Arkansas: You Can Do Better

As we traversed Arkansas on our shelter tour last April, I grew more and more frustrated (read: ANGRY) with the state by the day. I know anger doesn’t help, so I focused on the amazing people we met, including Corinna who more or less single-handedly runs A&B Animal Rescue of SW Arkansas.

A&B Animal Rescue is the only option for Little River County as there are no animal services (like pretty much every county in Arkansas. If Corinna can’t take the dog you no longer want (or the one you found on the side of the highway), you are out of luck.

The dog pound in the nearby city of Ashdown (Arkansas does have ‘animal services’ in the cities) is a five-day kill shelter, which means if no one comes to claim a dog after it has been in the pound’s care for five days, they assume no one wants it and ‘euthanize’ it.

You can read the most recent ordinance reducing the stray hold from 10 to 5 days for Ashdown and Foreman animal control (Ashdown provides animal services, such as they are, to nearby Foreman). Read the ordinance.

At the rescue, we met a beautiful purebred Aussie who would have met that fate if Corinna hadn’t gone to the pound and pulled him (despite being overfull already at the rescue).

At the time of our visit, Corinna was caring for 61 dogs (plus a few rabbits, cats, guinea pigs, and one bird) at the rescue. The small animals, plus three dogs with medical needs (plus the Aussie who was a new intake) all live in a little brick ranch house.

The majority of the dogs (all large, plus a few medium-sized) live in outdoor kennels that Corinna built behind the house. Most of the spacious kennels house two dogs (plus a barrel and a Kuranda bed). They have a roof over them and mud/pebbles on the floor.

Corinna has no volunteers or fosters. The only hands-on help she has is from her ex-husband who feeds the dogs and checks on them after work each day. His mother originally started the rescue as a sanctuary. After she passed in 2013, Corinna moved the operation to the current location and turned it into a rescue rather than a sanctuary.

The main support Corinna gets with the rescue is from Lillian who lives in New Jersey (and originally founded the rescue with Corinna) and Sue, who lives in Michigan and advocates for the rescue (and reached out to us to see if we would visit).

This means the day to day operation, including all the cleaning and vet care and adoptions (when there are any) fall to Corinna. She also constructs and repairs kennels, fundraises (primarily through online raffles run through the Facebook page), picks up (and unloads) the pallets of food required to feed this many dogs, and tirelessly searches for ways to help her dogs.

As soon as they caught sight of us, the dogs began their chorus. Walking between the kennels was loud. The dogs threw themselves at the fences trying to get our attention (and some reacting to Nancy’s scary camera).

Having volunteers to spend time with the dogs and walk them could go a long way to preserving their mental and emotional health. Corinna gives the dogs attention and plays with them when she’s inside their kennels cleaning. But she is only one woman and there are sixty-one dogs.

I asked Corinna about their average length of stay. It’s measured in years, not months. Yoshi is her longest resident and has been there for nine years. Bear and Rocky have been there for eight years.

Prior to the pandemic, rescues regularly pulled from her, but since the pandemic she gets no rescue help (many of her rescue partners shut down). The only way dogs leave now is by adoption (she does do adoptions to people out of state). A&B only euthanizes for extreme medical cases.

As of mid-April, 2024, Corinna had four dogs adopted. But she’d also had two dogs returned. One was a puppy whose adopters couldn’t deal with chewing and housebreaking. The other was Phantom, a sweet boy Nancy and I both fell in love with, was adopted four years ago and turned up in a kill shelter. Corinna microchips all her dogs, so the shelter contacted her and she drove to get him.

All of A&B’s dogs are adoption ready. They are spayed or neutered, vaccinated, given preventatives for heartworm and fleas/ticks, dewormed, and microchipped.

Corinna loves what she does – she is quick to say that. But she’s only one woman, so I asked what would become of the dogs if something happened to her. She hesitated before saying, “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

I don’t either. Arkansas does not have much animal compassion to spare.

This county is allowing one individual to shoulder the load for all of them. They have no animal services and no qualms about taking advantage of a big-hearted citizen who cares too much to walk away. Several of the dogs in Corinna’s kennels are there because they were seized by authorities and their owners are caught up in legal battles. The county does not give Corinna a penny for their care.

Corinna recently spent $800 to install security cameras because people have been dumping dogs on her property. The rescue sits right off a busy highway and Corinna is tired of having to scrape dogs off the pavement.

It’s hard not to be discouraged by the situation. Which is why I marvel at (and am grateful for) Corinna’s persistence and resilience.

I asked Corinna if the residents of Little River County know about A&B Rescue, and she assured me that they did. She’s been there for ten years providing a safety net for the animals. This challenges my assertion that the problem isn’t that people don’t care, but that they don’t know. Maybe they do know, but they don’t understand that they could help. More human contact and play groups could go a long way to relieving the stress on the dogs and make them more adoptable. But Corinna is stretched pretty much as thin as a person could be in caring for this number of animals.

I hope that we can shine a light on this situation, and I hope that the people who live in and near Little River County will step up. I’m sure they want a better situation for their animals and for this woman who is truly sacrificing her heart to save them.

If you’d like to help, you can donate: Visit the website (and find the donate tab in the upper lefthand tiny menu, or scroll way down the page) or donate via paypal.

You can buy a raised bed for one of the dogs here.

Or shop A&B Animal Rescue’s Amazon wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/351O44RQGMLV8

Or their Chewy Wishlist: https://www.chewy.com/…/ab-animal-rescue-of-sw-arkansas…

Until each one has a home,

Cara

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Learn more about what is happening in our southern shelters and rescues in the book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, 2020). It’s the story of a challenging foster dog who inspired me to travel south to find out where all the dogs were coming from. It tells the story of how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. Find it anywhere books are sold.

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