Now, the same woman had dumped the two terrier mix puppies, since named Zinnia and Magnolia, with Keri. Both are soaking wet when Keri places them on the examining room table because the woman bathed them hastily before bringing them in. Keri parts the fur for me to see. Both are covered with fleas. Fleas, like ticks, feed on blood, and a bad infestation can result in anemia and death.
It’s clear the dogs need help, fast. Dr. Haas immediately administers an oral medication, Capstar, that will cause the fleas to die and drop off within about fifteen minutes. Keri bathes the pups again and returns to show me the bloody water that has rinsed off them in the small tub. When I see Zinnia and Magnolia the next day, I’m amazed at the transformation. They hardly look like the scraggly, flea-infested puppies I saw the day before. Instead, they are fluffy and as cute as can be and ready to melt the heart of a northern adopter.
But Keri is dismayed because the woman who surrendered them informed her she’s keeping a third puppy because her granddaughter has fallen in love with it. They’ve already bought a doghouse and a chain, the woman said, two signs the dog will be consigned to living most of its life tethered to a post in the yard. This family has a poor track record of caring for dogs, and Keri isn’t going stand by and watch another dog suffer in their care. This puppy stands a better chance of a good life through adoption so Keri hatches a plan to persuade them to surrender the third pup. She sends a text suggesting the first two are showing signs of illness (given their flea infestation, this is defensible if exaggerated) and it’s likely the third is also ill and will need costly treatment. Hours later, while Keri, Greta Jones, and I are on our way to a foster home to pick up fifteen dogs to be spayed and neutered, Keri suddenly erupts in a cry of joy. Her ruse worked. She has a text saying the family wants to surrender the third puppy, since named Tulip. From experience, Keri knows these three cuties will be adopted quickly; they’re young and they’re adorable.
• • •
Though Keri and her organization will rescue any kind of dog, many rescue organizations, and rescuers, faced with the overwhelming magnitude of the problem—there are thousands upon thousands of dogs in need of rescue—focus on a particular breed or type of dog. They may rescue shepherds or Akitas or Labs, or they may focus on small shaggy dogs, as Houston Shaggy Dog Rescue does, or larger long-haired breeds as Tennessee-based Big Shaggy Dog Rescue does. Keri does, however, occasionally say no to a dog in need. Her criteria are more subjective and center exclusively on temperament and adoptability. If she thinks a dog can be successfully placed, she’ll take it under her wing. If the dog is sick, and many are, the question is how sick and whether she has the resources to nurse it back to health. It’s not uncommon for rescue organizations to spend more on veterinary care than they will collect in adoption fees. That’s one reason why so many involved in rescue work are spending from their own pockets or running up debts, as Keri has, at veterinary clinics.
I soon learn that anyone involved with animals within a hundred miles of Alexandria—veterinarians, shelter personnel, pet store staff, dog salon owners, and animal welfare advocates—knows Keri Toth. And there are thousands of people up north with rescue dogs with Keri’s fingerprints on them, many of whom know her by name. Over the past ten years or so, Keri has placed several thousand dogs from Louisiana in northern homes. In recent years, she’s been placing six to seven hundred a year—so many that in late 2012, Greg added Alexandria to his route to serve her and her organization.
I am particularly interested in Keri because she, like Greg, was instrumental in bringing Albie to us. I want to know what makes her tick and how she manages to work full-time as a vet tech and rescue hundreds of dogs a year all while raising four children. She tells me she’s missed a lot of their growing up because of her commitment to rescue and it has sometimes strained her marriage to the breaking point, but she has persevered.
The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Keri has lived in Louisiana almost her entire life. Her accent, to my northern ears at least, recalls Dolly Parton. Keri’s first memory of rescue goes back to third grade, when she saved a lizard from her cat’s mouth.
“My dad was yelling at me to get ready for church,” she tells me, “so I put it in a little container and put rubbing alcohol on the lizard, where the cat had made bite marks. That killed the lizard, but it was my first effort at rescue.”
A year later, when she was eight, Keri lost her cat, Bluejean, whom she found dead by the church where her father preached.
