Helping Dogs on the Streets with All 4s Rescue League

After our day spent on the streets of Memphis with All 4s Rescue League, I lost track of how many dogs we fed, and how many times Suzy handed out spay/neuter information or left a note: ‘Sorry we missed you, we’d like to help you dog.’ on a door. But I also lost track of how many mama dogs we followed and fed, how many dog houses we set up or filled with straw, and how many dogs we documented and treated for fleas/parasites.

This is a day with All 4s Rescue League. We hopped in and out of the truck trailing after Suzy, as she marched up to house after house, dropping treats for dogs that growled or barked, to knock on the door of yet another house with loose dogs or chained dogs.

About half the time, there was someone home. Suzy would say, “We’re a dog rescue. Do you need anything for your dogs?” Then she’d offer free spay/neuter and vaccines, a doghouse, food, dewormer, or to treat their fleas and parasites.

At one house, Suzy took the phone number and gave information for the spay surgery one of her volunteers would schedule (and pick up/drop off the dog), and then treated the 8-month-old pitbull puppy with bare patches from fleas and heaven-knows-what-parasites. Five kids bounded out to see what it was all about. Suzy went back to the trailer and pulled out a box of children’s books and a box of dog toys and brushes. The kids were thrilled to choose items for themselves and their puppy.

In the beginning, I was scribbling down notes after each stop, but soon they began to blur together. There were just so many dogs and so many stories. As I started to write this in the hotel that night, Nancy mentioned the Husky dog we saw. I honestly couldn’t remember seeing a Husky until she reminded me that she was the mama dog named Christmas with three-week-old puppies in a suitcase on the porch.

There were only two puppies in the suitcase. Their owner said that Christmas had three puppies but someone took one. Suzy offered to spay the mama dog after she finished nursing the pups, but the woman said she wanted to get at least one more litter out of the dog. I asked if she knew who the father of the puppies was and she said, “He’s a dog I have to run off all the time.”

Homeless Dogs (and People)

Later in the morning, we pulled up beside an empty lot strewn with old cars, living room furniture, a giant burn pile, coolers, trash, and even a pair of ice skates in excellent condition.

There was one friendly white pitbull with her ears chopped off, chained up beside an abandoned car, and another black and white dog on a short heavy chain beside a chewed up igloo dog house, just like the kind All 4s gives out. I tossed treats to the pittie and Denise filled aluminum serving dishes with dog food and used a plastic rod to push them within reach of the dogs.

There was no sign of humans, but we weren’t sure if someone wasn’t sleeping inside a car whose windows were covered with plastic and blankets. Suzy left a note on the car offering help with the dogs and the All 4s number.

It was astounding to me that this enormous homeless encampment seemed to be a relatively permanent set up surrounded by small houses in a neighborhood just like all the others we spent the day winding through.

Dogs All Over the Streets of Memphis

On every street we found dog after dog, on chains, behind fences, but many loose. When no one was home and the dog looked hungry, Suzy dumped out some dry food and emptied a can of wet food on top of it and watched while the dog gobbled it before scribbling a note and leaving it in a door or a mailbox.

At one house, there was a small dog with a mammary tumor so large it dragged on the ground. No one seemed to be home. Suzy scribbled a note offering medical help for the dog before we moved on.

For a winter month, it was remarkable how many nursing mama dogs we saw. Two were in a fenced yard with a gaggle of puppies. No one was home, so Suzy left information and made a note of the address so she could come back. Another was loose in the street and skittish. It was hard to say if she belonged to any house, so Suzy fed her and again, made a note of the address so she could come back.

We followed yet another mama dog heavy with milk as she crossed a busy street nearly being hit by traffic. We lost track of her briefly, but Suzy pulled over and asked the guy at a food truck about the dog. It turned out she belonged to the family that owned the body shop it was parked beside. Before we left, the family had agreed that Suzy could come back in three weeks once the puppies were weaned to take the dog for spay surgery.

The last stop of the day was maybe the saddest. There was an elderly German Shepherd wandering around the front yard of a house. Suzy knocked but got no answer. The next-door neighbor came out and said that the family doesn’t pay any attention to the dog and never takes it inside, even though it had been in the single digits and there had been snow that month (February 2025). The next-door neighbor tossed food over their fence to her sometimes.

