Best Friends Blog

Trixie stars in the parade

Michael Mountain — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:03:26 GMT

So here's Trixie in the July Fourth parade. She was indeed the star of the show – as predicted in my post yesterday. And she behaved impeccably. Congratulations, Trix!

Of course, Kanab, Utah, our local town, about 10 miles from the sanctuary, is not exactly New York City, so the parade is a bit smaller than what Macy's puts on. Mostly the city fire truck and a whole lot of people riding ATVs!

But Trixie wasn't the only star. Here's Harley, one of the potbellied pigs, in his float.

Not sure what the American Airlines umbrella has to do with it. Someone probably donated it. Whatever . . .

Happy Fourth to y'all.

Kids, cats, me make “superhero” video

Michael Mountain — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:42:08 GMT

What: Teen team travels around the state, interviewing people who dress up as superheroes and do good deeds. (The kids told me there really are such people!)

What then: They decide to find some "real" heroes to interview as a counterpoint.

And so: They come to Best Friends!

The teen team is from Spyhop, which describes itself as a "youth media arts and education center." They spent a day at the sanctuary, and interviewed me as one of their "heroes".

Here I am, in a famously heroic moment.

Well, OK: no one has to be heroic with Juniper Kitty. And in any case, the true heroes are folks here like Sherry Woodard, Shelley Thayer and Mckenzie Garcia, who have spent months helping kitties like Juniper to recover from the appalling trauma that led to the Great Kitty Rescue in the Nevada desert this time last year. Even when sick and starving, the cats were terrified of people and armed to the teeth with claws.

Today, most of these 800+ cats have graduated from what became known as Miss Sherry's Finishing School for Cats here at the sanctuary. And most of them have been adopted – a miracle in itself. Others, like Juniper, have moved from their special care center over to Kittyville, our cat village.

The room in the photo where we were filming is in the CalMar house – named after Cal and his wife, Martha, two members of Best Friends who were planning to retire and build a house near the sanctuary. But then Martha passed away. Cal decided to build a house anyway – in her memory – for cats with feline leukemia, FIV, and other special needs. CalMar opened a couple years ago.

The kids did a great interview, but I was stumped for a moment when they asked me who's my own favorite hero. I could only think of a long list of people who have been in some of Best Friends major rescues – like right now in the Iowa flood rescues. But they wanted one in particular. So I chose a guy from the coast guard whom we heard from after the Hurricane Katrina rescue.

Here's the story:

It begins with a typical scene that one of our own teams came across during the Katrina rescue. The boat had been dragged up to the side of the waters.

And this is the dog we found inside. She was starving and dehydrated, covered in parasites and diesel fuel, and could barely stand. But back at the rescue center, she was soon OK. The team affectionately named her Diesel, and a few weeks later she was sent out, like the 6,000 others Best Friends brought out of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, to be fostered and, if her family didn't come forward, to be adopted.

A year later, a book was published about the Best Friends rescue work, called Not Left Behind. And a few weeks after publication, we got this letter from a young man in Illinois:

We let Brandon know that Diesel was now in a good home and he could set his mind at rest.

Truth is, Best Friends worked side-by-side with the military all through the Katrina rescue. They had their mission; we had ours. We helped each other in numerous cases.

I told the kids from Spyhop that in my terms, Brandon qualifies as a true hero. Hope you agree.

Trixie’s rehearsal

Michael Mountain — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:22:25 GMT

Trixie is getting ready for her big day out.

Tomorrow, the Fourth of July, she'll be starring in the parade through our local town of Kanab, Utah.

Trixie is a mini-horse. She came here, in part, to be a companion to Luna, a mini-horse who had been run over and was rushed to the sanctuary for emergency care and surgery. Once Luna had started to recover, we discovered what a badly-behaved girl she was! So Trixie's job was to help her learn her manners. It's debatable, at this point in time, who's taught whom what. J

Anyway, Trix likes doing all kinds of interesting things, so here she is with Linda Alvey, practicing for the Fourth of July parade.

Behind them in that photo above, incidentally, and tucked away next to that big cottonwood tree, is our mailing office. All your delightful mail and donations land there. Thanks for sending them!

