Vicki Neal stands next to Mr. Meter — a name she’s dubbed for the parking meter she leans on outside of Dale Dyvig’s Pet Shoppe just off Main Street.

Neal, in her late 70s, gathers with four other women in the cold, windy weather. It’s late January and nearly a year after Dyvig approached the Ames City Council requesting a protest ordinance because of them.

Neal is the self-proclaimed “rabble-rouser” of Bailing out Benji – an animal advocacy group. She jokes that she could have the police called immediately – all by dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk outside of Dyvig’s.

She estimates an officer – should she lean against a window or wall, or block someone on the sidewalk – would arrive in no less than five minutes. Over the course of the past several years, the Ames Police have been called over a dozen times.

Mr. Meter is Neal’s saving grace. That is not to say, however, that he isn’t a trouble maker, too. The duo have been reported to police before, Neal says, because while she was leaning on him for comfort she was also “driving away customers.”

It’s not too bad for mid-January, however. And it’s definitely not the worst conditions the group has experienced to date. And when you’ve protested in negative degree weather with a high windshield, your tolerance tends to build. Or at least your winter wear expands.

On this day, she’s wearing her 30-below coat.

The five women are holding signs asking passersby to say no to puppy mills as they stand on the sidewalk in front of Dyvig’s store.

Behind them reads a sign in the top corner of Dyvig’s corner window that contrasts the dark green paint on the building.

“Our puppies come from great kennels! Don’t buy the lies!”

In mid-February 2016, he proposed the protest ordinance to the city council – before him a 300-signature petition. He says the ordinance will inevitably “protect all customers and business owners.”

For nearly five years, the puppy mill advocacy group, Bailing out Benji, has stood outside of his business protesting his store.

And every weekend the rivalry brews – to Dyvig, Bailing out Benji drives away business.

To Bailing out Benji, the sidewalk outside his shop is where their meetings occur weekly – protest signs and all.

They are the Mill Dog Warriors. The sidewalk is their territory. Their weapon? Education.

The moment

Bailing out Benji president Mindi Callison founded the group in 2011 after seeing a news story detailing the abuse of two dogs and their litter of puppies that were locked inside a run-down Des Moines hotel room.

She remembers a run-in at Dyvig’s Pet Shoppe in Ames just a little while later and asking where he received his puppies. She wanted to see them, so he sent her to Century Farm Puppies in Guthrie Center, Iowa.

Callison said the farm at the time housed more than 400 adult dogs, but it only showed her 20.

A feeling of shock, stupidity and confusion hit her. Who is looking out for these dogs? She thought.

Well, now Bailing out Benji is.

Saving lives

Callison’s younger sister Brandi Webber remembers her first introduction to puppy mills while she was still a College of Design student at Iowa State several years back.

Webber said she came home from class one day and Callison immediately began telling her about this horrible thing that she recently learned.

And while Webber didn’t know it at that point, Bailing out Benji would alter her future down a different path, specifically relating to her career as a designer and solidifying her interest in graphic.

The two began brainstorming name ideas for the animal advocacy group and Bailing out Benji stuck, Webber said.

A product of time, the group formed when the Wall Street bailouts were still raw in many Americans’ minds. For Callison and Webber, the name just made sense.

Callison wanted to know in a time of bailouts, who was bailing out the puppies?

Webber creates graphics pro bono for the animal advocacy group, and she originally signed on to help her sister as part of her capstone project for Iowa State.

She made the logo and chose the colors for Bailing out Benji, which began as a small blog. However, the website on average now sees well over 20,000 views per month.

Webber recalls not being as into the topic at first like Callison was, but it wasn’t because of the cause. She felt she couldn’t match her sister’s level of dedication.

Now, she says, it’s all they ever talk about.

“She’s extremely compassionate, specifically when it comes to animals,” Webber said. “She’s been a hero of mine [but has] blossomed into a hero for everybody.”

Webber recalls when she and Callison were younger. The two would see a stray kitten or puppy in the road and go help it. Inevitably, they would bring the animal home and nurture it, always promising to their mom that they weren’t going to keep it.

