It was 6am and I huddled next to the air pump at the Shell station, waiting for Melisa, the president of the Humane Society of Shenandoah County. She would drive my four foster kittens an hour south to be neutered. She was a few minutes late and apologized as she popped open her van, already stacked with crates of cats and kittens to be spayed/neutered.

We talked for a few minutes about the overwhelm of rescue. She echoed what I’ve heard from so many shelter and rescue directors — It is worse than she has ever seen it. Melissa had 22 kittens at her own house, in addition to over 100 cats and kittens in foster homes. She fields daily pleas for help. One elderly woman with over twenty cats is desperate for her to come take her animals.

Exhaustion is clear on Melissa’s face. All she does is work and rescue, catch a little bit of sleep and do it again. The Humane Society is a nonprofit; so, in addition to saving so many lives (thousands), they have to raise the money to do it. Despite the county shelter referring the majority of their calls to the Humane Society, they do not pay a single penny toward their work.

All of the animals in the rescue are FIV tested, vaccinated, dewormed, and spayed/neutered before they pass them along (for free) to another rescue further north, or sometimes adopt them out locally for less than the money they’ve invested in them.

This model is typical. There is so much talk of the United States becoming a no-kill nation, but if that ever happens, it will happen because of women like Melisa. She will sacrifice her personal life, her money, her time, and every scrap of her heart to save these animals. And she won’t be paid for it or given credit for it.

Striving to please the public and local leadership by becoming ‘no-kill,’ many shelters practice a policy of ‘managed intake.’ Shelters used to all be ‘open intake’ which means that the shelter will take any animal, any time, for any reason. ‘Managed intake’ means just that — managing which animals come in, when they can come in, and from whom they can come in.

Some won’t accept strays, pit bulls, sick animals, pregnant animals, puppies or kittens, forcing the person trying to find a place for them to turn elsewhere. Managed intake is great for a shelter’s numbers. If they only take in a limited number of highly adoptable animals that don’t require expensive veterinary care, they can save every animal, offer first class care, and operate within a reasonable budget. But what happens to the animals that are turned away?

Many people who don’t want a cat or dog (or the kittens or puppies that animal produced) feel a public shelter should have to take their animals. Their tax dollars support it. (More on this in a moment.) Some will kill the animals out of spite, some will dump them elsewhere, but all too often they end up at a rescue. Because it is the rescues, often run by people like Melisa whose hearts can’t turn away an animal in jeopardy, no matter how furious that animal’s owner makes them, or how unreasonable their reason is for abandoning it.

Surrender fees, commonly collected by shelters (but not rescues) are meant to offset the cost and discourage people from giving up their animals. But as one resident of Tennessee said when confronted with the $10 fee to surrender an animal, “A bullet only costs thirty cents.” Rescues charge even less.

Some progressive shelters work with owners to try to help them keep their pets in their home — offering assistance in the form of veterinary care, training, food, and supplies. A number that isn’t tracked, but should be, is how many pets are kept out of the shelter because shelter staffed assisted the owner. That’s an important number and one a shelter should be recognized for and encouraged to raise. Counseling owners to prevent them giving up their animals can often be successful and should always be the first step.

Not long after I moved to our town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I found a beautiful bluepoint Siamese cat. I’d scooped her up after she was nearly hit right in front of me while I was walking in town. Not knowing what else to do, I took the cat to the shelter. I hoped the cat would be microchipped and they’d be able to return the cat to its owner (it wasn’t). I explained this cat was a stray and they explained that they couldn’t take it. Maybe they assumed I was making up the ‘stray’ description because the cat was so affectionate and sweet in my arms.

I took the cat home, posted its picture and description everywhere I could think of hoping to find her owner, and I attempted to rehome her to no avail. So I turned to a local rescue who adopted it out (after I fostered it and paid to have it spayed, vaccinated, and microchipped because they were full up and out of money). But ever since that experience, I’ve wondered, ‘What if…?”

I had the ability, money, and space to feed and care for that cat for two weeks until it was adopted. I had a local rescue willing to take on the responsibility for it. But if I hadn’t, what would I have done?

I honestly don’t know. Put it back out on the busy sidewalk where I found it dodging traffic?

I have toured over 100 shelters and rescues in twelve states, and in many of those places, animal control officers, rescue coordinators, shelter directors, and volunteers talk about their save rate (or live release rate). They are focused on being able to save every adoptable animal that comes into their building. But what about the ones they turn away?

It’s the rescues that save those animals, often the most challenging and the sickest. The animals that might consume a lot of a shelter’s time, money, and resources, and potentially drag down a shelter’s live release rate.

It’s a hard truth that we cannot save every animal. Every shelter and rescue has to euthanize animals for behavioral or medical reasons. There is no way around that and any organization that says they save them all is lying.

But too many that can be saved are only being saved because of private individuals and nonprofit organizations that step into the gap created by public no-kill shelters.

We cannot rescue our way out of the current crisis. And it is a crisis.

Shelters, not just in the south, but all over this country are full and overwhelmed. Rescues that have been pushed beyond anything they ever signed up for, are breaking down from compassion fatigue, bankruptcy, and the impossibility of the situation.

