Video: Family Shocked to See Where Rescued Pit Bull Spent Her Early Years

For Immediate Release:
September 3, 2024

“My gosh, look at this place,” Marilyn Cline gasps. For the first time, she and her husband, Phil Massa, are seeing footage of the squalid backyard where their adopted pit bull, Billie, spent her early life, chained outside 24/7 and starved for food, water, and affection. But as a new video released today reveals, everything changed for Billie once PETA rescued her, and she’s now unrecognizable—no longer the lonely dog who was once terrified of everything and everyone.

Billie was one of the “Bertie 5”—a group of severely neglected dogs rescued from a miserable backyard in Bertie County, North Carolina. PETA fieldworkers had regularly visited the property to provide free food, doghouses, flea treatments, and more. Even though PETA had urged the owner to take care of the dogs or allow the group to find them a new home, fieldworkers continued to discover them malnourished. After one of the dogs, Minnie, was found dead from starvation—still attached to her chain—PETA pleaded with local law-enforcement officials to act. After months of pressure, the dogs’ owner was charged with multiple counts of cruelty to animals, the four survivors were seized, and PETA sued for and won custody of all the remaining dogs—including a young black and white puppy, who had been acquired after Minnie’s death and was kept chained in her spot. PETA named her Billie—after the judge who had presided over the custody case.

After receiving much-needed veterinary treatment and recovering from ringworm in a foster home, Billie was transferred to the Norfolk SPCA, where Cline and Massa first fell in love with her. She now spends her days indoors with guardians who adore her, an overflowing toy box with her name and likeness on it, cozy beds to choose from, and all the affection, attention, and care she was once denied.

“I think we saved her just in the nick of time for her to get used to the good things,” Cline says.

“Billie’s story has a happy ending, but countless other dogs remain chained outside around-the-clock, neglected, mistreated, and denied any semblance of the care and comfort they need,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA urges everyone to keep their dogs safe indoors with the rest of the family and help spare others the misery that Billie once endured by pushing for bans on unattended tethering in their communities.”

Every year, PETA’s rescue team finds dead or dying dogs confined to pens and/or with heavy chains around their necks. Dogs kept chained or penned outdoors often go without adequate food, water, shelter, and veterinary care and are limited to the same few square feet of space day in and day out amid their own waste. Chained dogs have frozen to death during cold snaps or died from heatstroke on sweltering summer days.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.