You can see how tiny Trixie is as she and Linda go past some of the other horses.

And here she is getting a general rub-down and beauty treatment.

Queen of Mean ... heart (and will?) of gold?

Michael Mountain — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:44:34 GMT

We all heard, when notorious hotelier Leona Helmsley passed "over the Rainbow Bridge" that she'd left $12 million to her pooch, Trouble.

I'll confess to thinking, at the time that ... well, all very nice, but it doesn't take $12 million to look after one dog, and there are still millions more (dogs, not dollars) dying in shelters every year. Leona, I thought, certainly loved Trouble, but that's a bit different from truly caring about animals.

I guess I have to rethink my thoughts. It's all over the news today that Leona actually wanted to leave billions of dollars to homeless dogs! According to The New York Times:

Her instructions, specified in a two-page "mission statement," are that the entire trust, valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, according to two people who have seen the document and who described it on condition of anonymity.

But before we (meaning every animal rescue organization in the world) start lining up at the door of the trustees, bear in mind that this may all be a bit more complicated. The Times notes that the relevant document is simply a "mission statement", and that trustees are permitted to "use their discretion in distributing the money." It's an "expression of her wishes" and not necessarily legally binding.

Still, other legal experts are noting that a donor's intent is important when trustees are called upon to make such decisions.

Even if a small percentage of the fund is eventually given away on behalf of dogs, there's apparently no direction in the document as to how exactly it should be spent and to which organizations it might be given.

Nobody's asked for our opinion here at Best Friends. At least, not yet. But I'd certainly hope that enough funds go specifically to humane organizations that are fully committed to the no-kill philosophy. Properly managed, even a small fraction of such a fund could bring an end to the killing of homeless pets in shelters.

Plus, an infusion of funds into all these humane groups, even though directed to the goal of no more homeless dogs, would free up a lot of existing funds to help the cats, birds, bunnies and other homeless pets, too.

Whatever happens, we should all note that Leona may have been pretty awful when it came to her treatment of humans, but there was quite a large little corner of her heart devoted to the animals.

Now they want to clone Best Friends!!

Michael Mountain — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:14 GMT

First, they tried to clone dogs. That didn't work, and the company, Genetic Savings & Clone, shut down. I guess a lot of people lost some money. (Who knows how many dogs they lost in all the experiments they conducted?)

So then they cloned the old company as a new start-up: BioArts.

Next, they succeeded in cloning some dogs.

And now they've even tried to clone Best Friends – or at least the name. The company's website is called Best Friends Again.

You may have seen the doggie lookalikes on the morning TV shows a few weeks ago. Actually, they don't look that much alike. (But that's no surprise. When they cloned some cats back in the old company, the clones weren't even the same color.) And when I saw the dogs on Good Morning America, the cloned puppies all behaved quite differently from each other. Maybe one of them was more like the mother ... but which?

Cloning is such a scam – playing off the emotions of people who sincerely believe they're going to get Fido or Fluffy back. That's not going to happen.

And to name the program after Best Friends is simply outrageous. Needless to say, we're lodging a formal complaint, and with a view to taking matters further.

Note to Lou Hawthorne, CEO of BioArts:

Don't tell us you didn't realize there was a possible conflict of identities. You've known Best Friends for years. You even sent a team here, back in the days of your old company, to check out how we shelter dogs and cats.

And you actually requested that we give or sell you the "bits" from our spay/neuter surgeries so you could experiment with them. (We declined.)

According to reports, BioArts is planning "a series of online auctions ... that will award five winning bidders the opportunity to clone their dogs, living or departed (providing that tissue samples were taken before their deaths)."

The Best Friends Again website says that the first auction takes place on July 5th – opening bid $100,000. New auctions follow every day, with the opening bid increasing each day – up to $180,000. And to qualify, you also have to provide "A bank reference that will confirm your ability to pay for this service, with available cash, assets, or credit line of at least $250,000."

Apparently BioArts is teaming with a South Korean company which has done a number of cloning experiments, and which was disgraced in 2005 when the leader of the team was found to have falsified data relating to cloning human embryonic cells.