Why is it so bad now? Lots of reasons. But it starts with the fact that the current system of managed intake shelters dependent on rescues to care for the animals they turn away is not sustainable. With numbers swollen as a result of the pandemic, the economy, the unstable housing market, the veterinary shortage, and breed-specific policies and laws, we are reaching a breaking point.

So what is this animal-loving country to do? How do we fix this?

It starts with our government and community responsibility. These animals belong to all of us. Long ago dogs and cats were domesticated. We tamed them, brought them inside as pets and into our lives for companionship, protection, and assistance. They cannot survive on their own. It is our obligation to take care of them.

We need good munipal shelters, run by trained staff with strong protocols for animal care, plus reasonable adoption policies. We need shelters that do not adopt (or rescue) out any animals until it is spayed/neutered. Shelters that offer education and support to pet owners and potential adopters. And these shelters need a mandate to help all animals (and their owners) whether that means offering support (training, veterinary, or resources) to keep the pet in the home or taking the animal into shelter custody.

There are hundreds of ways to change the narrative so that a shelter becomes a community resource, rather than an eyesore. Training classes, kids programs, dog parks, walking trails, and volunteer programs are just a few of the ways a shelter can become an engaged and beloved part of a community. The shelter should be an integral part of a community’s life.

The other way that government can help turn this tide is to create and enforce strong dog laws. At a minimum requiring dog/cat licensing (with a significantly larger fee for unspayed/unneutered animals) would create an income stream to help pay for better equipped and maintained shelters. Anti-cruelty laws and the repeal of breed-specific legislation are two powerful ways to send a strong message that we value our pets and our people.

I don’t know of any organization that has tallied the amount of money spent by private rescues to save the animals turned away because of a public shelter’s policies or because there is no public shelter. No doubt it is much more than any county or city government spends on animal shelters.

And I get it. No one wants to pay more taxes, but it is unfair to expect private citizens and local nonprofits to take on that burden, exploiting them because of their enormous hearts. There are innovative ways to cover the cost of sheltering animals like licensing and adding sales tax to luxury pet items, rather than leaving it to nonprofits to get the money through car washes and bake sales. Communities are paying to save or kill their animals one way or another. Make no mistake, it costs us either way.

As Aubrie Kavanaugh says in the title of her book about the No-Kill movement in Huntsville Alabama, it’s ‘Not Rocket Science.’ Saving every adoptable animal whether that animal is in Texas or North Dakota, is possible. But first we have to decide to save them.

Those are the exact words of Dr. Kim Sanders, the director of PAWS of Anderson County, South Carolina, a public shelter that takes in as many 500 animals a month. The shelter had been killing 90% of the animals they took in, but six months after Dr. Sanders arrived they achieved ‘no-kill’ status (saving 90% of their animals). When I asked her how she did this, she said, “We just decided to stop killing animals.”

When killing an animal is not an option, you find another one. Yes, the challenge is great, but in so many places, it has been met. We cannot simply shirk our responsibilities and leave it to the rescue organizations. Not only is it unfair and unreasonable, it is not sustainable. Rescues are struggling and too many are reaching a breaking point. It is long past time we step up and decide to find fair and humane solutions for the animals in our communities. We cannot rescue our way out of this crisis.

I met a Humane Society volunteer later that same day to retrieve my kittens. Another volunteer who had taken four hours out of her day to help animals that didn’t belong to her. My kittens eventually were transferred to another rescue further north.

I already have another litter of seven kittens sharing my office. There is an unending supply. The Humane Society still has over 100 in foster care. I checked the public shelter records for the month — the shelter took in eighteen cats/kittens this month. Eighteen.

Gosh, the County sure is getting a great deal, but at what cost?

Cara Achterberg is the author of One Hundred Dogs and Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues. She is also the founder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out, a non-profit organization that raises awareness and resources for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them.

“Shelters who haven’t had to euthanize in ten or fifteen years, are having to again,” said Tammy Dodson, a long-time rescue advocate who coordinates rescue transports out of Wise County, Virginia, moving dogs and cats north to rescues and adopters via the Animal Rescue Coalition.

Scan the headlines elsewhere in the country…

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., WESH Channel 2- Halifax Humane Society in need of foster families as shelter stretched beyond capacity: Capacity at Halifax Humane Society is 350 cats and dogs but they are way beyond that, caring for at least 410 animals right now.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE — Southland shelter sees wild day of pet abandonment in forest preserves; ‘It’s never happened like this…’

DENVER, FOX channel 31 — Colorado animal rescue groups desperate for foster, forever homes: “One of Denver’s largest animal shelters is calling for help as it reaches capacity. The Dumb Friends League is seeing its highest volume of animals in roughly a decade. Katie Parker, vice president of operations, said they started feeling pressure when they reached 800 animals at their Denver shelter. She said now they’re hovering between 900 and 1000 animals, depending on the day.”

Where are all these dogs coming from? After returning from a tour of 13 shelters and rescues in five southern states, I think I have some idea.

