarding kennel—the wing set aside for dogs whose owners were out of town. She also tended to pregnant dogs, orphaned puppies, and, every now and then, a group of dogs involved in a court case, which was the category Wolf’s dogs fell into. The newcomers would remain at the Rescue League until the charges against Wolf were resolved, however long that took.
    Inside one of the crates, a tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with enormous eyes and feathery ears trembled. A self-confident animal might have been curious about her new surroundings. She might have glanced about at the shady elms that flanked the shelter or squinted up at the winter sun. But Dog 132 wasn’t noticing any of this. She cast her eyes downward as Rudy sat her crate against one wall of the wide hallway into the boarding wing, where Bair stood waiting.
    Bair knelt and peered inside the crates. She counted one Havanese puppy, two English Bulldogs, and nine Cavaliers. She’d been told to expect a dozen dogs, and it looked as though all twelve were accounted for. She’d cleaned out six cinderblock kennels; the dogs were small enough to fit in them nicely, two by two. The Bulldogs