“He finally admitted he had stepped on her by accident,” Keri recalls, “and he felt terrible.” She composed a little ode, which she recalls precisely: “On top of old Blue, all covered with flies, there sat old Keri, crying out her eyes.” The experience, she says, “got me started in forever saving animals.”
While a student at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Keri started volunteering at the Monroe Humane Society. When she moved to Alexandria in 2003, she started the Humane Society of Central Louisiana. In the fall of 2004, through a long series of connections, she began working as a volunteer adoption coordinator for Labs4rescue. She went to the Alexandria shelter the next week and pulled four Lab mixes. She’s been finding homes for dogs through Labs4rescue and other organizations ever since.
• • •
Although Keri works full-time as a vet tech for Dr. Haas, it’s hard to know where her work there ends and her rescue work begins. Dr. Haas is deeply engaged in Keri’s mission and her day too is a mixture of treating people’s pets and providing medical care to Keri’s dogs.17
Keri’s days are filled with a blizzard of text messages, emails, and phone calls related to dogs in need and dogs being adopted. She’s a woman under constant siege and also has to deal with a lot of “crazies,” as she calls them, people such as the woman with the two terrier mix puppies claiming to have found an injured dog when, in fact, it’s her dog and she’s hoping to scam some free veterinary care.
“We’ll pay for the care,” says Keri, “but they have to surrender the dog.” Then Keri can ensure it gets placed in a home where it will be loved and properly cared for. One woman called Keri insisting she pay for her dog’s cancer care, even though the woman was well aware that she was calling an animal rescue/adoption organization while having no intention of giving up the dog. “I explained that we are here trying to solve the animal overpopulation problem, but she was indignant that I was going to let her dog die,” says Keri. “We get a lot of crazy calls [like that].”
One of her biggest challenges is similar to the one Greg faced when it became apparent we were going to have a very full load: Where do you put all the dogs you rescue?
At any given time, Keri will be fostering a dozen or more at her home in Deville (she and her husband, Phillip, live on twenty-four acres), Greta Jones will have some at her house, others will be spread out—one, two, or three at a time—at other foster homes in the area with whomever Keri can persuade to take in a dog or two for a few weeks. Some are on “hold” at the shelters in Alexandria or Pineville, meaning someone has identified the dog as one he or she intends to adopt or to find a home for. (Pineville has the only other nearby shelter with a roof; there’s an outdoor holding pen for strays in Colfax, about half an hour north). Some are boarded at Dr. Haas’s clinic. Finding temporary places for dogs is one of Keri’s constant challenges and biggest headaches, an ever-shifting puzzle as more dogs are rescued and brought to Keri and others sent on their way with Greg.
Fostering a dozen may seem like borderline hoarding, but in Keri’s case it’s not. “If the dogs don’t leave,” says Keri, “that’s hoarding.” She simply keeps them temporarily until she can find permanent or foster homes for them. That said, hoarding, a form of mental illness, is something of an occupational hazard in rescue circles; it’s a slippery slope between wanting to save every animal and being unable or unwilling to let any of them go.
• • •
One day, after she’d worked a full day, Keri, Greta, and I dr
ive in Greta’s van about a half hour to Prospect, Louisiana, in Grant Parish, about twenty minutes from Pineville. Keri has a woman in Prospect, Diana, a single mom, who fosters for her. On the way Keri admits she has concerns, though. Diana takes in so many dogs from people in the area, including the Grant Parish sheriff’s department because their holding pen in Colfax is so small, that Keri fears she may be a borderline hoarder, and she’s concerned about the conditions of the kennels at Diana’s.
We’re going to pick up fifteen dogs to bring them back to the Haas Animal Hospital for the night. Tomorrow morning, a van from SpayNation, a low-cost spay and neuter organization based ninety miles south in Lafayette, is going to take the dogs for their surgery. They’ll spend the night in Lafayette and be returned to Pineville the next day.
When we arrive at Diana’s and the usual barking erupts, I see why Keri is concerned. There’s a very large fenced yard with about a half-dozen dogs running around and in one corner a few pens floored with wooden pallets into which a few small doghouses have been placed. As Keri points out, the dog waste may fall or be washed through the spaces in the pallets, but underneath, it’s basically a smelly, raw sewer. And there’s little shelter from the weather.