Hawthorne admits to various "failed attempts" at cloning in the past, but told Forbes Online "We are 100% sure that we can deliver five dogs to five families." Whether or not he can, no one has ever been told what those "failed attempts" really looked like. How many? What happened to the animals? What kind of suffering was involved? How many living creatures were killed? An article on Alternet puts it thus:

With such high failure rates, hundreds of surrogate dogs must endure significant pain and suffering to produce one cloned puppy. And the surviving cloned animals are typically riddled with serious health problems such as kidney failure, lung problems, and premature death. In discussing the abnormal gene expression thought to cause clones' health problems and abysmal survival rate, MIT cloning expert Rudolph Jaenisch put the matter succinctly: "There may be no normal clones." Good Morning America's failure to provide dog owners this perspective is astonishing.

Back when his team came to Best Friends and we asked why he was trying to clone dogs and cats, Hawthorne said simply, "It's consumer-driven." i.e. people thinking they can keep transfer the entire life experience of one animal into the cloned body of another. That doesn't happen.

This is not science. It's not about enhancing life. It's not about giving people back their beloved pets. It's about making money off the backs of well-meaning but gullible people ... and, worst of all, off the lives and suffering of living creatures.

Please, Lou, at very least take the name of Best Friends off your program.

Chicago: Deflation?

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:08:00 GMT

Our local airport is St. George, about 75 miles from the sanctuary. It's a small commuter airport, with flights just to Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, and in small planes that seat about 30 people and tend to bounce around when landing in the summer heat.

So we land in St. George, I'm just walking up to my trusty Jeep, when I notice it seems to be slightly tilted over. <groan> Flat tire in the back. And 104 degrees in the parking lot. (It's never that hot at the sanctuary, but St George is lower elevation, more like temps in Las Vegas.

I can't quite face changing the tire in the heat, the other folks took an earlier flight, and I'm useless at flat tire stuff anyway, so one of the guys inside suggests a repair shop that may be open (lots of things are closed here on Sundays), and 13 minutes later, a truck rolls up and it's like something out of some hilarious comedy movie ... a whole delightful Hispanic family , including mom and the kids, and maybe the grandkids, all in a big yellow repair truck. Dad and two of the boy leap out and, presto, it's all done in minutes.

Pics taken with my phone. Don't really do justice to all the shouting and hilarity, but anyway . . .

And 90 minutes later, it's back home . . .

Chicago: The eBay donation

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:07:00 GMT

While we'd been having the members meeting and talking about Safe Humane, thousands of other people were having a whole other meeting altogether – at the big McCormick Place Convention Center.

It was the annual eBay Convention, and I'd been invited to their closing ceremony to receive a check to help build a new puppy care center at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

Each year, a focus group of eBay members decides on three charities that they'd like the eBay Foundation to support. This year's choices were Oxfam, for famine relief in Africa; First Book, a reading program for young people; and Best Friends, to help with our work in saving the puppies and their mothers and father who are forced to spend their lives breeding puppies at puppy mills for sale in pet stores.

You can read more about that in Sandy's report here.

I arrived at the wrong end of the convention center and was quite lost until I started hearing the mix of cheering and screaming and just followed the sound ... thousands of people, wearing all manner of hats with flashing lights, necklaces of eBay buttons, all parading around in what they call the Clapping Tunnel. (Here's some YouTube video from the 2006 one –it gives you some idea, but this year's was far more wacky ... lots more squealing!)

Debbie McCullough, in our development office, had been working with the eBay Foundation for several months as they put the program together. And on top of the big donation, eBay members have also been making personal donations. So we don't have the final figure yet.

That's Debbie in the middle, with some of our new friends at the eBay Foundation.

Next: Deflation?! :-)

Chicago: The members meeting

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:06:00 GMT

It was an overflow crowd at the members meeting, which began at 7 pm. – about 260 people. We'd set up the meeting at only a few days' notice, so it was good of so many people to drop everything and come by the hotel.

I love members meetings, and we haven't done them for some years now. I hope this will be the start of a new series.

The first round began about 10 years ago, and the purpose was to introduce members of Best Friends to local humane groups and encourage them to get involved locally. Most of them knew very little about what was going on in their own home towns, so it was a great opportunity. And the local groups, many of which were struggling with few resources and tons of homeless animals, really welcomed the infusion of volunteers and energy. It was a critically important element in the overall No More Homeless Pets campaign.