Returned dogs

The national return rate for dogs adopted from shelters and rescues is about 10%. The number holds fairly steady year to year. People return dogs for a variety of reasons — the dog they adopted doesn’t get along with others in the household (two and four-legged), the dog has needs the new family can’t meet in terms of behavior, exercise, medical, or a thousand other reasons both reasonable and unreasonable. During the pandemic, a record number of adoptions took place. It’s not that all those dogs adopted to stave off the loneliness of quarantine are being returned; it’s simply that ten percent of that record number will be a record number of returns.

Owner Surrenders

Dogs that have been adopted, purchased, or acquired elsewhere are being surrendered to shelters and rescues in record numbers. Some of these dogs are young, purebred dogs purchased during the pandemic whose breed eccentricities or needs were too much for a new owner. Many of the dogs being surrendered are given up because their owners can no longer afford them, or their work or housing situation has changed drastically.

Rising birth rates

During 2020 and even into 2021, many veterinarians were closed and/or not performing elective surgeries, so thousands of spay and neuter surgeries were canceled or postponed. And once surgeries were happening again, the backlog forced shelters and rescues who receive ‘rescue rates’ to wait weeks or even longer behind the full-paying clients. This has led to more puppies and kittens landing in shelters.

Normal Animal Control strays, seizures, and court cases

The steady stream of animals that turn up as strays, are seized because of abuse or neglect or abandonment, held as evidence in court cases, or left behind after the death of their owner, continued throughout the pandemic. Strays must be legally held at a shelter for their ‘stray hold’ which is normally 5–10 business days, depending on the jurisdiction. During that time, they can’t be adopted out or transferred to rescue, taking up much-needed kennel space. Dogs seized for legal reasons must be held until their case is settled and cannot be adopted out or transferred to rescue (those dogs were most likely not in the picture of those empty shelters, but they were still being held at the facility).

All of these factors contribute to the rising intake numbers being seen all over the south in shelters and rescues. Those numbers are tough, but as outtakes have dried up, they are even more challenging.

“During the pandemic, rescues were begging us for dogs, but now I’m struggling to find rescues for puppies!” lamented Jo Anne Harding, who coordinates rescue transports from Lee and Dickson County, Virginia.

Adoptions have slowed to a trickle or stopped altogether. Rescues and foster homes are full. No one can take the easy-to-place dogs, let alone the challenging dogs like bully breeds, hound dogs, heartworm positive, and medical cases.

The presence of small dogs, purebreds, and puppies in shelters could be the canary in the coalmine. Those are the desirable dogs that most shelters usually have no trouble adopting out or transferring to rescue. Normally, shelters are full of pit bulls and large mixed breeds, old dogs, and dogs with behavior issues. At one shelter in Simpson County, Kentucky, a Husky paced his kennel maniacally. In Franklin County, Tennessee, a bulldog struggled to turn around in his tiny enclosure, the concrete saturated with urine, and a matted Shih Zu peered out from under a tangle of fur. A litter of chihuahua puppies screamed at the sight of any visitor. In Cowen, West Virginia, at Saving Webster Dogs, a rescue that functions as the county shelter, a beautiful Basset Hound puppy wandered around his muddy kennel, a scruffy terrier jumped at his kennel fence, and a purebred Redbone Coonhound strained at his chain.

As winter settles in, a time when adoptions normally dip, many of these shelters and rescues will face the hardest of decisions. Budgets and spaces will need to stretch. Rescues will be pressed to do even more.

The pandemic led huge numbers of people to seek comfort in the company of animals, adopting animals in record numbers while the pandemic raged. And now as the pandemic recedes, everyone in animal welfare will be challenged to find new solutions. Counties and states must step up, and perhaps all those pandemic-inspired animal lovers will become voices for the animals left in its wake.

Cara Achterberg, co-founder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out and author of 100 Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus, 2020)

We met with Jack, the new director, and Maily, a volunteer leader; both are new to Maury and having a positive impact on the place.

When I visited Maury nine months ago, I spoke with the woman who handled intake who told me that while she sometimes asked why people were dumping their animals, she had no choice but to take them. Now, while still an ‘open-intake’ shelter, people had to make an appointment to surrender their pets, and the earliest appointment was usually a week or two away. Similar to a waiting period for buying a gun, that gave them time to reconsider and possibly find another way to rehome their pet rather than dump it at the shelter out of frustration or desperation.

Instead of barren kennels and isolation, now the dogs in the adoptable area had filled Kong toys and other toys, blankets, and as many as three walks/playtime with volunteers each day. Maily had managed a huge well-laid-out whiteboard that included information about the dogs, places for comments from volunteers, and directions for all the volunteer jobs so that anyone who showed up could get right to work without the direction of the volunteer coordinator or the director.

Not only did the board keep volunteers from wasting their time, it gathered more information about individual dogs, and ensured that dogs were getting equal attention. There were bins of Kongs waiting to be filled and big jars of treats available to be given out — that was such a change from my last visit!

