Rescue Road

by Peter Zheutlin

  There’s Bijou and Willis, and Tennessee, surrendered by the homeless man he’d been with for two years. There’s Salyna, Sully, and Seth, three of the ten puppies saved by CJ Nash, the compassionate and quick-thinking eighteen-year-old near Natchitoches, Louisiana; Jupee and Pam, two of the tub puppies; and Trudy and her companion, Popcorn. And sadly, there are those who didn’t make it or never will, nameless hundreds that looked at me through shelter cage doors, licked my fingers, and jumped manically hoping to get my attention. But for now the focus is on getting the lucky ones we have on board safely on their way to the families counting down the hours and minutes till Gotcha Day. Greg’s ready to roll, the dogs are ready, and so am I.

  • • •

  The virtually nonstop run from Lafayette to Allentown will take us across Louisiana, through Mississippi, Alabama, a tiny piece of Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, to Allentown, in Pennsylvania, where, if all goes according to schedule, we’ll arrive around six o’clock on Friday night. It’s 1,326 miles all told.

  Back on Interstate 10, heading east toward Baton Rouge, it seems as if the entire state of Louisiana is sinking into the swamps. For twenty miles, the highway is straight as an arrow and elevated just feet above the Henderson Swamp, a massive wetland in Saint Martin Parish. The rain subsides near Baton Rouge, and a short distance beyond, we stop in Hammond. This is where we pick up Sadie, who will ride in the cab with us. Sadie is a sweet girl, but also self-contained. She doesn’t display much emotion as we hoist her up into the cab. Rather, she sits calmly next to me on the mattress behind Greg and Tommy, tolerant of my petting her but not insistent for affection, as many dogs are, as we continue our journey east across Louisiana.

  Just before noon, in a parking lot near a Cracker Barrel in Slidell, we meet volunteers from Labs4rescue and other rescue groups to load a few Labs, a basset hound, and several others.

  Before we leave Slidell, Greg calls Debbie, his mother-in-law, to review the passenger list. As always, there have been some late cancellations and some substitutions. Greg wants to make sure he has an accurate list with each dog and where it’s meeting its forever family or foster. Debbie will also be the point person communicating with adopters and fosters meeting the transport up north in case we’re running behind schedule.

  As we cross the border into Mississippi, the return of heavy rains is slowing our progress considerably and adds to the strain and fatigue we’re all experiencing now. Driving in this kind of weather requires greater than usual concentration. In good weather, we’ve been moving at sixty to sixty-five miles per hour; now our pace has slowed to forty-five or fifty at best.

  When we reach Hattiesburg, we stop briefly to deliver a load of supplies donated to a local rescue shelter from people in New England. I’ve come to learn this is exactly the kind of extra mile Greg travels simply because he’s eager to help people—and dogs. He’s not charging for hauling the food, bowls, leashes, and other pet supplies he picked up two weeks ago on his last pass through New England. He’s just lending a hand to the rescue groups transporting dogs with him, and sometimes even those that aren’t.

  By midafternoon, crossing Mississippi, the rain abates and the roads dry out. Seeing the weariness on Greg’s face on our fourth day on the road now, I ask him what keeps him going and how long he thinks he can keep doing work that is clearly exhausting, physically and mentally.

  “I plan on doing this as long as I’m physically able,” he tells me. “And I do it because it helps the dogs. It helps the person getting the dog, but I also do it because it helps people like April [April Reeves, the adoption coordinator at LAA]. April is one of my heroes. I want to help her too. It’s why I drag my ass out of bed. As I learned with Poochie [the first stray dog he brought home as a kid], damn this feels good. And it still feels good.”

  When we stopped in Slidell, an elderly gentleman named John Yonge met the transport. He’d been fostering two Labs, Bumble and Bee, and they were now headed to their forever homes. He cried quietly as he said good-bye, just as Tilani Pomirko had when she said good-bye to Willis in Baytown, and just as Greta Jones had when she said good-bye to Tippi in Alexandria. Fosters give so much of themselves to these dogs, knowing all along there’s a painful parting in the future—unless, of course, they become foster failures. Their role in the rescue process is indispensable. Without them, far fewer dogs would make it to forever homes.