Then we started the No More Homeless Pets conferences – two each year in different parts of the country – and those really took the place of the members meetings.

The last No More Homeless Pets conference we were going to do was scheduled for October 2005. But then Hurricane Katrina hit, and we canceled it because of the huge rescue operation we and so many others were involved in. (We're starting up the conferences again this October. More on that soon.)

It was Paul's idea that we should have a members meeting in Chicago – a great opportunity to bring everyone up to date with the No More Homeless Pets campaign, where it's at, what's next, and our work with Safe Humane. And again with the purpose of connecting our own members with all the great local organizations that are already involved.

It's a great opportunity, too, for members to meet each other, plan visits out to the sanctuary (about 40 or 50 people put their hands up when I asked how many had been out to Best Friends) and get involved in other programs.

Paul talked about our work in Chicago and with Safe Humane.

And I talked about Best Friends just generally, with lots of video and photos from the sanctuary, from Chicago, and from some of our other work.

We also showed some pics of the rescue team in their next-door state of Iowa, which was quite emotional for many people, seeing all the rescues taking place there.

And there's a lot of fun and laughter, too

And after the main talk, there's time for questions.

Overall, it's a bit like a giant family gathering – just a roomful of people of different backgrounds, faiths, cultures etc. but who all feel exactly the same way about kindness to animals.

Always very touching and a great experience.

Next: The big eBay donation

Chicago: Safe haven & intervention

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:03:00 GMT

Friday June 20th, 5 p.m.

Before the members meeting, we invite some of the local organizations over to talk about why we're here and what we're doing.

There are about 40 people at this get-together. Some of them already know about safe Humane. Others don't, and Cynthia Bathurst (director of Safe Humane) is eager to have them involved. So she and Paul explain the program and invite others to talk about their part in it. And then I talk about Best Friends and our work just generally.

This is Charles Kraft, director of Chicago Animal Care & Control. He's the person who has to deal with all those abandoned bully breed dogs who are picked up off the streets or dropped off at the shelter.

And this is Rev. Dr. Johnson of the African Methodist Church, who arrived about half way through, having been called to an urgent intervention situation (violence, of course). He told us how he talks, in his sermons, about the need for "safe haven" in neighborhoods where you can take your life in your hands just trying to get to the grocery store; about teaching respect to young people, which is so important because when you respect other people as being people in their own right, you're not so likely to get violent with them; and about kindness (and again respect) toward animals – on the basis that if we respect all living beings, then we're going to be good to each other.

On the left here you'll recognize Yvette from my post this morning, and the other two ladies are Susan Robinson from PAWS Chicago and Melia Carter, one of the founders, along with Cynthia, of Safe Humane.

When I was talking to the assembled company about the work of Best Friends, I mentioned that we'd recently done a "trade" with PAWS Chicago. They're an amazing no-kill shelter, adoption and spay/neuter organization, which has grown up over just the last ten years. When we first met them at our first members meeting in Chicago, in the early days of the No More Homeless Pets campaign, they hadn't yet opened a shelter. Paula Fasseas, the founder, was doing low-cost spay/neuter on Saturdays at a bank! (Her husband owns the bank, and was delighted to put it to good use over the weekend.) Today, PAWS drives the no-kill movement in Chicago.

But it's always difficult for a no-kill shelter when they have animals who are hard to adopt. That's where Best Friends tries to step in and arrange for these special-care pets to come to the sanctuary. Recently we brought three dogs who need lots of behavior coaching to the sanctuary. This is Nochi with John Garcia, whom you'll recall from the TV show Dogtown on National Geographic.

Whenever possible for the shelter, they take back some adoptable dogs or cats. That why we call it a "trade".

And in this case, in exchange for the three slightly-badly-behaved pooches, PAWS took 27 cats. What a deal!

Next: The members meeting

Chicago: “How many of you kids have seen a dog fight?”

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:58:00 GMT

Friday June 20th

Paul Berry, our exec director, standing at the back in the photo, has already been in Chicago a couple of days, working with Cynthia Bathurst, who heads up the Safe Humane program in Chicago. Yesterday, they took some dogs over to the community center at the 18th District Police Station meet a group of kids aged about six thru 14.

