Rescue Road

by Peter Zheutlin

In another yard, a forlorn pit bull mix puppy, Diva, just four months old, lies against a tree, tethered to a line running above and across the yard. Many of these dogs will live their entire lives chained to a spike or a fence, never knowing the joy of running through a field, the softness of a carpeted floor, or a dip in a cool lake or stream.

  “There’s a lot of drugs out here, gang bangers and meth heads,” Sarah says. “Few people here work. They party all night and sleep all day. The dogs serve as alarm systems for many of these people. Some of these dogs are chained up for years.

  “There are also a lot of transients here, which makes it hard to help some of the dogs,” she adds. “Sometimes I tell people to give me a week and I’ll come back with vaccines, heartworm medications, and food, and when I come back they’re gone. Parvo is rampant. People’s dogs have pups, and they move place to place, leaving the infection behind for the next dog that moves in.” There are also backyard breeders in the neighborhood, breeding dogs behind trailers in grounds littered with parvo.

  Week after week, Sarah comes out here providing food, food bowls, toys, and small store-bought shelters for dogs in need. In return, she tries to secure agreements from the owners to get their dogs spayed or neutered.

  “I hate it here because of the way people treat animals,” Sarah tells me as we drive through Bacliff. She’s a California native who moved here from Alaska. Right along the bay, there are some expensive homes, but nearly every street we drive down is lined with dilapidated trailers, yards strewn with trash, junked cars and old tires, chain-link fences, and dogs chained to posts. In one, a dog on a short chain is defecating into a water bowl. “As soon as I moved here and saw all the stray cats at an apartment complex I managed, I started doing animal welfare work.”

  Like the Fifth Ward in Houston, local government seems to have washed its hands of the people and animals that live, and die, on these streets.

  “Dead dogs lie in the street for days,” Sarah tells me, “and get bloated in the sun. You call the town agencies and they just kick you from one to the other and no one will come and pick up the dog.

  “For a long time I bought all the food myself,” Sarah tells me. “Now I get it through a rescue food bank, and I get some support from local groups, such as the Animal Alliance, but I still finance most of this work out of my own pocket.” Nevertheless, she’s not always welcome in the neighborhood. “Some people will hug you, but I also get cussed out and spit on too.”

  By the end of the morning, after spending a few hours in San Leon and Bacliff, I felt like I’d fallen through a rabbit hole into a world I neither recognized nor wanted to ever see again, a world of desperate people and desperate dogs, a hopeless place where a few people, such as Tom English and Sarah Manns, try to change a handful of lives for the better.

  Yet, it’s a world other people need to see too. And not just to understand the plight of these dogs, so they’ll hopefully “think rescue” if they ever decide to get a dog of their own, but the plight of these people. There’s much talk these days about the growing inequality between rich and poor, but places like Houston’s Fifth Ward and San Leon, which sits near the nation’s largest oil and gas refineries, bring that issue to the forefront. In these places filled with hopeless people and hopeless dogs living very hopeless lives, it’s hard to find any evidence of the American dream. But what you can find are people like Tom and Sarah and Jenni, chipping away at a tiny piece of the problem with true American spirit.

  By bedtime, I would be back in my comfortable home outside of Boston. I wanted nothing more than to see Albie, curl up with him on the bed, and rub his very lucky belly.

  23.This is a pseudonym.

  24.The name aside, Rottie Empire Rescue accepts breeds other than Rottweilers.

  8

  ACADIANA

  IN THE LAST TWO CHAPTERS, WE returned to Houston, Brazoria County, and San Leon to better understand how some of the dogs Greg boards in Baytown happened to be at his door that hot afternoon when Kathy Wetmore left us with Willis, the world’s happiest dog, and a feast from Whole Foods. I also returned to Lafayette Parish where, the morning after loading Keri’s dogs in Alexandria, and the pick-ups in Baytown, we would board fifteen additional dogs headed north. I wanted to spend more time at Lafayette Animal Aid (LAA) in Carencro, where Greg picks up dogs on each trip, because it’s a very different operation than Keri’s in Alexandria or Kathy’s in Houston or Tom’s in and around Texas City.