All of the dogs on the adoption floor were spayed/neutered, microchipped, and up-to-date on shots. They were ready to walk out the door with an adopter that day. Jack didn’t want someone to choose a dog and then have to wait a week or more to pick it up (many will get tired of waiting and never show up for their new pet). There were about a dozen or so dogs in Adoption, but we visited on a Monday after a busy adoption weekend.

The majority of the dogs we met were in the ‘Stray Hold’ area where dogs are legally required to be held 72 hours before they can be adopted, pulled by rescue, or destroyed. Dogs in Stray Hold are kept there until they are reclaimed by owners or have had the necessary vet and behavior attention needed to move them to Adoption.

When I visited last fall, dogs were lingering in Stray Hold for months and months, stressed and neglected.

They were still held in Stray Hold far longer than is good for them, but efforts were being made to not only move dogs up to adoption faster, but to ensure they had exercise and attention while they waited. It was a bit of a struggle because before volunteers could handle them, the dogs had to be evaluated by a trainer and staff; and before they could go to adoption, dogs had to be spayed/neutered, shots updated, etc. None of that could begin until the 72-hour hold was up.

Maury did not have a vet on staff and relied on vets that came in on Wednesdays. In a shelter this size, that inevitably meant a backlog. It meant dogs still waited in Stray hold for weeks, sometimes longer. Jack had to juggle his desire for dogs to be immediately adoptable for an impatient public with the importance of moving dogs out of Stray Hold as quickly as possible. He was working to get more veterinary help, knowing it was the key.

Many municipal shelters utilize inmates to do much of the work. While from the public standpoint (and the budget standpoint) this may seem like a good plan, for the dogs’ sake, it’s a terrible one. Shelter staff have no say in which inmates are assigned to the shelter and no knowledge of their ability with animals. One of the most important jobs of a shelter employee (or volunteer) is to follow a strict cleaning and handling protocol to ensure that infected animals do not spread diseases like parvo, ringworm, and a host of others to the general population. Using inmates makes this difficult to enforce, so Jack had moved much of the work and most of the animal handling over to staff. Hoping to counter the inevitable push back at added work, he also invited an outside group to evaluate staff compensation and determined that a raise was in order for shelter employees.

The most powerful key to changing the culture of a shelter and saving more dogs is leadership. I’ve seen this again and again in shelter after shelter. One positive, motivated person can make the difference between a shelter that is a community partner, saving dogs and educating the public and one the public eyes as a place to dump the animals they don’t want to deal with.

When I visited before, it was hard to pin down the LRR (Live Release Rate), partly because the director did not show up to meet with me. To be honest, I never know for sure what that number means because there are many different interpretations of it that can vary shelter to shelter. Is it the number of ‘treatable, adoptable animals’ that make it safely out of the shelter through return-to-owner, adoptions or rescue? Or is it just the number of animals that come to the shelter for any reason that make it out alive? And what is ‘treatable, adoptable” and who makes that judgment?

One big difference between my first visit and now was that Jack seemed willing to be transparent about just about everything. He’s been in shelter work for over twenty years. He’s seen a lot. He’s learned a lot. He agreed that LRR is very open to interpretation. He didn’t know the numbers off the top of his head, but later he sent me an email that said Maury has euthanized 108 of the 1096 animals they’d taken in since January 1 (it was June when we visited), more than half of those he said were very sick kittens (they had a virus come through, a strain I’ve never heard of). That puts their LRR somewhere around 90%. Not a terrible number as far as municipal shelters go, but not nearly as good as Williamson County Shelter, just thirty minutes away.

To be fair, though, as we drove into Williamson we couldn’t help but notice it sits smack dab in some of the poshest suburbs you’ll encounter in Tennessee. There was money and volunteers and community support to spare at Williamson. They have a large staff, a well-equipped building (with ‘catios’ and a full veterinary suite), a full-time vet (and two techs), a full-time volunteer coordinator (to organize the plethora of volunteers we were literally tripping over). This created an atmosphere that was positive and bustling with activity.

At the time, Williamson’s LRR was somewhere around 97%, and Chris, the kennel manager who gave us a tour, told me that they really stressed that last 3%.

Williamson is an example of all a shelter can be — engaged in its community, caring expertly for its animals, and saving every possible animal they can save. I asked Chris if their numbers were going up or down in terms of intake and without hesitation, he said, “Up.”

So a great building, full staff, veterinary access, and lots of money still didn’t stem the flow of unwanted animals. I asked Jack at Maury what he thought the problem was and while he told me that was complicated, many-pronged situation, he thought the only solution that would bring real change was a ‘paradigm shift’ in terms of how people think about animals.

“This is a work in progress,” Jack said to me many times on our tour, and he was right, Maury still has a ways to go in terms of care and in terms of shifting that paradigm, but so does this country. That much is still clear.

Note: Since this first trip, I’ve gone back two more times and am in the midst of planning another trip in January, despite COVID restrictions. The situation has not improved, despite a brief flurry of rescue adoptions at the onset of the pandemic. Now the shelters and dog pounds are filling again and the desperation level only rises.

