by Rory Kress
We sit like this for what feels like a long time, taking each other in. To her, maybe I’m just another passerby or a farmhand. Maybe she’s not even looking at me but looking off in the distance over my shoulder. In her, I see what Izzie’s future would have been if she hadn’t been shipped off for sale. This is what her life would have been if she weren’t mine. The only difference is that I’m not sure Izzie would have survived this long. It takes everything in me not to get out and grab the dog and her puppies and tear off down the road with them. But I can’t save them. Just like I can’t save the hundred or more other dogs surrounding me. I know that. So instead, I just stare back helplessly, hoping I can do more in writing than I can in the flesh.
In the weeks that follow, I call Jackie at least a half dozen times. I send her about as many text messages, trying to get that interview she had promised when ditching me in Missouri. My calls are dodged; my voicemails and text messages are ignored. So without a willing participant from Simler’s Kennel on the record to recount their side of the story, I’m forced to rely on what undercover investigator Pete, the USDA, and the Missouri Department of Agriculture have found on the property.
Using the USDA’s online database that was available to the public at the time of my visit, I searched for Simler. On Keith Simler’s current license dating back to April 2014—a year before Pete visited and investigated the facility—there is not a single violation to be found. No mention of dogs compulsively circling, gone cage crazy. Nothing. There is a mention of the late Wanda Simler’s license, but no reports are listed under her name. I submit a FOIA request with the federal government, and nine months later, a sixty-four-page file of USDA inspection reports dating back to 2009 under Wanda’s license arrives in my inbox. These tell a very different story from what had been available to the public to see.
On March 19, 2013, a USDA inspector cited the kennel for a violation of compatible grouping in which puppies under four months old cannot be housed with any adult dogs other than their mothers. While this may not seem like a very serious rule to break, the inspector’s notes under this nondirect violation are unnerving.
“In the inside section of a sheltered enclosure, the inspectors found what appeared to be a deceased newborn puppy. The licensee was unaware that the puppy was in there until the inspectors pointed it out to her,” the report reads.2
The official documents contain images as well, including a blurry photograph of the dead puppy.
The other images are also hard to stomach: close-up shots of rotten teeth and gums, matted hair pulling the dog’s skin at the root, feces caked and ossified on a dog’s fur. Teeth problems seem to be a recurring issue in the reports. Also from the March 19 report were reports of multiple female Yorkshire terriers with teeth and fur problems. These were marked as direct violations—the most serious category available to inspectors.
A female Yorkshire Terrier…was observed with severe matting on her head, face, and chest area… The matting on her back legs and abdomen were so tightly matted that the matted hair was pulling on her skin and the skint [sic] was slightly reddened. There were balls of entangled fecal material dangling from her rear end and back legs. Matting of the hair coat can be painful, can lead to the development of skin infections, and reduces the ability of the coat to insulate. Upon closer observation of this dog, it was also noted that there was a heavy accumulation of a light to dark brown and black material covering the surface of many of the teeth. Some of the front and back teeth were completely encased in this material, and the gums above these teeth had receded, exposing the root structures… These signs are consistent with the presence of dental disease, can be painful, lead to the development of other health problems, and can inhibit the ability of the animal to eat normally.3
By March 27, 2013, the inspectors returned to note that this violation had been addressed and found no new noncompliant items.