  “It takes a lot to scoop up a dog and give it so much of your heart knowing you’re going to give it up,” Greg explains. He’s right: The foster networks are another piece of the rescue puzzle mostly invisible to adopters. Though he’s a critical link in the rescue chain, the one knitting all the others together, you sense Greg is in this difficult, messy, smelly work for all the people who play their parts in getting the dogs on board his truck, including people like John and Tilani. “At the end of day,” he says, “everyone feels good about what they’ve done.”

  • • •

  On every trip, Greg stops for two to three hours outside of Birmingham, Alabama, where a group of about two-dozen volunteers meet the truck and help Greg and Tommy get every dog out for a good walk, play with them, rub their bellies, and give them water and snacks. These are the “Birmingham Angels,” as Greg calls them, started a few years ago by a woman named Lynda Ingle. In 2011, Lynda, who is involved in several local rescue organizations, had rescued a dog and found an adopter in Massachusetts. Someone recommended Rescue Road Trips for transport. She started following Greg on Facebook, saw he was looking for volunteers in the area, and offered to pull a group together.

  “Greg puts his all, his whole being into transporting these dogs safely,” Lynda once told me. “These aren’t just dogs to him.”

  By late afternoon, we’re southeast of Birmingham on Interstate 20, on our way to meet the Angels, when we pass a white van traveling in the right lane. Greg realizes it’s Keri Toth and Greta Jones from Alexandria on their way to this Sunday’s adoption event in Rhode Island with forty dogs, mostly puppies. Greg expected they’d be much farther north by now, and he’s concerned as evening turns to night they’re going to be fatigued. He knows from experience it’s no easy feat to make a long-distance drive in a van with forty mostly very young and active puppies.

  We wave as we pass, and Greg calls Keri on her cell phone. He tells her she and Greta should follow him into Birmingham, that the Angels will help them with the dogs they’re transporting too. Greg never expected to see Keri and Greta on the road. But this is the kind of improvisation that keeps the rescue movement moving. Knowing how difficult the trip is for Keri and Greta, Greg suggests, insists really, that we travel as a two-vehicle caravan all the way to Allentown. After all, we’re carrying two-dozen “Keri dogs” bound for the Rhode Island adoption event too. Greg’s going to do whatever he can to make sure all of them make it there safely and on time.

  • • •

  Right around 6:00 p.m., followed by Keri and Greta, we pull into the parking lot where the Angels are waiting. The skies are threatening yet again, and getting more than eighty dogs out for walks in the pouring rain would be a nightmare, not to mention the forty dogs in the van needing to get out and exercise and do their business, but we luck out and there’s little more than a light drizzle as the carefully orchestrated routine unfolds.

  Volunteers line up at the trailer door as Lynn Watson, dressed in jeans, a Rescue Road Trips T-shirt, a baseball cap, and rain boots (“washable and pee proof”), hops into the trailer. Lynn is one of the Angels. As each dog is taken out of its crate for a walk, she’ll clean the kennel and lay down dry newspaper. Over the din of dozens of excited, barking dogs, Greg, Tommy, and Lynn hand off dogs to one another and then to the waiting volunteers.

  “T-Bone!” shouts Tommy, handing T-Bone to Greg.

  “T-Bone! Got him!” Greg shouts back as he slips a leash over T-Bone’s head and around his neck. Then he turns to the man next in line at the trailer door.

  “T-
Bone!” Greg shouts as he leads T-Bone down the steps and into the hands of the waiting volunteer.

  “Paper change in forty-four!” Tommy yells to Lynn, referring to T-Bone’s crate number.

  “Tennessee!” shouts Tommy. And the process is repeated, with Greg, Tommy, and Lynn handing dogs to volunteers until each dog has had his time in the fresh air.

  As Greg and Tommy work to get the dogs out, Keri and Greta have been setting up portable play spaces for the dogs they’re driving to Rhode Island. Occasionally, a puppy slips out and a handful of volunteers chase it down. This isn’t a typical stop with the Birmingham Angels; not only is Greg carrying about two-dozen dogs more than usual, but there are also the forty unexpected guests with Keri and Greta. There’s more than a passing resemblance to a traveling circus. Seeing Keri and Greta have their hands full, Greg asks Lynn to lend them a hand.

