Reposted Article: Who's Watching the Dogs, By Bill White

Who's watching the dogs?
Experts say officials must have noticed 'horrific' abuses earlier.
Bill White in TheMorningCall.com
October 5, 2008

The discovery of horrendous conditions at a Chester County puppy mill this summer was bad enough on its own merits.Breeding dogs were brought away with empty eye sockets full of flies, eyes long dead for untreated infections, splayed feet from a life on cage wire and a host of other medical problems. The owner of Limestone Kennels was raided by Pennsylvania SPCA agents and charged with some 23 counts of animal cruelty.

But the story also had a very disturbing kicker. That same kennel, full of hellish conditions, had been inspected earlier this year by a state Bureau of Dog Law warden and her supervisor -- and had been rated ''satisfactory'' in all respects.In response to the PSPCA's findings, the bureau sent different wardens to inspect, and the kennel's license was revoked. An investigation is under way, and the inspectors involved were reassigned to desk duties.

Anyone who read reporter Tim Darragh's terrific 2007 series about the kennel inspection system -- or knows anything about Lancaster County puppy mills -- knows how screwed up the system is. But the Limestone story was particularly interesting to me because one of the inspectors, former dog warden and now supervisor Rick Martrich, has been a controversial figure in the Lehigh Valley, thanks to the well-publicized problems of the inaptly named Almost Heaven dog kennel in Upper Milford Township.

People have been questioning for years how Almost Heaven and notorious proprietor Derbe ''Skip'' Eckhart received such favorable inspection reports, and many of the questions have focused on Martrich, the warden who conducted most of them. More on him in a moment. He's not permitted to respond to press inquiries, so I haven't been able to ask him about it.

Those questions intensified this week when Pennsylvania SPCA investigators raided Almost Heaven -- less than two months after a spotless state dog law inspection -- and found more than 800 animals of all varieties living in absolute filth. Many of them were sick, frightened, injured, dehydrated and crammed into overcrowded cages, investigators said.Investigators' comments were consistently disturbing.''It's bad.'' ''It's disgusting.'' ''It's horrific.'' ''It's heartbreaking to see the dogs like this.'' They ended up charging Eckhart with more than 550 counts of animal cruelty.

PSPCA Chief Executive Officer Howard Nelson told me, ''I wasn't there a couple of months ago, but my guess is [Eckhart] knew they were coming Â… . Then he cleaned it up, and hid animals that were severely sickened and severely matted.'

'Still,'' he added, ''there are some common sense things, to me, that they just missed. Anybody knows so few people can't possibly care for and clean with that large a number of animals.'' He said he can't believe that all these problems just appeared. Investigators at the scene said the same thing.

Carol Araneo-Mayer, vice president of the New Jersey rescue organization Adopt-a-Pet and co-founder of the annual Puppy Mill Awareness Day in Lancaster County, told me she's received maybe 80 rescue dogs over the years that originated at Almost Heaven, and they're always in horrible shape. She has checked his inspection reports and can't believe he kept passing. ''There's something really really wrong here,'' she said. ''Maybe one inspection. Not even two. Every single dog that came out of there looked the same way -- dirty, starving, wounded. There's always something wrong with their dogs. What were [the inspectors] looking at?

''When I learned some years ago that the Lehigh County Humane Society had supplied shelter dogs to Almost Heaven's ''rescue'' operation, then-shelter manager Orlando Aguirre -- now a state dog warden working under Martrich -- told me he had done it on Martrich's recommendation. LCHS said it discontinued the practice when it learned about Almost Heaven's reputation.Aguirre, part of the four-person team that inspected Almost Heaven, declined comment at the scene Wednesday.

The kennel's problems over the years were no secret to anyone. Eckhart served jail time for cruelty to animals. He was sued by the American Kennel Club for misrepresenting himself to sell AKC-registered dogs after receiving a lifetime ban.

A few months after my 2004 columns about Eckhart's violations of the state consumer protection laws relating to dog sales, he signed an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance with the state attorney general's office promising not to engage any more in those activities. Among other things, the court papers say he failed to provide health records and full vaccination information for his dogs at the time of sale, that he used contracts with language that was contrary to the law and failed to provide written notice of their rights and a guarantee of his dogs' good health.

He agreed to comply in the future, was permanently enjoined from violating consumer protection laws and agreed to pay restitution to dog buyers who submitted complaints or who submitted claims within 60 days of the filing. He also paid a $500 fine.

The kennel has an unsatisfactory record with the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Pennsylvania because of unanswered complaints. BBB records show that in the last three years, there have been nine complaints about the kennel, and four in the last year. Of those, Eckhart failed to respond to four, the records show, and only two were resolved.

Records also show Eckhart has state tax liens for unpaid sales taxes totaling more than $80,000 dating back to 2001.

Beyond all that stuff from legal and business records, dog law and other state agencies received many complaints about him for years. I know because many of the same people called and e-mailed me. I have stacks of files on him, many of them involving Almost Heaven customers who ended up with sick dogs.

Nelson said, ''I'm relatively new to Pennsylvania, but this place is notorious. I've heard horror stories for years. Everybody knows it takes like 20 baths to clean a Skip Eckhart dog. They have that smell of feces and urine, ammonia, deep in their skin.''

''How did Dog Law not know that? I think they know it.''

What I'm saying is: This is an operation that pretty much everyone knew was a mess. So the suspicion has been that if the state of Pennsylvania keeps giving Almost Heaven a clean bill of health, there's something wrong.

I tried unsuccessfully to reach Eckhart for an explanation. However, Pattie Fontana, a longtime employee at Almost Heaven who finally left the place in 2007 but returned for a few weeks this summer, told me Eckhart always was warned before an inspection and that he had a close relationship with Martrich. Information she supplied to PSPCA helped spark this week's raid.

Bill Smith, founder of Main Line Animal Rescue in Chester Springs -- the group that sparked the Limestone Kennels investigation -- told me he has filed complaints, both with the state attorney general's office and the state inspector general, alleging that then-state dog warden Martrich was improperly sharing information with Eckhart and tipping him off to raids and the origin of complaints. He also complained to former Bureau of Dog Law Director Mary Bender after his inquiries about Almost Heaven were relayed right to Eckhart. I have copies of a whole series of e-mail exchanges on the subject.

Nothing positive came of Smith's complaints. In fact, Martrich eventually was promoted to regional supervisor, and Smith said the response when the inspector general starting investigating his complaints was an immediate inspection of Smith's own rescue kennel -- by a two-person team that included Rick Martrich.

Dog Law spokesman Chris Ryder told me this summer that Smith's complaints would be part of the investigation into how its wardens missed the horrors of Limestone. He confirmed Thursday that the investigation would be expanded to include what happened at Almost Heaven.

However, resolving that one may be more complicated than just putting a couple of people in desk jobs.

The four-person team that inspected Almost Heaven in August included the relatively new director of dog law, Sue West.

I wonder if she'll suspend herself?