I also FOIA requested any teachable moments issued to the Simlers. The USDA responded that they had none on record.4
Additionally, I placed a Sunshine request with the Missouri Department of Agriculture to view the state inspection reports on Simler’s Kennel. A month later, a much thinner stack of papers arrived on my doorstep dating back to September 2010, two months before Izzie was born there. For the most part, state inspectors found no violations. The only noncompliance on record with the state at Simler’s Kennel dates to June 21, 2016, when the inspector found several dogs with long toenails needing to be trimmed and groomed to prevent discomfort.5
In the last year of traveling the country, visiting other breeding facilities, I’ve somehow been able to distance myself from the truth of Izzie’s birth. I’ve tried to convince myself that I’d someday see where she came from and it would be different. It’s true that Simler’s Kennel is not the worst out there or even the worst that I’ve seen for myself. If this collection of state and federal reports are to be believed, things are better today at Simler’s Kennel than they were when Izzie was born, and any improvement is a good thing. But it’s still not a place where dogs are happily kept, where puppies are born into a loving home, where they’re kept safe from the elements and warm at night. I don’t fault the Simlers for this. If the abandoned farm equipment surrounding the dog cages is any indicator, breeding dogs is a last resort for them—as it is for so many of these breeders. But they are regulated by a system that asks very little of them. So sure, the Simler facility is mostly operating within the legal constraints provided to it. But from what I know now, legal doesn’t mean right.
A long, dazed drive, a bumpy plane ride, and I’m back in Denver. It feels like another planet after where I’ve been. I’m exhausted as I pull up in front of my house. Dan and Izzie are sitting on our front step waiting for me. They rush to the car when I pull up. Izzie jumps to put her paws on my swollen belly and tries to bring those honey eyes as close to my face as possible. I kneel down in the grass and put her paws on my shoulders.
“Who the hell are you?” I whisper in her ear.
I look for some clue, some sign that she knows where I’ve been. She gives me nothing but her excitement that I’ve returned home. I search her face for some way to see the ugliness of her birthplace, as foreign to me as an island on the other side of the world. I find nothing. But she looks different to me now. It’s like she’s been robbed of some of her magic. She’s still my closest ally, my most cherished friend. She’s still the same Izzie to everyone else around us—even to Dan. But now that I’ve seen where she was born, I feel that I know too much. Like a child who dared to ask where babies come from, I sought to find out where puppies come from. And like that curious child, I was disappointed, disgusted, and hurt to learn the truth.
This is Izzie’s truth, and now it’s mine to bear. And I can love her and give her the best life she could ever hope for, but it will never undo the damage done.
Two weeks after my trip to Izzie’s birthplace, my water breaks. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m not due for about a month. I yelp and squirm out of the soaked sheets, and Dan shoots up in bed.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asks in a panic.
“My water broke,” I chirp and bound out of bed, speed-waddling into the bathroom. I can’t stop laughing as my husband swirls around the house, trying to figure out what to pack. I’d been warning him that all the baby books say to have his-and-hers hospital bags packed from week thirty-four onward. But then again, I knew I couldn’t really push my argument with a guilt trip, because at thirty-four weeks, I was in rural Missouri trying to get into the breeding facility where Izzie was born. Oddly, the baby books didn’t say anything about that.
I ring the on-call doctor and tell her my water broke. She sleepily says to wait for contractions. When I tell her the baby was transverse breech as of my last OB visit, she tells me to head to the hospital right away. I’m calm amid the chaos within me. I shove a bath towel between my legs and go outside to give Izzie a walk. I stand barefoot on the cold concrete p
avement as she sniffs around the grass for a place to go. It’s a few hours before dawn on the first day of September, and the heat is finally breaking. Every few steps, she pauses and looks back at me in the darkness, checking to see if this is a new nightly routine I’m trying out with her.
“Go ahead. It’s okay,” I assure her, readjusting my towel under my muumuu. The street is quiet and still, our neighbors’ windows all dark and unaware. Back in the house, Dan is frantic. While I at least had my bag packed, we are still woefully unprepared. The whole pregnancy, we’d been puzzling over what we’d do with Izzie if we went into labor in the middle of the night. During the day, it’d be no problem: we’d take her to her usual dog sitter or drop her off at the fancy dog-boarding facility down the block. But the middle of the night was a blind spot that we were still figuring out without any family in Denver or friends that we’d be comfortable waking on a moment’s notice.