I am posting the stories of our trips in the hope that they will motivate more people to help, to spread the word, and to consider donating what they can in terms of time or resources to help the dogs that have been forgotten. You can find more information on all of the shelters, pounds, and rescues that we’ve visited and how to help them directly on our website, Who Will Let the Dogs Out.

Together, we can let the dogs out.

IF you’d like more information about Who Will Let the Dogs Out visit our webpage, Facebook, or Instagram.

If you’d like more information about my books and blogs, visit CaraWrites.com.

Ian has snapped hundreds of pictures out the window but has not deemed any of them ‘post-worthy’. Hopefully, he’ll lower his standards soon so I can post to our Facebook and Instagram feeds so the people supporting this trip can see what we’re seeing — mountains, kudzu vines swallowing entire forests along the highway, plenty of trucks, plenty more American flags, and since we entered Tennessee, gobs of horse-trailers. The roadside signs are fairly entertaining — equally biblical messages and adult entertainment stores. The fog comes and goes. Today we’ve alternated between Ian’s 70’s Pandora station and podcasts of The Moth.

Two more hours of driving and then finally — dogs! We’ve come to tell their stories and to share their pictures in the hopes of raising awareness about the conditions in too many places in the south. It’s our first official trip for Who Will Let the Dogs Out, our fledling non-profit intiative as part of the rescue, Operation Paws for Homes.

This will be my second visit to Maury County Shelter, and I’m really (really) hoping things are better this time. They have a new director, so it will be interesting to see what has changed. Maury is a large, open-intake shelter in Columbia, Tennessee with a large building, a good-size budget (relatively speaking), a big staff, and from what I remember, strong volunteer support.

The last time I was here the biggest problem was the length of time (a month or longer) that dogs were kept in ‘stray hold’ — unevaluated, unstimulated, isolated, which caused undo stress. Shelter life can sometimes be harder on a dog than life as a stray. They get meals, but without companionship, toys, exercise, or engagement combined with the noise and tiny space, it can break down dogs quickly.

The other issue I remember at Maury was that the dogs were given no bedding and no toys because it made clean up too difficult and clogged their drainage system. The dogs each had a tiny, hard plastic shelf in their kennels and nothing else.

It seemed like solitary confinement, punishment for some unknown and uncarried-out crime. I remember the sad, sad eyes and how some dogs flung themselves at the kennel doors as we passed and others huddled in the back corner of their tiny space.

Here are a few of the faces of Maury County the last time I visited. Hopefully, things will look different on this next visit.

Since this first trip, I’ve gone back two more times and am in the midst of planning another trip in January, despite COVID restrictions. The situation has not improved, despite a brief flurry of rescue adoptions at the onset of the pandemic. Now the shelters and dog pounds are filling again and the desperation level only rises.

I am posting the stories of our trips in the hope that they will motivate more people to help, to spread the word, and to consider donating what they can in terms of time or resources to help the dogs that have been forgotten. You can find more information on all of the shelters, pounds, and rescues that we’ve visited and how to help them directly on our website, Who Will Let the Dogs Out.

Together, we can let the dogs out.

IF you’d like more information about Who Will Let the Dogs Out visit our website, Facebook, or Instagram.

If you’d like more information about my books and blogs, visit CaraWrites.com.

Some lucky dogs are in progressive shelters who have staff, resources, and community support that allows them to place all of their adoptable dogs through local adoptions and outside rescues.

Some not-so-lucky dogs are in open intake, high-kill shelters that routinely euthanize for space. Many of the people who work in these shelters try desperately to save every dog they can but our understaffed, under-funded, under-supported, and overwhelmed.

And then there are the dogs left behind at tiny municipal pounds in rural communities on back roads people rarely travel.

These dogs live in sparse conditions with few resources and no extras. They are held in chain-link kennels until their owners come for them or when they don’t (as is more often the case), they are killed at the local veterinary office or shot by a dog-catcher’s gun. Their pictures are not on a shelter website or petfinder. Rarely is there anyone working to address their physical, emotional or behavioral needs, let alone search for an adopter. Their only chance beyond being claimed by their owners is for a rescue worker to drive down one of those long, lonely roads and ‘pull’ them, transporting them to rescues sometimes states away.

We started the nonprofit initiative, Who Will Let the Dogs Out, to document the faces and stories of the forgotten dogs waiting to be let out. It’s grown into more than that, but from the start, it has always been about these deserving dogs whose only fault lies in being born in a desperate area that does not value dogs.

Our first Who Will Let the Dogs Out trip south happened because of my then-high school age son, Ian. He insisted. He was a budding photographer, and he wanted to document the faces of the dogs to raise awareness. I’d told him about what I’d seen in the south while touring to support my book, Another Good Dog: One Family and Fifty Foster Dogs. He wanted to see it for himself and figure out how we could help.

We had no real qualifications beyond being people with wide open hearts who believe that the problem has never been that people don’t care — but that people don’t know.

By traveling to the shelters, we hoped to shine a light on the forgotten dogs and inspire change.

Since that first trip, I’ve gone back two more times and am in the midst of planning another trip in January, despite COVID restrictions. The situation has not improved, despite a brief flurry of rescue adoptions at the onset of the pandemic. Now the shelters and dog pounds are filling again, and the desperation level only rises.

