Oprah Winfrey - A dog's wish come true?

IF OPRAH CAN DO for Fido what she's done for some authors and Barack Obama, dog lovers will wag their tails. They were drooling in anticipation of Oprah's show last Friday.

Oprah's endorsement turns books you never heard of into best-sellers, and transforms lagging presidential hopefuls into odds-on contenders.

As a onetime TV columnist, then gossip columnist, I know that most celebrities are empty-headed clowns who don't have the humility to thank their lucky stars for making them winners in life's lotto.

Oprah is among the exceptions, and when America's most influential woman pushes an issue, Americans respond.

On her Friday show, a teary-eyed Oprah condemned puppy mills, the bitter betrayal of "man's best friend." The canine horror houses are located mostly in Oklahoma, Missouri - and the Puppy Mill Capital of the East, picturesque Lancaster County.

Given that Oprah is a dog lover - her coddled canines live better than you or I - she came late to the anti-puppy-mill party and only after a very public "invitation" by Bill Smith.

The founder and head of 10-year-old Main Line Animal Rescue, in Chester Springs, Smith in February spent $10,000 of a donor's money to put up an anti-puppy-mill billboard near Oprah's studio. It pictured a cute dog pleading: "Oprah - please do a show on puppy mills; the dogs need you."

Friday, the dog's wish came true.

Calling herself "a changed woman," Oprah vowed never to buy another dog from a store, urged her viewers to adopt, and aired a segment on neutering pets. She hit all the right notes, as only she can.

To close puppy mills, Smith told Oprah, adopt only from breed rescue groups or shelters.  Smith says pet stores get 99 percent of their puppies from puppy mills. The Humane Society of the United States agrees. Pet stores create the demand that keeps mother dogs locked forever in wire cages.

But Smith is the real hero here. Already a recipient of an ASPCA lifetime-achievement award, he used imagination to collar Oprah and her huge, devoted following.

But wars aren't won overnight, and Smith tells me that he will keep rescuing dogs from the misery of puppy mills as long as they exist upstate.

Now that he's exposed their business on Oprah, I asked why breeders would talk to him again.

"They're Amish," Smith says. "I'm counting on them not having television."

By Stu Bykofsky
Philadelphia Daily News

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