Dog sanctuary houses the worst of the worst

FORKS, Clallam County — There have always been good dogs and bad dogs. Then there are the really bad dogs — the cat killers, face biters and snarling wretches so mean even their owners want them shot.

Those are Steve Markwell's kind of dogs.

"When people create these monsters, I think it's people's responsibility to take care of them. Not to just kill everything because it's inconvenient," said Markwell, who operates a sanctuary for canine ne'er-do-wells in the Olympic Peninsula rain forest.

"The fact that they have their quirks, the extra things you have to be cautious of, in some ways it's almost endearing. It's kind of like, the world hates you, but I don't," he said.

The Olympic Animal Sanctuary caters to the worst of the worst: dogs that would be euthanized or turned away at any other shelter, dogs with records so bad no humane society would consider adopting them out.

Among the more than 50 animals now at the sanctuary are domestic coyote mixes, guard dogs that once belonged to drug dealers, cat-killing huskies and one creature that appears to be 90 percent wolf and about as interested in being petted as a demon is in being in church on Sunday.

And their rap sheets are impressive.

One of Markwell's first clients was a pregnant ex-fighting pit bull named Abby that terrorized the California town of Grapevine, in Kern County, for two weeks — despite having been shot — before Markwell was able to coax her into his truck.

After her puppies were born, they were so mean that they largely had to be isolated. "If I let him out right now," Markwell said, pointing to one of the young toughs leaping and snarling behind a glass door, "he'd try to kill you. No doubt about it."

Markwell has seen litters of puppies that started trying to kill each other at 7 weeks, and a miniature pinscher that bit off somebody's lip and ate the family guinea pig.

Another of Markwell's dogs now behaves just fine except for "the first two seconds" after he wakes up, when he's almost always in a very bad mood. "He was sleeping next to his dog walker, and he woke up and bit off half her face," Markwell said. "But it's easily manageable. Don't sleep with him. If I'm sitting with him and he starts to go to sleep, I'm gonna wake him up and make him leave."

Famous inmate

The sanctuary's most famous inmate is Snaps, a mixed breed who made headlines south of Seattle in September when he attacked two women on the command of his owner, a 15-year-old girl.

A 63-year-old woman who had seen the girl and three other youths kicking the dog stopped her car to scold them. The girl grabbed the woman by the hair, pulled her from the car and began beating her with her cellphone. One of the girl's companions moved in with Snaps, kicking the dog until he began attacking the woman.

Another woman tried to intervene, and Snaps bit her so severely the skin was flayed off her arms.

The youngsters — ages 11, 12, 13 and 15 — were arrested, and Snaps was facing a probable death sentence until Markwell stepped in.

"This vicious monster of a dog, he's the sweetest thing in the world," said Markwell, who often exchanges face kisses with Snaps, one of the few dogs he allows to roam uncaged inside the large industrial building, ringed with kennels, that is the heart of the sanctuary.

Markwell, 34, never intended to become a go-to guy for unmanageable dogs. But he's always had a thing for animals. When he was 4, he rescued a rabbit from his uncle's fur farm. As a student in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., he took in unwanted reptiles.

After college, he worked for a while on a horse ranch and gravitated toward wildlife rescue — moving to Washington in 2003 with the idea of helping dogs that couldn't be helped.

He started out with two or three animals he simply ran into and took in; others followed, and when his house got too small, he sold it and bought the industrial site that his brood has already outgrown.

Now Markwell receives calls from animal-control agencies all over the U.S. that have dogs fit for neither pound nor play yard. He responds only when he's convinced it's a dog with truly nowhere else to go.

No whispering here

The sanctuary sits on a quiet street, surrounded by woodworking mills and a few houses.

At 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, with an arm covered in tattoos, Markwell looks like he could intimidate even some pit bulls. But, he said, the secret of taming the untamable is not being tough. It's giving dogs their space until they're ready to let him in, exuding quiet kindness and corralling like-minded dogs together for socialization and managing bad behavior — rather than trying to eliminate it immediately.

He scoffs at "dog whisperers" and rejects any potential volunteers who say they have a "spiritual kinship" with animals.

"I have absolutely no place for people like that because they're dangerous," he said. "What it takes is common sense and experience. That whole, 'Animals like me.' Well, animals like me, too. But I take a really bad bite about once a month. Let's not rely on that as our safety mechanism."

Markwell lives most of the time in a kennel of his own, a 9-by 7-foot space equipped with a small computer desk, TV and DVD player. There, the most haunted dogs — semicatatonic animals that have suffered terrible abuse and seem to want nothing more than to be left alone — live with Markwell for days at a time. Slowly they start to show some trust, coming up to sniff him when they think he's sleeping.

"It doesn't mean a dog I've had for two years and slept with in my bed isn't one day going to take a chunk out of me. It sometimes happens," he said.

"But we can't blame what is essentially a large carnivore for doing what large carnivores do: fighting and killing," Markwell said. "Dogs and humans are the only living things that aren't allowed to bite. Cats are allowed to bite all they want. Horses are allowed to bite and kick and stamp. A hamster can bite. But when a dog bites, we go crazy."

But there will always be more really bad dogs, and Markwell is trying to raise $500,000 to move to bigger quarters. He gave a presentation to the Seattle Humane Society last month, but most of his donations come in small amounts from individuals over the sanctuary's Web site, or from people responding to one of his Facebook ads: "We rescue scary dogs."

Right now, a lack of outside space means dogs at the sanctuary must take turns romping in the exercise yard, usually in small groups. They spend most of their days locked in cages.

And when the dogs come here, they come to stay, Markwell said — adding that over time, his four-legged friends mellow out and he gets scarier.

In fact, when some local meth addicts showed up at his door asking for pit bulls, Markwell, who does a good growl, turned them away.

"I said, 'Don't come around here any more,' " he said. " 'Tell your friends the dogs are dangerous, but the owner's worse.' "