This past spring we visited Petersburg Animal Care & Control just outside of Richmond, Virginia. The shelter building is over sixty years old and shows it, but new director and ACO, Jenny, is doing all she can with what she’s got, and that means saving as many dogs as possible. Before Jenny took over in…
In this tiny county, ALL of the dogs are being saved because of one VOLUNTEER rescue coordinator — is this a sustainable solution?
In 2017, the Dyersburg-Dyer County Humane Society was killing as many as 90% of the animals it took in. When I heard those numbers and that date, I had to ask Diana, the president of Paws To Care, to tell me again. That was only a few years ago—the year my daughter graduated from high…
Okay, the first thing I need you to do before you read this post is park your anger somewhere. You’ll need to set it aside and listen with an open mind and heart. And remember that anger won’t solve this problem. Hate won’t help you either. When we finally exited off the beautiful Natchez Trace…
Only an hour from Corinth where they are struggling to raise money for the shelter by sitting outside the supermarket collecting donations is a beautiful, brand-new 2 million dollar shelter teeming with staff and resources. Tupelo-Lee Humane Society is blessed with
I’d heard about the Animal Rescue Corps before, snippets mentioned by other rescue people in passing, but nothing solid, nothing that I thought had anything to do with the world of dog rescue I inhabited. I pictured a group of superheroes who swooped in during the direst of situations and rescued the dogs, but I…
So much of our rescue efforts are focused on the rural south, as well they should be. That’s where the majority of dogs are suffering and dying, where shelters are overwhelmed, and money runs short, but recently I participated in a rescue that wasn’t in the south. It was actually four hours north of my…
Our next to last shelter visit was actually two visits in one. We would visit the Giles County Animal Shelter, and also meet with some of the volunteers from the Giles County Humane Association, a foster-based rescue that supports the shelter. This Humane Association/County Shelter partnership model is fairly common and usually turns out to…
“I hope this isn’t some wild-goose chase,” I warned Nancy as we headed south from Montgomery to visit our next shelter on the tour. I’d heard about SHARK (Safe Haven Animal Rescue Kennel) from a Humane Society representative. I’d asked her about shelters further south in Alabama and her immediate response was, “You have to…
One of the visits I was most looking forward to on this trip was with RUFF (Rescuers United For Furbabies), an OPH rescue partner. They are a foster-based rescue on the front lines who are saving lives in Walker County, Alabama. RUFF supports Walker County Humane and Adoption Center in a gazillion ways, but I…