Toward the far back of the property is another enclosure where dogs are living. All together, there appear to be at least two-dozen dogs here, maybe more. Diana tells me she’s had more than forty at times. Some of these are dogs Keri has asked Diana to foster, but since roles often get blurred in the fluid world of rescue work, Keri has also assumed responsibility for trying to adopt out many of the other dogs Diana has taken in too.
Hoarding is a complex psychological phenomenon whether people hoard things or animals. Animal hoarders often truly believe they are saving animals from a worse fate and that they are doing right by those in their care. And they may slip into hoarding without even realizing it. While being unable to let go of the animals taken in is indicative of hoarding, so is taking in more animals than you can reasonably care of properly. That’s why Keri thinks Diana may fall somewhere along the hoarding spectrum—she simply doesn’t have the resources or time to care for all the dogs in the way they need and deserve.
The roundup of the fifteen dogs headed to SpayNation is loud and chaotic. Many of them push through the kennel doors as soon as they’re opened and are running willy-nilly around the yard. Keri and Diana grab them and lift them, some quite large, over the four-foot high fence to Greta and me to be put in kennels in the van. Some are scared and could snap at us, so I keep a careful eye out for these and try to let Greta, who is far more experienced than me, handle them. As I learned when we boarded poor Teddy in Alexandria a few weeks ago, you have to be on your guard for a dog that may try and bite. Luckily, none of us are bitten, but by the time the dogs are loaded, we’re drenched with sweat and have poop smeared all over our shirts and pants. If you’re always moving a lot of dogs around, especially puppies, it comes with the territory.
As we head back to Pineville, Keri ponders the quandary about Diana. Conditions at Diana’s are far from ideal for the dogs, but unfortunately, Keri’s options are limited. Every dog she can foster somewhere is a dog that isn’t being euthanized elsewhere. So she sometimes accepts less-than-ideal circumstances because the alternatives are worse. Yet, if she can’t get the dogs at Diana’s spayed, neutered, and vaccinated, and ensure that they are fully healthy—all of which are crucial to move them along toward adoption—why leave them there? One thing is certain: when the dogs return from SpayNation with fresh surgical wounds and stitches that will need proper care, she does not want them to go back into the unsanitary living quarters at Diana’s. She’s determined to have another place for all fifteen by the time they get back from Lafayette and she has about thirty-six hours to come up with a plan.
Problem solving on the fly is a constant in Keri’s life. If there’s a dog in distress, she doesn’t think, Do I have a place for this dog? Her heart, not her head is her guide. She acts, takes the poor creature in, and crosses the next bridge when she comes to it. Move this dog here today even if she doesn’t know where he’ll go tomorrow. If she needed to have a complete plan from the outset she might never save a dog. It’s not about logic; it’s about love.
With the clock ticking, Keri and Greta ruminate about what to do. Greta wonders if they should buy a few ten-by-ten-foot temporary kennel runs and set them up in Sara Kelly’s backyard—Sara Kelly is the physician whose rescue organization, the Central Louisiana (CenLa) Alliance for Animals, is merging with Keri’s soon. It was Sara who fostered Trudy, the deaf and blind Catahoula mix, and Popcorn, and her home is where they bonded. But Sara lives in a quiet suburban subdivision, where the neighbors are already concerned about how many dogs she’s fostering. A few other names are tossed out: What about the Smiths? Could they board a few more at Dr. Haas’s? How many more could Keri and Greta take to their own homes for temporary lodging?
It’s nearing 9:00 p.m. as we return to Pineville, so Keri’s going to have to figure it out tomorrow. For now, she has to get the fifteen dogs dewormed, vaccinated, given their heartworm preventative, bathed, and settled in for the night at the clinic. She’s expected home in an hour, but it’s well after midnight before she stumbles into bed.