  Lafayette Parish is part of a large swath of south-central and southwestern Louisiana known as Acadiana or, more popularly, Cajun Country. The descendants of eighteenth-century exiles from the region that comprises Canada’s maritime provinces, many Cajuns speak a French dialect, but the area is ethnically diverse; it’s a mix of Cajuns, Native Americans, Creoles (native-born Louisianans often of mixed ancestry), Germans, and, more recently, Southeast Asians.

  During my travels, I often heard rescue people say, “If I won the lottery…” followed by a wish list of what they need to help the dogs. In Greg’s case, it would be a new tractor and trailer, but for the others, those pulling dogs from shelters and rescuing them off the streets, at the top of the list is always a piece of land where they would build a well-equipped, comfortable shelter, so they could rescue more dogs and have a proper place to put them: no more patching together a network of fosters; no more running from place to place, moving dogs from here to there; no more living in their own homes with dozens of dogs because they’ve run out of other options. If they had their dreams fulfilled, what they’d have would look a lot like LAA.

  • • •

  Set on ten acres of land, LAA’s main shelter building is a rescuer’s dream. Five thousand nine hundred square feet of bright, clean kennels for cats and dogs, medical treatment rooms, and storage and office space. There’s a separate heated and air-conditioned cottage dedicated solely to the comfort of “sanctuary” cats (about three-dozen cats that for various reasons will live their lives here), a six-thousand-square-foot barn for both equipment storage and isolation facilities for animals that have, or may have, contagious diseases, and large, shaded, fenced spaces for dogs to run and play in.

  Just about to open on the property when I visited was a new veterinary clinic, a triple-wide trailer that had served as a nearby general practitioner’s office. When he retired, he donated it to LAA, and it had been towed to the property. LAA invested $20,000 to ready it for its own use. The nearly two-thousand-square-foot building comprises three exam rooms, an operating room, a recovery room, offices, a supply room, a bathroom with shower, a laundry room, and a kitchen.

  LAA has thirteen paid staff, five full-time and eight part-time, and a bevy of volunteers. Just an hour and half south of Alexandria where Keri Toth, Greta Jones, and Sara Kelly scramble every day to hold together a heroic rescue effort with gumption, passion, and endless improvisation despite a dearth of financial resources, LAA is institutionalized rescue in the best sense of the word: a professional staff, an active board of directors, excellent facilities, and money in the bank.

  How has LAA been able to pull this off while so many other rescue organizations struggle? LAA is the legacy of the late Miriam Weiss, a Lafayette native whose third husband was a New York City judge she met while vacationing on Long Island. She kept a home in Lafayette and ran a family business there, an upscale women’s clothing store. Later in her life, she returned to Lafayette, donated the land, and built the shelter, completed shortly before she died in 2005, at a cost of $750,000. In her will, she left a significant bequest in trust to the organization. The income from the trust finances about a quarter of its half-million-dollar-a-year operating budget. The rest comes from donations and grants. If necessary, LAA can tap the trust principal. It’s a luxury relatively few rescues enjoy—so is a paid staff.

  “It’s hard when rescue organizations rely strictly on volunteers,” Melinda Falgout, LAA’s board president, tells me. “With a staff, you can be much more efficient and ensure you c
an carry on even when people leave. Investing in staff will help us continue to grow. Beyond rescue, we want to make a big impact on public education and public policy.”

  One public policy priority is stepping up enforcement of the state’s often-ignored animal cruelty laws. The LAA board has one attorney member and Melinda is hoping to create a legal advisory board. On the education front, another LAA board member, a teacher by profession, runs a reading program for second graders called I Read to Animals. The children read books about rescue dogs such as Buddy Unchained and Before You Were Mine, books with strong messages of responsible pet ownership. They read aloud to a therapy dog named Cece, a golden retriever who belongs to Melinda and her husband, Gary. Each child signs a pledge to care for animals and receives a gift certificate for pet food and a stuffed animal. The program started in the Lafayette public schools, then expanded to the schools in Saint Martin Parish.

