In his heyday, Michael Wolf was a nationally known breeder of champion show dogs.
China Dragon, his small blond Pekingese, won 29 best-in-show titles in the 1980s. Scores of other winners came from Wolf's Mike-Mar kennels in Chester County.
But after decades of catering to wealthy dog fanciers, Wolf, 65, now stands accused of mistreating 337 dogs by allowing them to live amid accumulated waste and filth.
How Wolf fell from renowned breeder of champions to accused animal abuser has emerged in part from his own words, which provide a rare glimpse into the mind of a man for whom animals had become a family - but also the object of neglect..
"I love dogs, and they've been a great part of my life," Wolf said. "I kept dogs alive after I should. They wagged their tails, they ate. I'm old; are you going to put me to sleep?"
The Chester County SPCA seized the dogs on Feb. 10. They're staying at shelters all over Pennsylvania until 639 citations against Wolf are resolved.
Many of the dogs have lice, mange, and infected eyes and ears. A few have pneumonia and parvovirus, an intestinal ailment. Most will need extended medical care, SPCA spokesman Chuck McDevitt said.
Nevertheless, Wolf denies he mistreated the dogs, insisting he fed them well on meat and cottage cheese. "I have four different vets," he said. Wolf now feels deprived without his dogs.
"I'd get up in the morning and go to work on my dogs. I'm lost right now. I'm devastated," he said at his fenced-off kennel compound in Oxford.
"All my years of devotion and love. It's horrible. It makes me sad at this point in my life I have to be in this position."
One hint of his future problems was in a 1983 copy of the now-defunct magazine Kennel Review. Even when Wolf was successfully breeding, training and showing dogs, he had trouble letting them go.
"My kennel is past 100 dogs now, because I'm not very sensible. I have a lot of old friends in the kennel. They've given me a lot of joy as show dogs and breeding, so I keep them," Wolf told his interviewer.
That wasn't what others did, he acknowledged.
"A lot of people discipline themselves and place their bitches at five years old, and I think that's a great idea, but it's very hard for me to do."
Court records filed last month detail the consequences: dogs living in their own waste in rusty cages, others running loose on waste-strewn floors, a stench of urine permeating the compound, dogs with untended skin conditions and eye problems.
