Look familiar??

http://gazetteonline.com/local-news/featured-local-news/2009/11/30/rescued-basset-hounds-moving-on-to-new-lives

Rescued Basset hounds moving on to new lives

Posted on Nov 30, 2009 Cedar Rapids Gazette ( I apologize if I'm not supposed to re-print this, I don't really know the rules about that)

On a perfect Saturday morning for a long walk, there were 18 Basset hounds in Iowa City that had never even been introduced to leashes, much less to walks.

The dogs, which had been rescued from puppy mills, cannot even coexist easily with humans.

“They are like babies,” said volunteer Tammara Baker of Pet Central Station. “They’ve never had the opportunity to be outside or walk on grass.”

Barbara Crandell, with Hounds Haven Bassett Rescue, said, “Some of them are scared to death to be touched.”

Crandell, Baker and other volunteers were carefully preparing the dogs, from just five months to 12 years old, for a trip to New York rescue shelter. There they will be taught to enjoy everyday life with people.

Just getting the dogs to trust a person long enough so they could be carried to the vehicle that will transport them was itself difficult for the volunteers.

Baker said Iowa and Missouri are “two of the top puppy mill states” in the nation, and that the rescued dogs were in a condition common to parents of puppies sold in many pet stores. Some were gaunt, and others were overfed.

A pair of rescued Shetland sheepdogs was a case in point.

“They came in loaded with fleas,” Baker said, “and they were yellow from years of sitting in urine.”

They will stay in Iowa for their rehabilitation.

Like the sheepdogs, many of the Basset hounds had spent their lives in a cage. The volunteers’ goal Saturday was to make the animals’ 1,000-mile trip to New York their last time being confined.

Baker said that even such unfortunate animals can be trained to become domestic pets. The underlying spirit of a dog — something as basic as feeling joy and expressing it with a wagging tail — can be recaptured.

“Even the dog that has been caged has the ability to come out of its shell,” Baker said.

A few minutes later, the final cage was closed, and the dogs headed east to their new lives.

– Chris Earl, KCRG-TV9