The neighbor on the other side of the house arrived home and said the dog in his yard also belonged to the Shepherd dog’s family, but it was living with him. His English wasn’t great, but it seemed as though the young pitbull now belonged to him and he took it inside with him.

Suzy poured food out for the shepherd and I fed her treat after treat – she was so thin and frail and hungry. At this point, the front door opened and a woman came out. She didn’t seem upset at what we were doing and told Suzy that she was welcome to rehome the dog.

So that’s what Suzy will try to do, but until she finds a rescue, she’ll come here every day and feed the dog. She’ll add her to the long list of dogs she feeds every day all over the city. They are strays or simply neglected dogs. They wander the neighborhoods and the train tracks, trying to survive.

How Things Have Changed for Dogs on the Streets of Memphis

This was the second time I’ve spent a day with Suzy on the streets of Memphis. The last time was five years ago in early 2020. We helped dogs that day, but we drove a lot more miles to find them. Today, the streets were full of dogs. They were everywhere we looked.

Having visited Memphis Animal Services the day before, I know that a year or two after that visit in 2020, MAS changed their policies and stopped picking up strays, switching to managed intake policies and community sheltering. The enormous increase in strays and dogs in need is the result of years of those practices.

I don’t think Memphis is the only municipality that will be grappling with the culmination of so many years of turning dogs away. 80% of dogs surrendered to a shelter or brought in as strays are not spayed or neutered. So two dogs turned away could come back as eight or sixteen or thirty-two dogs in the years that follow.

The Impact of All 4s on the Dogs (and People) of Memphis

Meanwhile, as this community debates what is best for the shelter and advocates lambast the shelter for euthanizing so many, Suzy continues to drive the streets seven days a week, helping the dogs. She stays focused on the mission. She brings food, shelter, and medical care without judgment. She is tireless and determined, and I imagine frustrated, but her warm smile never falters as she walks up driveways, into yards, onto stoops offering help.

Not only does All 4s schedule, pick up, drop off, and pay for the surgeries, they’ve opened a monthly Pit Stop clinic where they spay/neuter about 30 dogs using a vet clinic in its off hours, paying their vet techs and utilizing the help of veterinarians who volunteer their time. They dream of starting a mobile clinic to reach more animals with vaccines and basic care. All 4s recently partnered with MAS to host a distemper vaccine clinic to try to combat the ongoing distemper outbreak at the shelter.

All 4s desperately needs a space of their own to store doghouses, straw, food, and supplies, and to hopefully someday open their own clinic. I don’t imagine the need is going to lessen anytime soon.

In all our work that day, I never remembered to ask how many spay/neuter surgeries they’ve done, how many dog houses they’ve given out, how many bags of food, flea/tick treatments, dewormers, bales of straw, or toys, books, and treats.

But maybe it doesn’t matter, because it’s never enough. There seems to be an endless stream of need. And an endless stream of dogs.

Each time Suzy helps another family, she does more than just make a dog’s life better. She educates by example. She teaches us all that we cannot stop caring, even when it feels overwhelming, even when it is hard. The lives of these animals matter.

How You Can Help

If you’d like to help All 4s Rescue League and the work they do, consider shopping their Amazon wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2J4DHAFXJW1KV.

Learn more and donate via their website: all4srescue.com

The biggest need is for spay/neuter funding.

Until each one has a home,

Cara

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Who Will Let the Dogs Out: Stories and Solutions for Shelters and Rescues was published in January of 2025. It is filled with stories and ideas to help everyone be part of the solution. You can buy a hardback or paperback copy for yourself and/or buy a copy for a shelter or rescue through our website. It is also available on Amazon in paperback and ebook. We are looking for opportunities to share a presentation of the ideas in the book and facilitate conversations about how we can work together to find solutions for our shelters. If you have a dog-hearted group that would like to connect, contact Cara@wwldo.org.

To see our Emmy-nominated, award-winning short documentary, Amber’s Halfway Home, click here.

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