  “She’s willing to get knee deep in shit,” Greg says to me, paying her one of the highest compliments you can get from Greg Mahle.

  Lynn is tall with dark, shoulder-length hair; she works in an administrative position for the University of Alabama-Birmingham Health System. There was little time to talk during our stop, so we spoke by phone a few weeks later. Greg had urged me to talk with her; she is one of his most highly prized volunteers and would be able to explain what drives the Angels to come out to meet the truck every two weeks, rain, snow, or shine.

  “I always had dogs growing up,” Lynn tells me, “but my father wasn’t keen on it. When I was finally on my own at nineteen, my first rite of passage was to get a rescue dog. I was at an adoption event and saw this older wirehaired terrier–dachshund mix being overlooked by everyone. She wasn’t one of the cute puppies in a pen. She was my companion throughout my twenties and into my thirties. We were our own pack. We traveled together. I’ve been drawn to rescue ever since.” And to rescue dogs—she now has three.

  “There’s a lot of compassion out there,” Lynn says, “and Facebook connected me with like-minded people helping animals one at a time.” Through Facebook, Lynn learned about Lynda Ingle’s group helping Greg with the dogs. When she came to meet the truck for the first time a few years ago, she was impressed.

  “There wasn’t a lot of ‘Kumbaya,’” Lynn tells me. “Everyone was just there to help the dogs. I started helping Tommy in the truck and got hooked on the grunt work. I love being in the truck and being hands-on with all the dogs and handing them off for walks. You see the fearful ones, who are reassured when you put them into someone’s arms. They know they are on the road to safety and security.

  “There’s always at least one that shoots an arrow right through my heart,” she continues. “It’s a look in the eye. It’s very rewarding. Everyone can do something. Not everyone can give money or adopt or foster, but everyone can make a difference. You can’t solve the whole problem, but you can have an impact. Greg knew he could make a difference and people stepped up to help.”

  Lynn rarely misses a Rescue Road Trip; she’s someone Greg can count on seeing every other Thursday night.

  “When we were done the night you came through with the truck and all those puppies in the van, I smelled so bad.” She laughs. “But being with that little community for a couple of hours and helping—on the ride home, I have the best feeling ever. I’m doing my little part, but Greg is making a huge difference. I feel so content knowing Greg is back on the road; the dogs have all been walked, fed, and watered; and Greg and Tommy are okay. It’s great to know they are all safe and on their way.

  “I want people to realize they don’t need a designer puppy from a pet shop or breeder,” Lynn adds. “There are so many dogs that just don’t get a chance. Caylie [her first rescue] was overlooked. She always looked like she was walking downhill because her front legs were shorter than her hind legs. But I gave her a chance and she changed my life.”

  • • •

  Just before nine, a little less than three hours after our arrival in Birmingham, we’re back on the interstate, but traffic is at a virtual standstill. Using my iPhone, I can see we have several miles like this ahead. I check the news and learn there’s been a fatal accident. Under the best of circumstances, Thursday night and into Friday is the most arduous part of the journey. To be stalled right out of the gate, moving a few feet at a time, is dispiriting. It’s also a reminder that this difficult job can also be dangerous. Keri and Greta manage to stay close, and for two hours, we creep along covering just three miles or so before we finally clear the accident scene and drive into the dark Alabama night, a two-vehicle caravan with five people and more than 120 dogs.

  I ask Greg about the monotony of driving the same route over and over and over again. “It must seem like and endless loop,” I suggest, and he agrees. When I ask him what he thinks about as the endless miles roll by he responds, enigmatically, “Everything and nothing.”

  I was curious what exactly this meant, so over the next twenty-four hours I would periodically and randomly ask him, “What are you thinking about right now?” The first time he was thinking about where to take Adella to celebrate their second anniversary in a few weeks, though he would be on the road on the actual date. Cincinnati was the leading contender at the moment. More often than not, he was thinking about work: from Rescue Road Trip web pages that needed updating to whether to turn the operation from a limited liability corporation to a nonprofit, to the Facebook posts he’ll write as Gotcha Day draws closer. One time when I popped the question, he immediately replied, “Elvis!”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Noooo!” He laughed.

