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A HAVEN FOR HAVANESE: Couple in West Bloomfield provide a temporary home for rescued dogs

July 14, 2006

BY JENNIFER DIXON

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Bob and Carolyn Bough of West Bloomfield provide foster care for Havanese dogs. Yummy, sitting on Bob Bough's lap, was rescued from a puppy mill and is a foster dog. Clinger, whom the Boughs adopted after fostering him, helps show the new dogs the ropes, the Boughs say. (MARY SCHROEDER/Detroit Free Press)

Two years ago, Carolyn and Bob Bough agreed to temporarily take in Clinger, a Havanese puppy rescued at an auction in Missouri. Bob Bough was semi-retired, they already had two dogs, and there was plenty of room for a third on their two-acre West Bloomfield property.

They fell in love with Clinger, adopted him and have since become foster parents to nearly a dozen more dogs rescued by the Havanese Angel League Organization for Rescue, or HALO.

Now, they're getting ready to have dozens of dogs -- and the families who adopted or rescued them from a future at a puppy mill -- for a picnic at their home July 22.

It's the Boughs' second annual Havanese get-together and, from experience, Carolyn Bough expects everyone will be talking about their dogs.

"It's like showing off your child," she said this week.

The Boughs got involved in HALO through their daughter, Cynthia Bough of Northville, who works at a marketing firm in Livonia and learned about the Havanese breed from her colleague, Pat Peterson.

Peterson began rescuing Havanese dogs in 2002, and Cynthia Bough had adopted a rescued Havanese. Peterson needed foster families, and the Boughs agreed to help.

"We got this little guy," Carolyn Bough said of Clinger. "He looked so pathetic."

At their home, Clinger discovered a bucolic world of birds, grass and rabbits. He hadn't spent much time outside until Peterson brought him to Michigan.

The Boughs say Clinger trains his new mates; he shows the foster dogs how to play and helps them navigate the Boughs' property.

The Boughs say Havanese dogs are intelligent and appreciative. Some people call them Velcro dogs because "they stick with you," she said.

Peterson and her husband, Bill, started out rescuing golden retrievers and other large breeds about 12 years ago. A few years ago, they turned to smaller dogs. She learned about the Havanese and HALO and began going to auctions, some in southwest Missouri, where the dogs were being sold to breeders.

Pat Peterson, 61, of Livonia said most of the dogs being sold were destined for puppy mills, large breeding farms. A mill breeder could have "100 to 500 dogs that are kept in cages or crates, sometimes piled five to six crates high."

The saddest dogs, she said, "are the ones I couldn't take home with me -- that I couldn't afford or someone else got them. I always wonder where they're at."

HALO buys the dogs at the auctions, and once Peterson and other HALO members get them home, they're quarantined for two to three weeks, then sent to foster homes like the Boughs while an adoptive family is found. HALO charges an adoption fee of $550 to families with good references -- far below the $1,000 to $3,000 typically charged by breeders.

"It's wonderful," Peterson said. "You take a dog that's been in a mill ... and you let them run on grass. They've never ... felt sunshine."

For more on HALO go to www.rescuedhavanese.org. Contact JENNIFER DIXON at 313-223-4410.