This is Cynthia explaining the whole program to the kids (apparently in great detail!). Here's the short version:

Safe Humane is a coalition of ministers (about 400), teachers, police, animal rescue groups etc to help build safe neighborhoods in at-risk communities. As Cynthia says:

"A safe neighborhood is a humane neighborhood. And vice versa. You can't have one without the other."

Cynthia started the program herself, and now she's on the staff of Best Friends, and with the support of Best Friends and our resources to help manage the animal protection side of the whole program. The point is, where you have cruelty to animals, you always have violence toward people, too.

In fact, in a recent survey of Chicago prisons, it turned out that 70 percent of all felony inmates admitted to a history of cruelty to animals. That's huge, but it's the same everywhere. (In some towns and counties around the country where the connection is understood, animal control officers are required by law to report animal abuse to child welfare authorities, because it's just guaranteed that where someone is abusing the pets, they're abusing the kids and probably the spouses, too.)

Susan Robinson, another of the Safe Humane team, asked the kids: "How many of you have witnessed a dog fight?"

Every single hand in the room went up.

Then Susan asked the group what they thought the dogs were feeling when they were fighting each other. Several hollered out single word answers like "angry," "scared" and "fearful."

One little boy said, "I think they must be very confused."

Like most of the kids in the room.

Dog fighting is endemic in some of these neighborhoods. Kids get dogs – almost always pit bulls – when they're quite young, pre-teen. Older kids will often approach them on a street corner and say something like, "Bet you $5 my dog can beat your dog." And so they all get drawn into the world of fighting. We're told that the dog fighting industry (and that's what it is) is now bigger than the drug industry.

There's a whole lot of backyard breeding, and the dogs who aren't wanted end up at city shelters, which are crowded out with bully breeds.

That's why this is all becoming a major focus of Best Friends.

The kids also got introduced by Officer Randi O'Carroll to Boomer and Isabelle and Lumpy and Bravo and other dogs, and practiced safety around dogs and learned not to be automatically afraid of them.

Last week, we sent out a postcard to members of Best Friends in Chicago inviting those who'd be interested in knowing more and perhaps joining in as volunteers, to come to a meeting tomorrow.

Next: Safe haven & intervention

Chicago: At the TV studio

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:31:00 GMT

Friday 20th June , noon.

WCIU TV is known throughout Chicago as "the dog channel." And they launched their "Top Dog" contest in April, with viewers invited to vote online for Chicago's top dog.

Yvette Pina entered the contest and asked her friends on the Best Friends Network to vote for Dundee Boy and Scruffy Doo. That's because she'd adopted Dundee when she and her husband, Frank, were visiting the sanctuary.

Dundee was the winner!

So when they heard some of us were going to be in Chicago, WCIU asked us to drop by the studio and talk about the work of Best Friends. And they wanted Yvette and Frank and Dundee and Scruffy to be there, too. A fun reunion.

We talked about Best Friends, how we're working toward the No More Homeless Pets goal, what we're doing in Chicago with Safe Humane (previous post), and then I got to switch roles and do the interview with Yvette.

And then the dogs came on ... and there was no point in trying to keep the interview on track! Here's the happy family .... the winners!

Yvette works for the EPA and will be taking time off this afternoon to come and help set up the members meeting.

Next: "How many of you kids have seen a dog fight?"

Chicago: Flying over the floods

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Thurs, June 19. I'm flying into Chicago from Best Friends for a members meeting tomorrow. As we start the descent, we're over Iowa and this, or something just like this, is what I'm seeing out of the window.

(I can't get to my own camera since I'm in a window seat and have already bothered a large and rather grumpy person several times. So this pic is from the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. But it's exactly what it looked like.)

The photo is of the town of Oakville, which is where the Best Friends rescue team is being deployed. Rich Crook and Ethan Gurney are veterans of the Katrina rescue, along with volunteer Barbara Davis. So far, most of their work is focused on rescuing cats who were left behind as families evacuated and are calling in to local authorities, desperate to be reunited. Most were able to take their dogs with them.

