Posted: June 3, 2008, 5 a.m. EDT
She’s met Lindsay Lohan, Patti LaBelle, and Sen. Barack Obama, but Baby is fast becoming a celebrity in her own right.
The three-legged rescue dog is the subject of the new book, “A Rare Breed of Love: The True Story of Baby and the Mission She Inspired to Help Dogs Everywhere,” by owner Jana Kohl, a writer, clinical psychologist, and animal-welfare advocate.
Kohl and Baby travel extensively to raise awareness about puppy mills and to help reform animal-protection laws. “A Rare Breed” features 100 photographs of Baby, as well as original essays from writers like Alice Walker and Gloria Steinem.
Kohl adopted Baby after visiting a Texas breeding operation in search of a dog, and was sickened by what she saw: hundreds of ill and injured dogs crammed inside small wire cages and wooden sheds.
“I expressed my horror to [the owner], who told me simply that ‘animals don’t have feelings,’” she recalls.
Kohl, who is a daughter of the family that founded the Kohl’s department store chain, decided to do something. She adopted Baby, whose vocal cords had been cut to silence her cries.
“I just could not walk away and not do something to help animals – animals kept in cages, bred over and over again until they can’t breed anymore,” she explains. “Some of them never even leave those cages. They never know what grass feels like. They never felt the warmth and kindness of a human being, or heard a comforting word in their whole life.”
To learn more about Baby, visit www.ararebreedoflove.com