I am posting the stories and pictures from our trips in the hope that they will motivate more people to help, to spread the word, and to consider donating what they can in terms of time or resources to help the dogs that have been forgotten. You can find more information on all of the shelters, pounds, and rescues that we’ve visited and how to help them directly on our website, Who Will Let the Dogs Out.

Together, we can let the dogs out.

For more information on Who Will Let the Dogs Out, an initiative of Operation Paws for Homes, visit our website or find us on Facebook or Instagram.

For more information on my writing, blogs, and books, visit CaraWrites.com

#togetherwerescue

Rhonda is a smart, efficient, sensible woman who created BMAR so she could save animals her way — which we would learn is not only dog-centered but creates excellent, adoptable pets who probably don’t know they are living in a shelter.

Around these parts, they know Rhonda as the ‘Dane Lady.’ Not only does she love the monstrous dogs, she knows how to manage and train them. Danes find their way to Rhonda from all the surrounding county shelters and she places them via Petfinder when they are ready to be adopted.

Rhonda has about ten to twelve dogs at a time, knowing that’s how many she can manage well. Each dog stays an average of two to three months as Rhonda works with it to prepare it to be successful once adopted.

“There’s a fine line between rescuing and hoarding,” she tells us. She says the way she keeps herself from crossing is by making sure every step she takes is an improvement — like only taking as many dogs as she can handle.

The dogs rotate between living in her home and living in her kennel. The kennel has five huge runs that can each hold several dogs. The kennels sit on a paved pad under a shelter in a shady spot in her yard. An enormous swamp fan blows on them to keep them cool in the Alabama heat, and each run has raised beds and plenty of toys.

Beside the kennels is a small air-conditioned shed. Each dog has its own crate inside the shed where it sleeps each night, just like it would in a real home. “I want them to learn how to be family pets, or if they already were pets, I don’t want them to lose any manners they already have,” she explains.

There were a handful of Danes and Dane mixes, but also a sweet hound dog Rhonda had recently taken in who was heartworm positive. She was trying to raise funds for his treatment.

There was also a friendly brown dog with faint brindle markings (named Brownie of course) who had been there two years. Rhonda can’t understand why no one adopts Brownie as he was a true lovebug who wiggled when you petted him.

Rhonda shared all the dogs’ stories, which like so many we have heard, were heart-breaking. We met Sandy, a dog she does not plan to adopt out. Instead, she plans to spoil her all of her remaining days since she spent her first eight years chained to a front porch. She has no front teeth because they were ground down to nothing from a lifetime of eating off the ground with no bowl.

Dogs land at Brindlee via owner surrenders or shelters that seek her out for her expertise and her care of the Danes, and also by community members who contact her about an abandoned dog or stray in need of help. Each year she helps around 600 dogs find loving homes. This year she’s had two surgeries so her numbers are fewer, but her energy and dedication have not abated and I imagine she will be saving dogs and advocating for them for years to come.

After we toured the kennels and met some of the dogs, Rhonda invited me inside her home to see the dogs living there and to grab water bottles since all three of us were melting in the unforgiving heat. Her home is a neat, organized house trailer with a large covered carport. I paused to flirt with the two shepherd puppies in a puppy pen on the carport.

Rhonda and her husband didn’t always live in a house trailer, once upon a time they had a house with a mortgage and two cars, but they sold that so they could buy the property in Joppa and rescue dogs.

We asked how we could help and Rhonda said she needed some nice pictures of a few of her dogs. Nancy set up a little studio under the tree beside Rhonda’s house and we got work. I held the lights and wrangled the dogs (a job that is not easy to do with only two hands, particularly when the dog is bigger than you are). Rhonda was hoping to get some pictures of her dogs for the local Subaru dealer’s ad campaign that will feature dogs (and maybe support what she does).

I’ve never been so close to so many Great Danes. They are enormous, yet so gentle and their personalities were sweet and goofy and affectionate. Right now I can’t imagine life with such a large dog, but someday I might. I promised Rhonda that if I ever did, I would come to her for my Dane. Anyone looking to rescue a Dane should certainly look her up. All of the Danes we met and handled were not just beautiful but had perfect manners. Some of that may be the breed, but a lot of it is from life with Rhonda at Brindlee Mountain Rescue.

After we left, I thought about the life Rhonda has built for herself, surrounded by dogs in a quiet, shady spot in Alabama. I wondered if it was a life I might have someday. I’m sure it is not an easy life, but I also can’t imagine living out my days on a beach chair. I think I’d much rather spend them with dogs. They are good for the soul. Rhonda confessed that she doesn’t think this problem of too many unwanted and mistreated dogs will be solved in her lifetime. I don’t want to believe that.

In a message, someone mentioned that what I’m seeing is hard to see. Maybe sometimes it is, but the problem is that not enough people are seeing it. Yes, it can be hard, but then I meet people like Rhonda, and I realize that they need us, and more than that, they inspire us. We can do better. We can save these dogs, and we can solve this problem.

