DA are the initials of the name we gave her and for legal liability reasons we will not share the name the breeder—whose name we can't mention either other than to say they are from West Virginia so henceforth will be referenced as WV Kennel—gave her. The story is as simple as it is sad. We agreed to host DA (a 14 month old breeding female who had not yet hit her first heat cycle, foreshadow hint) in exchange for her full and clear ownership after two breedings. As she was a completely 'green dog' the arrangement was that her breedings would be put off by a year in order to allow us the time to train her without interruption. In reality we learned more from her than she did from us. Still, she learned a lot. During those 6 months DA trained 6 times a day, and at the time of our parting she had solid apport, silent recall, sit, down, go out, on point, human tracking, sending on bite and the list goes on. All this from a dog that arrived with such aggression issues she wanted to kill everything that moved. She was reactive and temperamental, tried to bite several friends and us as a daily routine. Still we loved her, because she was our girl and we eventually bonded to the point that we could even nap in her kennel with her. Then she went into heat for the first time when proper nutrition brought her weight up to 65lb.. So lets back track, she was just barely 49 pounds when she came to us at 14 months, had never visited a vet and had no shots, and zero imprinting though this was advertised. Loud noises made her shiver and recoil. Along the time with us we started to learn some fact about the treatment that dogs were exposed to back at the WV Kennel. These reports came from credible sources: military and law enforcement personnel attending seminars there. Take this exchange from a LEO attending a seminar hosted by the WV Kennel: 

     Officer: "I have a dog with really bad food aggressions. What would you                    do to fix that?"

     WV Kennel Owner: "I had a dog that had horrible food aggressions."

     Officer: "So how did you fix it?"

     WV Kennel Owner: "Easy, I took a shovel to him."

 

Or this one explained to us directly:

     WV Kennel Owner: "One of the ways I build food drive is to set several                                  dogs loose in the enclosure and toss just four cups of                                 kibble into the field. They eat what they find and quickly                                 they learn to scrounge and fight to survive."

 

And this revelation about another dog we purchased from him at the same time:

    WV Kennel Owner: "Keep him away from birds or small furry things. I fed                          him live baby chicks right from my palm since he was a                                 pup. He will kill anything he can fit into his mouth." 

 

We quickly form a picture of just the sort of treatment the dogs were subjected to at the WV Kennel, so when DA went into heat, we did as agreed and simply informed them that she was in heat but would be skipping this cycle. Cutting to the chase this started a storm of anger and she was recalled harshly. We foolishly decided to comply in order to stay on the right side of the law, as per our legal agreement. But upon her return to WV poor handling practices immediately resumed.  While still in the travel kennel she refused to come out and displayed aggression according to them.  Their response was to suit up in full bite suit and approach the kennel. Not surprisingly upon the opening of the travel crate she struck. Any true professional should have suspected that a dog conditioned to bite a bite suit would well...bite a bite suit. Instead of handling her appropriately she was tranquilized with a dart shot from a rifle. Blah blah blah...they blamed us for making her aggressive by adding "unfathomable amounts of stress". This was simply ridiculous so we offered to buy her straight out, but soon pride and the WV Kennel Owners inflated ego got in the way. "You will never get her back I will make sure of that," is a direct quote response to our attorney's offer to buy her. So we filed a lawsuit to regain DA and WON THE CASE. Still when it came time to serve the papers months later the local court refused to execute the orders of the VA court. We have all the proper documentation and invested thousands in the legal battle only to be stonewalled by the WV good-old-boys-network. We still count the days since we foolishly turned her over to that torture chamber: 225 at the time of this writing. So we added this memorial to her.  After all businesses are best impacted by loss of revenue. Interested to know if you are about to do business with this WV Kennel? Buy us a beer and we'll chat. We will never forgive, never forget, and never stop trying to bring DA home.