Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Clockwise from left: Lila Borgy Wills, petting Nicholas, an English mastiff; Christy Smith, holding Foxy Stella, a miniature pinscher mix; Becky Murray; and Kathy Davieds are member of the Virginia Partnership for Animal Welfare and Support. VA PAWS is a nonprofit animal welfare group based in the New River Valley.

House Bill 538

The bill designed to crack down on large commercial dog breeders passed the House of Delegates 91-6 and is moving through Senate committees with majority support.

• Commercial dog breeding and penalties: Defines a commercial breeder as any person who, during any 12-month period, maintains 30 or more adult female dogs for the primary purpose of the sale of their offspring as companion animals.
• Commercial breeders will be required to: Apply for a business license from their respective locality; cooperate with inspections by animal control officers to ensure compliance with state and federal animal care laws; create a fire emergency plan and install fire safety measures; maintain records of animal sales, purchases, breeding history, and veterinary care; dispose of dead dogs and confined waste in accordance with law; and maintain no more than 50 dogs over the age of one year at one time.
• Commercial breeders in violation: Will be charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor. Pet shops must ensure that their dogs are purchased from dealers or people who are properly registered and licensed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

CHRISTIANSBURG -- Foxy Stella weighs less than 2 pounds, has giant Dumbo ears and buggy blue eyes. She has an enlarged heart and a severely deformed sternum.

She's so ugly, she's cute.

"She's supposed to be a miniature pinscher," explained Christy Smith.

"It looks to me like she's got miniature pinscher and Chihuahua in her. She's a minahuahua," added Kathy Davieds, drawing a peal of laughter from a group of women taking turns cuddling Foxy Stella at the Christiansburg home where she's receiving foster care.

"It's not funny, really," Davieds said with a sigh.

The odd little puppy was named in honor of Fox 8 News, a Greensboro, N.C., television station involved in her story, and in reference to "Stellaluna," a Janell Cannon children's book about fruit bats.

"She looks like a little fruit bat," said Lila Borge-Wills. "We just hope she will survive and have a good life, even if short."

"We want to follow her and use her as the face of the puppy mill," Borge-Wills added, noting that Foxy Stella represents everything she and her constituents have been fighting for the past year.

Borge-Wills is president of the Virginia Partnership for Animal Welfare and Support (VA PAWS). Smith, of Pilot, and Davieds, a Floyd County veterinarian, are board members of the 10-year-old organization, along with Becky Murray, who joined the board in 2001. Both Murray and Borge-Wills are biologists on the research faculty at Virginia Tech.

VA PAWS, a nonprofit animal welfare group based in the New River Valley, has gained national attention in the past year by exposing a growing puppy mill problem in Southwest Virginia, which led to legislation being considered in the General Assembly.

House Bill 538 -- designed to crack down on large commercial dog breeders -- easily passed the House of Delegates 91-6 and is flying through Senate committees with majority support. The bill's wording echoes regulations VA PAWS pushed at area government meetings in the past year.

While the name of the group sounds imposing and the work it has done is ambitious, VA PAWS is actually a Lilliputian force doing battle with gigantic animal welfare issues. Undeniably small with an annual budget of about $30,000 and only 25 dues-paying members, VA PAWS is undeniably effective, too.

"Incredibly effective," said Stephanie Shain, director of outreach for companion animals with the Humane Society of the United States.

"I think they do great work, especially with the resources they have," Shain added.

"We've been at this for 10 years now," Smith said. "We have built up our name, built up our connections."

For most of the past decade, the group has concentrated its efforts on bringing various animal welfare groups together to form a network of mutual support. All animal welfare organizations, the members say, work toward the same goal: a world in which there are no unwanted, homeless, stray, neglected, abandoned, abused or mistreated animals.

To that end, the group has worked with Montgomery County officials to improve conditions and extend hours at the county animal shelter, helped provide free or reduced cost spay and neuter services in the New River Valley, sponsored pet adoption projects, provided educational materials for public school children and organized pet therapy programs at nursing homes.

But in the past year, VA PAWS members found themselves embroiled in much hotter animal issues.

It all started with a fire.

In March, a fire at a mass breeding facility in Bland County killed nearly 200 dogs and puppies. Most people were unaware that Dogwood Kennels, owned by an Amish family, even existed until the fire.

"Two informants contacted us after the Bland County fire," Davieds said, explaining that VA PAWS members were familiar with notorious puppy mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri but weren't aware that such facilities were operating in their own back yard. Critics claim such facilities breed dogs too young, too often and without proper care, which leads to bad health of the puppies.

"The more we looked, the more aghast we were at what we found," Smith said.

VA PAWS members went to work, checking out reports of puppy mills in other areas. They visited the facilities, posing as interested buyers. They began lobbying local governments to regulate the breeding operations. They rallied support at town meetings that were often tense and confrontational.

They enlisted the support of bigger animal welfare groups -- the Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society and the Humane Society of the United States -- to facilitate their efforts. In October, they pulled off a secret caper aimed at shutting down the Bland County puppy breeding operation. Using $60,000 put up by Best Friends, they sent in undercover agents to buy all the dogs and puppies, which were later transported to a New York sanctuary.

The culmination of the year's work came in November when the national Humane Society -- working from information provided by VA PAWS -- busted a Carroll County puppy mill and rescued 1,080 dogs and puppies. Now, Junior Horton -- the owner of Hillsville's Horton's Pups -- is facing criminal charges for animal cruelty and neglect and failure to obtain licenses for all his dogs.

While Horton admitted in November that he had an excessive number of dogs, he said the way the dogs were taken was unfair and costly to him as a businessman. "They're my dogs. I'm the one that's got the time and money invested in them," he said then. "I've got too many dogs, and I know I do. But I think they should give me the right to get rid of them."

While such victories inspire a bit of giddy pleasure for VA PAWS members, it's short-lived.

Even after most of the dogs were taken from Horton's Pups, VA PAWS members said they received information that he was acquiring more dogs. That's when they contacted the Fox 8 News station in Greensboro and assisted in filming an undercover report. As a part of that report, Foxy Stella was purchased from an unknowing Horton for $400.

"$400 -- for a deformed little bat," Borge-Wills said with a groan.

The puppy, she added, will likely be adopted by the Christiansburg foster family.

Smith admits the past year has been a roller-coaster ride for VA PAWS members.

"It's been an emotional experience for everyone involved," she said.

Her colleagues say the ride isn't over, either.

"At this point we need to educate the public," Davieds said. "We need enforcement of the laws. People are breeding to put money in their pockets or to breed healthy breeds. You can't have it both ways."

Davieds calls the bulk of VA PAWS' work "the nonsexy stuff."

"We are not animal rights activists. We are not fanatics," she said. "We are working for animal welfare. We have to push for serious enforcement of all the laws. Our focus is on what needs to be changed about the system."

"It's so much work," agreed Borge-Wills, noting that she and her cohorts have put in hundreds of hours of their time, as well as thousands of their own dollars, to achieve their goals.

"People always say, 'You should get paid for this,' " Borge-Wills added, as she held Foxy Stella. "I finally realized that I do get paid. I get paid twentyfold."

While VA PAWS' troops are pleased that the past year's battle offensive has produced results, they don't believe for a minute that the war is over.

Until people stop buying puppies from mass breeders and as long as there is money to be made from such sales, they say puppy mills will continue. Their fear is that without strict enforcement of laws, the businesses will keep operating -- with increased secrecy.

Foxy Stella is just one puppy mill casualty, they insist. There are plenty more where she came from.

"Oh, we haven't touched the tip of the iceberg yet," Borge-Wills said.