  Greg and Keri stay in touch by phone and about 1:30 a.m., we all pull into a rest stop in northeastern Alabama. Keri and Greta are exhausted, and it’s agreed Tommy will drive the van and Keri will ride with us in the truck until we are near Knoxville. Greg’s goal is to get Keri and Greta as far along as possible tonight, so they won’t have such a long ride tomorrow.

  With Greg behind the wheel and Keri in the passenger seat, I doze fitfully sitting on Tommy’s mattress with my back against the rear of the cab, one arm around Sadie who proves to be the mellowest and sweetest of companions. The lights of small towns, larger cities (Chattanooga), and gas stations and fast food joints just off the highway seem to flicker on and off like fireflies on a warm summer evening. But mostly, all I can see are the painted lines on the highway illuminated by our headlights and the endless ribbon of highway.

  Just south of Knoxville, we all stop, Keri and Tommy trade places again, and Tommy drives us on while Greg dozes for another hour or so. Keri and Greta stay put for some rest. Because we had so many dogs to be cared for in Birmingham this trip, we left about an hour later than usual. Then there was the delay caused by the accident in Birmingham. Shepherding Keri and Greta and then driving through a thick fog for the past few hours have also taken their toll. Finally, Tommy’s too tired to drive any longer, and, at around 6:00 a.m., pulls into a rest area and the three of us sleep in the cab until 7:15, when Greg rouses, switches seats with Tommy, and we’re rolling again.

  Now, Keri and Greta are on their own…sort of. The plan is now to stay in touch and rendezvous in Allentown this evening.

  Normally on this drive through the night, Greg sleeps as Tommy drives and vice versa. But because he was worried about Keri and Greta, both Greg and Tommy spent several hours when both were driving. They’ve dealt with worse, but lots of little things have conspired to make this an especially wearying trip: the larger-than-normal load, the rain, the fog, and the accident in Birmingham. Carrying precious cargo such as rescue dogs is more stressful than transporting ordinary goods, like beer and soda. For Greg, losing valuable sleep along the way is like adding another hundred-pound weight to his shoulders.

  • • •

  After a fitful sleep myself, I watch the morning sun fight its way through thick fog as we cross into Virginia, Greg behind the wheel. It’s around eight on Friday morning. Normally, Greg and Tommy would get each dog out for a morning w
alk, but the previous evening’s events have put us three hours behind schedule so Greg will stop, assess each dog, and see which ones really need a walk and those that will be content to remain in their kennels. On a grassy expanse at the edge of a rest stop, Greg and I walk about three-dozen dogs as Tommy tends to the kennels.

  “People think this is a glamorous job,” he says to me, referring to a number of offers he’s had since the Parade article to do a reality TV show and the minor celebrities who have asked to do a ride along. “But it’s a shitty, smelly, grueling job. Who else would want to do this?” He grins. The answer is obvious: very few people, which is why my admiration for Greg grows by the mile.

  • • •

  A little after noon, south of Staunton, Virginia, comes a stop I’ve been looking forward to for four days. This is the truck stop where we’ll each get a shower. For Greg, it will be the first break of any kind he’s had in our five days on the road. As I saw, when he’s not driving, he’s taking calls, trying to sleep, thinking about the dogs, worrying about staying on schedule, cleaning kennels, or reassuring nervous dogs. Seeing him head off to the shower, change of clothes in hand, I realize this may be the only fifteen-minute break he’s allowed himself since we pulled out of Zanesville.

  The shower is positively rejuvenating. The exhaustion of having only six hours of sleep over three days and two nights seems to wash down the drain. All three of us are in better spirits as we prepare to continue north through Virginia.

  It’s a good time for Greg to pull out his iPhone and painstakingly type out a new Facebook post for all those waiting down the road. Tomorrow is Gotcha Day and a steady stream of Facebook messages is part of his plan to make Gotcha Day as exciting and as memorable as it can be for everyone greeting a new dog. But this Facebook post also sums up his dedication to his work, the reason why he puts himself through these exhausting trips, driving long hours on the road through torrential rains and other bad weather, wading through and cleaning up dog poop and muck, and weathering the occasional bite or scratch to give these dogs and their soon-to-be forever families a future together.