  In addition to an executive director and a staff veterinarian, the LAA staff comprises four kennel workers, a cat director and three cat workers, an adoption coordinator, a development director, and an administrative assistant who manages intakes, phones, and email. On an average day, LAA receives about thirty calls to take in animals. New arrivals from local shelters, or those without a medical history, are isolated for a week from the general population to minimize the risk of infectious disease, and all are started on their basic vaccine regimen. More than 75 percent of the dogs test heartworm positive on intake and are treated before being put up for adoption. LAA also operates a pet food bank for local residents who need food assistance, distributing about $25,000 worth of food a year.

  But even a modern shelter like this one, built to accommodate about seventy-five dogs, is often over capacity, given the scope of the canine overpopulation problem here, so LAA relies on about a dozen regular fosters, including Melinda and other board members, to take in dogs temporarily while they await adoption. There’s also a full-time foster coordinator.

  Volunteers walk each dog five times a day—careful records are kept of who has been out, when, for how long, and with whom—and there is an enrichment manual to guide the process of socializing each dog and making sure boredom is kept to a minimum. Dogs that remain in shelters with little socialization can develop behavioral problems that can render them unadoptable, so each new dog is matched with a volunteer to socialize them and provide enrichment throughout their stay.

  • • •

  On the first day of my visit to LAA, as I walked back to the main building after touring the cat cottage, I saw a group of staff and volunteers gathered in the cemetery on the premises, a lush lawn surrounded by an attractive wooden fence and lined with perennial gardens, where animals that die while in residence can be given a dignified burial. Some may come in seriously injured or very ill; some, for various reasons, live out their natural lives here. On a rare occasion, an animal is euthanized when there’s consensus among the executive director, a PhD in cognitive science, Carley Faughn; Shannon Landry, the staff veterinarian; and Melinda, the board president, that the animal’s quality of life is so compromised that euthanasia is the only humane option.

  After the funeral, back in the main shelter building, Shannon and Carley, with a small assist from me, work to get dogs ready for transport. Greg will be here again the day after tomorrow and there’s a lot to be done: each dog needs to be weighed, micro-chipped, and, depending on age, given various vaccines. The recently spayed and neutered pups need to have their stitches removed. Shannon checks their hearts and breathing with her stethoscope, looks in their ears and at their gums, checks for fleas, takes their temperature, and does a fecal exam. All of this is needed to complete the interstate travel certificate Greg needs for each dog on board. This time around, there will be twenty-four dogs from LAA going north with Greg, twice as many we loaded a few weeks ago when I first passed through with him.

  Among them are two dachshund–basset hound puppies, Pilsner and Wheat, light brown with short legs, huge ears, and phlegmatic, wise-beyond-their-years demeanors. Their mama, Abita (named after the Louisiana-brewed brand of beer), is also making the trip, all bound for forever homes. Also traveling are seven precious heeler mix puppies, each patient and calm in my hands as Shannon removes their stitches. Bound for a new home in New York is Sunflower, a beautiful yellow Lab mix with an old bone break on her right rear leg and buckshot in her body, pulled from the Saint Landry Parish Animal Shelter just north of here.

  As soon as the dogs leave with Greg, the staff can begin pulling other dogs from area shelters, dogs with short leases on life that can take the spaces newly opened by those who have departed. Every dog that gets on board is a victory, and every one creates an opportunity for another deserving dog searching for a forever home.

  • • •

  On the second day of my visit to Lafayette, Melinda, April Reeves, LAA’s adoption coordinator, and I drive about half an hour to the Saint Martin Parish Animal Services shelter, where LAA pulls many of its dogs. Four years ago, a new shelter director was hired, Michelle Brignac, and the euthanasia rate has plummeted from close to 90 percent to below 20 percent, one of the lowest in the state. Had Bijou, the beagle mix, been in this shelter four years ago instead of a few weeks ago, his chances of getting out alive would have been slim. Today, he’s living happily with his forever family outside of Boston.