As Dan runs back and forth upstairs, I take all the cash out of my wallet and lay it out on the front table with Izzie’s leash and a big bag of her treats. I text her walker, asking him to start coming every few hours to let Izzie out beginning at 9:00 a.m.—and take whatever cash he needs. In the meantime, I begin working through how long we’ll really be in labor or in the hospital before we can get her to her dog sitter who she so loves. I just don’t want her to have to spend a night alone in the house.
When Dan finally comes downstairs with our bags in tow, we give Izzie a treat. For the last time, we are a family of three. I kiss her on the fuzzy blank space between her eyes and hope she won’t be too afraid.
Dan and I slip out the door and glide across the silent city to the hospital.
“Do you really think we’re coming home with a baby?” I ask Dan as he white-knuckles the steering wheel.
“Of course we are. What else would possibly happen?” He runs a deserted red light.
“I don’t know,” I say, thinking the worst but choosing not to add to his anxiety. I know the baby is lodged inside me sideways like a fallen tree trunk stuck between two riverbanks.
“Maybe they’ll patch it up and just send us home,” I say.
Dan doesn’t answer, too focused on the empty highway.
Four hours and one emergency C-section later, my baby is placed in my arms. He’s weightless, tiny, swollen, beautiful, and strange but undeniably alive and irrevocably ours. He wails and wails, his tiny lungs shocked to find the cold and alien air around him instead of the warm water world he had always known.
“Hey,” I say and pull his face close to mine. He falls silent, and his eyes jolt open to take me in. This is my child, and nothing will ever be the same.
We made it. We managed to have the baby we were told was impossible. For nine months, I’d been so sure that once he was safely delivered, my fear and anxiety at the possibility of losing him would subside. Instead, I find myself awash in a new terror as the world around me begins to look like a carnival of profound dangers. Blame it on the dissociative experience that is a C-section, but it takes me a full day to realize that he is really my child. Sometimes, I still can’t believe it.
Once we’re out of the operating room and my phone is returned to me, the first thing I do is check in to make sure Izzie is walked and fed and happy. She is, her walker assures me—and he’ll be heading back again to see her in just an hour or two. I’m relieved, but I still can’t have her staying home alone overnight. Sure, she could go through the night without an accident, but I can’t subject her to the loneliness and the sudden surprise we’ll be springing on her when we return.
“Dan, I want you to go and take Izzie to her sitter’s house,” I say, confined to a hospital bed until the spinal block can wear off.
“I can’t leave you here alone,” he says, rocking our too-tiny son in his arms.
“I’m fine,” I insist. “And there are a million nurses hovering around. You should go and take her to the sitter so that we can relax knowing she’s happy.”
Dan drags his feet and fights me but eventually relents, leaving his hours-old, premature son to make sure our firstborn is cared for. When he sends me a selfie of the two of them in the car together, I’m so relieved that I burst into tears for about the tenth time of the day. Our little girl is okay.
The next three days are a blur of nurses, suture checks, and pediatrician visits. We learn how to feed and change our baby. We even settle on a name for him after months of deliberations: Race, after the street in Philadelphia where Dan and I met. Very quickly, from within that tiny hospital room, our family unit permanently changes. We all do. But something is missing, and we won’t be complete until we’re home with Izzie.
When they finally release us, we drive straight from the hospital to pick up Izzie. I sit in the back seat with Race, making sure he’s surviving his first trip in his car seat, which suddenly looks so much bigger than it did when we bought it. When we get to her sitter’s place, Dan opens the door, and Izzie leaps into the front seat, tongue flopping and eyes bright. She has no idea that everything has changed. She clearly wants to jump into my lap in the back seat, but my anxiety at guarding my incision chills her enthusiasm as she respectfully stays put with Dan up front. We indulge her in the rare treat of an open-window ride. She periscopes her snout into the air, taking in the fresh breeze.