It is people like Rhonda, with a heart as big as the dogs she rescues, who are leading the way, but this will take all of us. As I travel mile after mile, I see solutions everywhere, but first we must acknowledge the problem.

It is time to let ALL the dogs out. #TogetherWeRescue #100dogsandcounting

Read more about Brindlee Mountain and other shelters and learn what you can do to help let the dogs out in Cara’s new book, 100 Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books July 2020)

We were traveling from our home in Pennsylvania to Tennessee and Alabama to raise awareness about the situation in southern shelters and rescues. Volunteering and fostering for a rescue wasn’t enough, the endless stream of dogs coming from the south compelled us to do something more — we were convinced that the problem wasn’t that people didn’t care, it was that they didn’t know.

We would tell them. So we begged friends and family for donations of dog food and medicines, rented a Jeep, and set out for the south with no idea what we were doing, just great passion to do it.

I’d heard about SHARK (Safe Haven Animal Rescue Kennel) from a Humane Society representative who told me she could only speak to me off-the-record (which made me kind of chuckle — the fact that she assumed we were legitimate journalists and not just rescue-crazed idealists with a pen and a camera). I asked her about the situation in Alabama (bad) and whether she knew of shelters further south since we’d found three to visit in the north and middle of the state. Her immediate response was, “You have to go see SHARK. You won’t believe it.”

She was right.

As we drove south on Thursday afternoon, tired and overwhelmed by all we’d already seen in the more than ten visits we’d already made that week, I wondered if this eight-hour detour to Abbeville, Alabama was a mistake.

It wasn’t. In fact, it was quite possibly the most inspiring experience of the entire trip, which is saying something because we met some amazing people on this journey.

SHARK’s director is Dave Rice, a 76-year-old disabled veteran. He is trained and certified as an Animal Control Officer, but the county doesn’t give him a salary. He says it’s because he’s too old. He’s supposed to bill them $10 for each call, but he doesn’t bother. The county gives him a $1000 annual stipend and the city $1200 to pay for the dogs in his care. Currently, there are 78.

Even if you don’t make regular forays to the pet store for dog food, you can guess how far $2200 will go towards his annual grocery bill. Dave’s latest vet bill was $27,000 (and no that isn’t an extra zero).

“We always pay it,” he says. “We find a way. The people around here are good folks.”

Dave took over animal control when the county shut down the shelter and fired the former ACO. Dave had been a volunteer, but couldn’t let his “lambs” suffer, so he stepped up and helped form SHARK.

Dave calls his dogs, mostly bully mixes, his lambs — Lower Alabama Mixed Breeds. As we followed him through the kennels and met the dogs, I had to agree, they were lambs. Big lambs, but sweethearts, every single one.

The first kennel we visited was the original pound, located at the landfill (a common and convenient location for many dog pounds, we’ve discovered). It was a set of 10 chainlink kennels on a concrete slab with a roof and shades partially covering the sides.

These are the special needs dogs, Dave explained. He takes care of them himself. They either have a health issue that needs tending too, or they are waiting for a space to open up in the main kennel. SHARK outgrew that space instantly and now keeps dogs in four locations, but Dave recently sold his business (restoring classic cars) and donated the land so that SHARK can build one facility for all the dogs.

The county allowed SHARK to build the main kennel on a spot at the landfill between the old dumping ground that has been covered and ventilated and the area where trash is currently being dumped. SHARK built the wooden pavilion-like structure that covers about twenty large indoor/outdoor kennels. It’s surrounded by a large fenced-in area that allows the dogs a place to run and play while their kennels are being cleaned. A committed group of (mostly) retired residents volunteer daily to care for the dogs at the main kennel, getting all of them out for walks twice a day.

As we approached the kennel, the dog chorus began, the lambs clearly thrilled to see Dave. After he’d introduced us to all of them, the most remarkable thing happened, something that hadn’t happened in any of our other shelter visits. The dogs grew quiet, waiting and watching Dave as if hanging on his every word. They were happy and healthy and certainly loved, but as Dave explained their only way out of the landfill is through rescue. A local adoption is rare. All of the dogs were picked up as strays and seldom does anyone come looking for their missing dog.

SHARK makes sure every dog that leaves is spay/neutered, vaccinated and healthy. Dave, like all the other shelter directors we’d met, keeps a vast list of rescues and works the phones trying to find placements. He drives dogs as far as Maine or Minnesota to deliver them to safety.

In previous years, SHARK has taken in about six to seven hundred dogs. This year, Dave tells me, they just took in their 1107th dog.

So many people in this country believe that we are winning this battle of homeless dogs, that the numbers are going down and we are killing fewer shelter animals, but once again I’m reminded that we are not. If not for Dave and SHARK, all of these animals would have found their way to the landfill, and not to be lovingly cared for by devoted volunteers until they can be safely transported to new homes.

In Alabama, the law dictates that each county ‘provide a suitable county pound and impounding officer for the impoundment of dogs, cats, and ferrets found running at large.’