The other animals most affected are pigs, and their situation is tragic. Thousands of them, mainly in fenced areas where they can't get out on their own. Some have escaped and are climbing up on the levees, but this is considered a public danger, since climbing up onto the levees can cause damage. So they're beginning to be shot. And to rescue them from the farms would require major resources and big boats. So we're doing what we can with the pigs, but it's not much.

Not that the cats are an easy rescue. They're hiding in barns, in trees, in attics, and they're very afraid. And our folks are all dressed up in red rubber, waterproof suits in stifling heat. You have to paddle to each house, wade in, find the cat, catch the cat, get the cat into a crate and into the boat, and paddle back out to the shore. It's exhausting, but every life saved is a triumph.

There are some great pics. Everyone's favorite is Ethan and Rigby, who was one of the first kitties to be reunited with his family.

You can see more of Rigby and follow the rest of the rescue in the team's blog here.

Landing at O'Hare a half hour or so later, I took the shuttle into town and checked in at the Allegro Hotel, where we're holding the members meeting tomorrow.

Next: At the TV studio with dogs

About this blog

Michael Mountain — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:55:08 GMT

We've been dedicating this blog to the Vicktory dogs since they arrived here last December. But we have other things to report in a general Best Friends blog, so this page is now becoming the general Best Friends blog.

There are still regular updates on the Vicktory dogs, and you can find them on the regular Best Friends News page and on the Best Friends home page.

No Obstacles Here

patty_hegwood — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:11:06 GMT

The body and the mind work together. If the body is not healthy, the mind is preoccupied. If the mind is not healthy, the body suffers. Ann Allums is one of our chief trainer/rehabilitators here at the sanctuary, and she says the body/mind connection is especially clear working with the Vicktory dogs:

"Every dog loves going onto the agility course. They love getting the attention and the rewards when working the agility equipment. And it's a socialization experience, too, for dogs who are trying to gain confidence. Some of them just want to run around and sniff the equipment at first. Others, like Ray, will run through the tunnel on their own just for fun!

"Agility courses provide new experiences and fun challenges for the dogs. And it helps raise dogs' confidence level when they successfully conquer an obstacle.

"We start with some basic training with the dogs: how to respond to their name and how to follow our hand to be guided to different places. Then we introduce each obstacle, one at a time, at each dog's individual pace. Sometimes we have to build on baby steps such as rewarding the dog simply for sniffing at the obstacle. We never force a dog to interact with the obstacle, because that might cause them to fear it.

"Almost every dog will jump on the platforms, which are box-like structures of different heights. We also have a barrel for the dogs to go through, a 10-foot tunnel, a teeter, jump, tire jump, and weave poles. There are different training steps for each of the obstacles, and for each of the dogs, since our training is customized for each dog."

Ann always makes it fun for the dogs. And they're gaining confidence every day.

Déjà vu

davidd — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:26:21 GMT

As I stopped by to visit the Vicktory dogs the other day, I got to talking with the caregivers about Mya.

Mya is the Vicktory dog who came a couple months back from Bad Rap, a pit bull rescue in California that operates through foster homes. Mya hadn't been doing well in her foster home, and came to Best Friends as an exchange.

After chatting with her caregivers long enough, I started to get this sense of déjà vu as they described Mya's progress in various areas. As one example, Mya used to hide in the corner whenever staff opened the door to her play area. There she would wait until one of them slowly, carefully approached with a lead. Not any more. Nowadays, she approaches the door in anticipation for a walk. No more cowering in the shadows.

Also, Mya used to be terrified of being petted. In truth, she's still a tad leery of too much affection at once, but even so she's making great progress. She now walks up to her caregivers on occasion and very lightly nuzzles their hand for attention. They pet her for as long as Mya wants, and then hold off, waiting for further cues from Mya. Nobody tries pushing her too far.

She has now discovered toys as well. Toys used to hold no value or purpose to Mya, but now she is starting to play with them.

As we visited more and more about Mya, it occurred to me why everything sounded so familiar. It's almost exactly what the other Vicktory dogs went through, except several months earlier. She came to the sanctuary later than they did, but Mya has been going through the same progression. It's almost like the other Vicktory dogs have paved the way and now Mya is walking the path they created. Which is pretty neat to see.