I’ll admit it’s a challenge at first for Dan and me to integrate Izzie into our dazzlingly terrifying new life with Race. Hours and days seem to melt together as one feeding-burping-changing session bleeds into the next. Then, with half the day gone, Dan and I look at each other and say one of two things: Have we eaten anything today? or When was the last time Izzie walked? But if our new addition bothers her, she never shows it. In these early days, she seems unaware that Race is a person just like Dan and me and, as a result, someone to be approached and cajoled for food or affection. Instead, she spends his first week or so somewhat frightened of him. We figure that she recognizes our anxiety around him and knows that he is something very precious not yet to be touched, sniffed, or licked.
When Race is just a few days old, Dan and I make use of an unexpected nap to retreat to the kitchen and scavenge our empty refrigerator for scraps. As we sleepwalk past our baby monitor, I freeze and grab Dan to come see too. There’s Race in his bassinet, perched on its stand by our bed. And there, in our bed, head low between her paws, eyes trained with tremendous focus on the bassinet and the baby, is Izzie. We stand in silence, watching them together, not sure if what we’re witnessing is a fluke or if Izzie is really standing guard over our son. Soon, he begins to squirm and chirp, winding up to awaken. We watch on the monitor as Izzie leaps from the bed and heads for the door. As I rush to mount the stairs to tend to him, Izzie paces the landing, waiting impatiently for me to come help, alerting me before he can even begin to cry.
We watch these two creatures grow together and bond. When summoned close with Race in our arms, Izzie trembles, her nub wagging so fast, it’s blurry to my eye. She licks his milk-sticky hands and his sweat-salty feet. She stares at him longingly and lays her head in his lap as his various swings and rockers bring him to her eye level. As the weeks pass and Race’s eyes develop, he begins to notice Izzie when she prances into a room, much to her delight. As he learns to open his fists into hands, his smile lights when I guide him to gently stroke her silky ears. When her sharp, phobic barks rattle the house over nothing, he startles and then settles back to sleep, her frantic yelps just another stitch in the sound fabric of our home, something he’s known all his life. When he wails and wails as his teeth start to cut in, she paces in shared, helpless agony. And as he lifts his head and starts to crawl, Izzie sniffs his diapered behind and stands cautiously behind him, keeping an attentive eye on his progress. She is, after all, the local expert on navigating the world on all fours. The first time his babysitter notices how bonded she is to him, I have to ask, “Honestly, how does anyone do this parenting thing without a dog?”
But as I strive to enrich my son an
d make his early weeks and months as beneficial as possible for his lifelong emotional and physical well-being, I think back to what I learned from Overall’s test of Izzie—how her earliest days forever capped her lifelong capacity for joy and appreciation of adventure. I think too of what breeder Patrice had told me when I visited Heirloom Wheatens. Just like Patrice does with her puppies, I pour myself into this child. I put him on his tummy during playtime even as he fights me furiously, and I introduce him to new people and environments to teach him to not be anxious and phobic. While none of us would ever equate a puppy to a human child, I am watching in real time how any living being can flourish when given all the best chances to thrive.
As a first-time parent, I’m surprised to find that babies don’t come into the world fully formed. I discover that there’s something about a newborn that isn’t quite human yet. All the pieces are there, but that essential consciousness and awareness takes time before it can begin shining through. Every day, he becomes more of a person. And part of this emerging humanity is his growing interest in our dog: the first time his eyes dart when he hears her running to the nursery; the first time he sits up and, eye level with her, babbles directly at her; the first time he watches her peeing in the grass and bursts into a fit of giggles; the first time he reaches out to touch her and stops crying.
Watching him grow to know that she is a part of his world but is somehow different from us is a milestone of its own. In our own home, I feel as if I am witnessing the millennia of our shared evolution of man and dog on a tiny scale in rapid playback.
Seeing the innate bond that Race and Izzie have already begun to develop together without even the words to name it, I feel stronger than ever that our dogs deserve better.