Callison and Webber are only a year-and-a-half apart, and the two have always been kind of close, Webber said. But it wasn’t until they started working together for a common cause that the relationship became about something deeper.

“We’re actually trying to save lives,” Webber said.

The two speak every day, Webber said, oftentimes more than once.

‘It takes all of us’

Puppy mills have enveloped Callison in every aspect of her life.

“Fun is when I get to transport a dog,” she said.

Waking up at 7 a.m. every day, Callison said she typically answers emails until she has to go to work as a preschool educator at 9:30 a.m. After work, she said she goes home and feeds and plays with her five black labradors. Her day then repeats.

“And then I work until my eyes close to go to sleep,” Callison said, which she estimates is usually about 1 a.m. “It’s a lot, but it’s worth it.”

Callison remarked on a time she left her laptop at work and her husband wouldn’t let her go back to retrieve it.

She remembers him telling her that she needed a night off, and she was going to take it. However, Callison still did whatever work she could from her cell phone that night, including answering hundreds of emails.

And when Callison talks puppy mills, she speaks vividly. Her hands move back and forth, but with purpose. A smile stretches across her face, even though the topic may be bleak.

Her nails, painted a light shade of blue, contrast the darker blue crew neck she’s wearing that reads, “This is my end puppy mills shirt.”

Several flyers with information about Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Texas are scattered across the Bailing out Benji Facebook page.

“220 USDA licensed puppy mills. Second in the country for puppy mills. 17,000 dogs are trapped every year,” the Iowa flyer reads. “You are the solution. Adopt.”

Webber said that when Callison discusses puppy mills she has a natural air of confidence. In every other situation, Webber notes, Callison is more reserved.

“It’s 180 [degrees.] She just snaps into what she needs to do to take care of these dogs,” Webber said.

For Callison, however, sometimes it can be hard to repeatedly raise awareness about puppy mills. She said she often has reminded herself that not everyone knows about them.

“When I talk to shelters and rescues and even our own volunteers, I try to remind them that one time you didn’t know about puppy mills,” Callison said. “You were not born with this knowledge.

“You can’t assume other people know or assume the person walking into the store [that sells puppy mill puppies] is a bad person.”

She said with every new person, no matter how frustrating it is, the conversation about puppy mills usually begins at square one.

“It takes all of us to do this,” Callison said.

A symbiotic relationship

In preparation of a transport, Callison often takes to Facebook.

“Can you help move this dog?” She asks.

Suzy Schnell and Dan Stoecklein said they help Callison whenever they can, largely through research and dog transports. The married couple, like Callison, often act as a middleman between puppy mills and rescues, helping transport dogs the mill may no longer want.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. The puppy mills don’t want to pay to euthanize their older, sick dogs, and Callison doesn’t want to see them dead. Sometimes the mills just aren’t generating profit.

“Some will contact Mindi in fact and say, ‘Hey, I got this dog and we need to get rid of it,’” Stoecklein said.

So Callison, or another transporter, drives to the mill – whether it be in Iowa or one of the surrounding states such as Nebraska or Missouri – and sits in their lot.

They place a dog crate outside their car and wait for a miller to give them their unwanted breeder dogs.

They have all these dogs and they can’t just snap their fingers and make them gone in a very ethical way, Stoecklein said.

The feeling is often surreal, and there are never many questions asked.

For Schnell, she said there are so many mixed emotions about going and getting a dog out. Oftentimes, they are old and in need of health care. They are happy to save the dog but saddened by the condition in which it has been living. After being bred their whole lives and kept in a cage, Callison said most don’t know even know how to be a dog.

She remembers a specific rescued puppy mill dog that didn’t know how to do anything but spin in circles.

Why they do it

Schnell and Stoecklein describe their efforts as never that big of a deal. To them, like Callison, it’s all for the dogs.