Keri is still up bright and early the next morning at 4:30 a.m. so she can meet the SpayNation people at the clinic and help them load the dogs. Then she’s going to start her regular workday while trying to serve as the adoption coordinator for dozens of dogs cleared for transport and listed on the Labs4rescue and Mutts4rescue websites, which means reviewing applications, arranging home visits, and getting all the paperwork together so she can put them on Greg’s truck in the near future. And in preparation for their first family vacation in years, which begins in a few days, she needs to make sure all her own animals and the fosters in her direct care will be attended to while she’s away. If it weren’t for this kind of exhausting dedication, dogs such as Jupee and Pam, Seth and Salyna, Trudy and Popcorn and T-Bone and all the others would never have made it north, not to mention Albie.
Like the countless people up north who have adopted dogs with Keri’s help, I had no idea of the investment in time, money, and emotion that goes into her work. She transforms lives, canine and human, yet to those most impacted by her work, she’s nearly invisible, just a name, an email address, and a phone number. There are no awards or public recognition, just the occasional thank-you note. But for countless dogs Greg drives north to their forever homes, and for their new families, Keri couldn’t be more important.
• • •
Ever since we adopted Albie, I’ve wondered: Why are so many rescued dogs from the South? There are, to be sure, shelter dogs up north in need of homes. Dogs are abused and discarded by their owners north of the Mason–Dixon line too.
But the vast majority of rescued dogs come from southern states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and others. How come? There are some simple answers I already touched upon, such as a general lack of spaying and neutering, which explodes the canine population well beyond the capacity of local communities to find homes for them all. But why is spaying and neutering common practice in some parts of the country and not others? Why are so many southern dogs left to wander and breed freely? Why are unwanted litters of puppies wrapped in garbage bags and thrown in Dumpsters or tossed out of moving vehicles onto roadways or left in plastic tubs at a veterinarian’s clinic? Why are dogs that won’t hunt simply abandoned deep in the woods?
I got an unexpected hint at the answer when I learned that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had recently vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature and backed by animal welfare advocates that would have prohibited dogs from riding in the back of open pickup trucks unless safely confined in a kennel secured to the truck…but only on highways where the speed limit was seventy-five mph. Why such specific circumstances for this law? Louisiana is filled with sportsmen who are accompanied by dogs in their pickup trucks, so animal welfare adv
ocates, being realistic, aimed only for a prohibition on unsecured dogs on high-speed interstates. The dangers of transport in the back of an open pickup are obvious: not only can a dog that jumps or is jarred loose from the back of a pickup be injured or killed, but it could endanger other drivers and their passengers too. Imagine the chaos that would follow a dog flying out of the back of a pickup with cars and trucks traveling behind at seventy-five or eighty mph.
But opponents of the bill saw their “way of life” threatened by such a measure. What I realized is that the root of many of the problems afflicting so many dogs here is social and cultural; as noted earlier, dogs are viewed by many simply as property, and they don’t want anyone, especially government, telling them what they can or cannot do with their property. That goes for spay and neuter laws too.
Indeed, in his veto statement, Governor Jindal wrote, “Animal cruelty is explicitly prohibited by current law, and I trust that our citizens can care for their pets without the nanny state intervening to dictate how a dog is secured in the bed of a pickup.” In short, the reasons for the surfeit of southern dogs are social, cultural, and political.
Animal cruelty may be prohibited by law, but public irresponsibility when it comes to animals is widespread in Louisiana. In an op-ed column in New Orleans’s major newspaper The Times-Picayune following the governor’s veto, Ken Levy, a law professor at Louisiana State University, wrote, “Louisiana is not exactly known for its responsible, compassionate treatment of animals. Unfortunately, Gov. Bobby Jindal…seems intent on keeping it this way. Despite massive efforts to educate pet owners and breeders, Louisiana boasts one of the lowest spay/neuter rates and therefore one of the highest pet overpopulation rates in the nation. As a result, every year, tens of thousands of cats and dogs are herded into local shelters and euthanized.”18
Data keeping in the thousands of public shelters across the United States varies greatly and getting reliable, complete state-by-state euthanasia statistics can be next to impossible, making comparisons difficult. Even within states the information is often incomplete, nonexistent, or kept inconsistently. Anecdotally, though, it’s clear the overpopulation problem is far more acute in southern states.
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