  Jamie Clark was born and raised in nearby Broussard, Louisiana, and returned there with her husband, also named Jamie, when he left the army in 2001. She spends a lot of time at the Saint Martin shelter, as a volunteer, pulling dogs for Lafayette Animal Aid and the Saint Martin Humane Society, and working closely with Michelle to move as many dogs as possible to other rescue organizations both in and out of state.

  She was introduced to rescue shortly after returning to Broussard, when she read about a pit bull fighting ring that had been busted. The fighting dogs and the so-called “bait” dogs—defenseless dogs or dogs confined in some way so other dogs can attack it—were brought to the Saint Martin shelter. A public appeal went out looking for volunteers to foster the dogs that could be safely fostered. Jamie went to the shelter, thinking she’d take one home.

  “I left with nine seven-day-old puppies born to one of the bait dogs,” she tells me. “They tried to save the mother, but she’d been shot by the people running the fighting ring. So I rescued the puppies, thinking the shelter would help me find homes for them. But I was on my own and I started calling all the rescues in the area and put up posters at PetSmart.25 The poster is how I first connected with the Saint Martin Humane Society, and we eventually found homes for all of them.”

  After working with the Saint Martin Humane Society for several years, Jamie realized local adoptions couldn’t possibly keep pace with the number of dogs in need of homes, and she began exploring the options for local rescue groups and shelters to send dogs to out-of-state rescue organizations that might be able to find homes in their locations. Unburdened by the individual adoption process, rescue-to-rescue efforts allow greater numbers of dogs to escape high-kill shelters. But you have to be selective both about the dogs and the other rescue groups: you only want to send highly adoptable dogs and only to rescue organizations you know will make every effort to work with dogs that need socialization, and find homes for them. Jamie knows some rescue groups have open adoption policies—meaning the adopters are not vetted—but when you know a dog is going to die within hours if it isn’t transferred, she believes it’s a risk you sometimes have to take.

  Jamie’s networking led her to Loving Friends Transport, a Florida-based animal transport service owned and operated by Laura Fletcher-Taylor and her husband, Jim Taylor. Now, Loving Friends Transport picks up dogs at Saint Martin Animal Control once a month. As it happens, its ultramodern tractor-trailer is idling in another heavy downpour outside as Jamie and I speak. The dogs will be delivered to the humane societies of Tampa, Sarasota, and Pinellas County. Because those organizations will spay and neuter them before fin
ding homes, it makes life easier for Jamie and Michelle. They can move more dogs through the system at less cost without having to euthanize them to make room for new arrivals.

  The Humane Society of Tampa adopts out about six thousand animals a year, and has full-time veterinarians on staff and the resources to take many dogs from other states. Though Florida also has a canine overpopulation problem, it takes highly adoptable out-of-state dogs: puppies, small breeds, healthy dogs—dogs that “fly off the shelf so to speak,” according to Jamie. “Still, there are many, many highly adoptable dogs here they can’t take, but every bit helps.

  “When you have a director willing to expand the effort to rescue and transport, it makes all the difference,” Jamie tells me. “This shelter used to have a terrible reputation and the euthanasia rate was sky-high. Michelle has reached out to rescue groups everywhere and created a network of fosters that allows us to take in more dogs and save more dogs. But as your live release rate goes up, so does your intake, so you become a victim of your own success.”

  Michelle has a business background, which she has used to her advantage. “Michelle stretches her budget in creative ways and has advocated for budget increases with the parish,” says Jamie. “She has only two part-time employees and two part-time trustees from the local jail to help her here, and her salary is half of what many parish shelter directors make. She does so much more with less. Her attitude is she wants to save every dog. She sees every dog as an individual and is open to any new ideas to help us do that. She’s built a big foster network. She even pulls dogs from other shelters with more resources and gets them on Loving Friends Transport out of her own budget. She’s the model other shelter directors should be looking at.”

  For her part, Michelle thinks every animal control director, no matter how large or small a community they serve, could replicate what she’s done.