In finding the right rescue, Callison has her connections. And the transport job doesn’t just end there. More often than not, dogs need transported from the rescue to another rescue or perhaps a foster home.

“[There’s] always some need of transporting,” Stoecklein said.

Schnell and Callison met through Schnell’s mom, who had been donating money to Bailing out Benji from the start.

“I had liked their page and would share some Facebook posts,” Schnell said, “but it wasn’t until around the [dog] auction that I went ‘OK, I need to do more.’ We would donate money, [but] I think donating your time is huge.”

The auction convinced Schnell that she needed to do more – it pushed her to be more active in speaking out about puppy mills.

It was raining that day, and Schnell was bidding on dogs for a rescue, work independent from Bailing out Benji.

The auction was at a farm, and the breeders said they were going out of business. A big tent settled on their property housed the unwanted dogs, along with some bleachers for the bidders to sit.

The dogs were then bid on by their breed. Stoecklein recalls the way they were handled: “The way they were grabbing these dogs, you can tell they were just a product or means of generating a product.”

Even at the end of the day, Schnell was still putting money into the puppy mills’ pockets, even if she was rescuing dogs in the process.

“She [Schnell] saw the conditions the dogs were in, she saw how they were handled and how scared they were,” Stoecklein said. “They were all just completely scared, timid and they looked like they had given up.

“They were going to whatever the next thing was, wire cage to wire cage.”

Schnell remembers the car ride home as being completely silent, even though kenneled dogs filled her backseat. The dogs, the two recall, were just dealing with it.

The most crazy thing about puppy mills to Schnell and Stoecklein, however, is “how many people don’t know” about the industry.

But the how, the way, the who and the what separate Callison’s organization from all the others, their goal being to raise awareness through education, not fear.

“I think eventually, Bailing out Benji is going to have to evolve beyond puppy mills, but I think they’ll always be educating [someone] about whoever needs a voice,” Webber said.

National acclaim

Google puppy mills in Iowa and Bailing out Benji is one of the first things that pops up, and it’s not by coincidence.

“We’re reaching online a million people,” Webber said. “Through Facebook and through our website. If you Google puppy mills in Iowa, you’re going to see our website pop up. If you Google Dyvig’s, you’re going to see our website pop up.”

Bailing out Benji serves as a resource outside of Iowa as well. Callison said most days, the group gets a message on Facebook or through its website saying ‘Hey, I was thinking about buying a puppy from this breeder. Do you know them?’

“Nine times out of 10 they are a puppy mill, so we just try to educate them about making a better choice, whether they adopt or [end up looking] for a more reputable breeder,” Callison said.

In addition to being featured in a documentary called “Dog by Dog,” which examines the puppy mill industry and its relation to money and politics, Callison has also been quoted in a Rolling Stone article about mills, something that Webber later described as a dream come true.

Webber remembers screaming when Callison told her. She even dropped the phone. Callison had just received a phone call from Rolling Stone Magazine out of nowhere, and Webber remembers an overwhelming sense of pride for her sister hitting her.

Who gets to say they’re able to hold a Rolling Stone article in her hand with their sister’s name in it? Webber thinks.

Callison, who is typically on the calmer side, jokes at Webber to get it together.

She’s just doing her job for the dogs.

An Ames rivalry

Dyvig stands in front of the Ames City Council. It’s mid-February 2016.

He is the owner of Dyvig’s Pet Shoppe. Before him is a 300-signature petition that he is presenting to the council, asking the city to adopt ordinances that will, as he blatantly describes, protect all customers and business owners.

Nearly five years of protests by the puppy mill advocacy group Bailing out Benji outside of his business has finally reached its breaking point.

A sign hangs in Dyvig’s window: “Our puppies come from great kennels! Don’t buy the lies!”

The rival between Dyvig and Bailing out Benji constantly brews. To Dyvig, Bailing out Benji drives away business.

To Bailing out Benji, the sidewalk outside his shop is where their weekly meetings occur – protest signs and all.

They are the Mill Dog Warriors. The sidewalk is their territory. Their weapon? Education.