I’m not sure how the ferrets made the cut (and I have yet to see a ferret at a pound in Alabama), but I talked to one official in Alabama who told me that at least one-third of the counties are not in compliance with this law. They simply don’t have the money to provide a pound or the current leadership doesn’t choose to allocate funds for it.

The law does allow for counties without a pound to ‘contribute their pro-rata share to the staffing and upkeep of the county pound.’ Henry County, where SHARK is located, is 568 square miles, but I imagine some of their animals come from surrounding counties that also have no pound, and no dedicated group like SHARK to shepherd their lambs.

Dave has a New England accent and hails from a town near Cape Cod. I asked him how he ended up in Alabama and he told us that he and his wife tried to retire to Florida, but once there realized it wasn’t the life for them. They decided to move further north and ‘threw a dart at the map’ and it landed on a little town in Tennessee. On their way there, they encountered some bad weather as they were passing through Henry County, so they stopped for the night. They’ve been here ever since.

I asked Dave what the average stay is for one of his lambs and he said, “Oh, not that long, about four and a half months.”

Before we left, we unloaded a bunch of donations since SHARK relies on donations for everything. I asked Dave what I asked every director, “How do we fix this? How can we help?”

He said he is always hopeful that a new board of directors in their county will decide to fix this, but mostly what SHARK needs and the lambs need is more awareness and more exposure so that people realize they are here, deep in the dump of Henry County.

For a man who quite definitely sees the worst of the worst, Dave is upbeat and positive and so, so inspiring. If you’d like to help, you can send a donation to SHARK viapaypal (paypal.me/SHARK37) or mail it to P.O. Box 126, Abbeville, AL 36310.

If you’d like to keep up with Dave and SHARK, be sure to like them on Facebook and join their Facebook group for friends of SHARK.

But if you’d really like to help Dave and the lambs, please share his story, tell someone. It’s a long way to the bottom of Alabama; we battled a bug storm (truly) to get there, so I can see why they might feel forgotten down here. But we can’t forget. They need our help. This battle to end the suffering and killing of adoptable dogs is far, far from over.

I keep saying it and I won’t stop saying it — this is fixable, but people need to know. Awareness is the first step towards change. It’s not that people don’t care; it’s that they don’t know. We have to tell them.

Please spread the word and if you haven’t already, subscribe to our blog (WhoWillLetTheDogsOut.org) so you can follow the stories and help work for change. You can also follow, comment, and share on Facebookand Instagram.

#BeTheChange

Until every cage is empty,

Cara

Tabi is a friendly, cheerful soul, despite the situation she faces every day regarding the fifty-nine dogs in her care. She greeted us and invited us to follow her to the city pound, just a few blocks away. It was under the water tower, next to a few unmarked run-down pole buildings, but out of sight of the highway (so as not to be an eyesore for the people who have abandoned these dogs).

Six kennels sat on a concrete slab under a small corrugated roof. Five were filled (one must be kept empty at all times in case a police officer needs a place to put a dog). Each had an igloo dog house or a hollowed out plastic barrel for shelter.

“They’re out here? All the time? Even in storms? Even in the winter?” I asked.

Tabi nodded and explained that these kennels were much better than the old kennels, which she pointed to across the road. Literally under the water tower, was a small clutch of falling apart kennels, with rusting chainlink and barbed wire, that looked more appropriate for rabbits than dogs.

“How long have these dogs been here?”

Tabi rattled off the stats on each dog, several had been living in these kennels for more than a year.

I asked who took care of them. She does. I asked if any volunteers came to walk them, play with them? No. Just Tabi. Every day cleaning their kennels and feeding them food she buys herself. She said she can’t feed them the crap the city was buying-food from the dollar store.

“How did it come to be like this?”

Tabi started at the police department twelve years ago. Back then the officers put the dogs in the pound (the original falling apart one under the water tower), held them three to five days, and when no one came for them (because no one ever did), had them destroyed. (I really can’t use the term euthanize when it comes to perfectly adoptable dogs being killed for no reason other than convenience and cost.)

When she learned this, Tabi said, “I got pissed. So I took them home.”

Only Tabi couldn’t keep all the dogs that kept coming. She found another resident who would allow her to use a piece of property, along the highway just outside of town. She moved the growing number of dogs there in makeshift kennels or staked out on lines. This worked for a while, but then the public began complaining. It was an eyesore. The mayor told her she’d have to move her dogs (who were really Greenfield’s dogs). She told him she would but she had nowhere to put them, so he gave her a small spot about a mile from town, down a narrow road, out of sight.

That’s where we would follow Tabi next to meet the rest of the dogs, and the family that cares for all of them on a daily basis. Amber and her husband Brandon and their four kids clean out the kennels, feed the dogs, take care of their medical needs, drive them to the vet, do whatever is necessary, and recieve not one penny for this work. They do it because they love dogs and because rescuing them is in their blood. Without them, Tabi couldn’t do what she does.

I asked Tabi how she decides which dogs live in town and she told me the five in town were the ones who kept escaping out of the kennels on the other site.

“So the city pound is really the high-security dog prison?”

She laughed. “Yeah, pretty much.”

At Tabi’s rescue, there were fifty-four more dogs in outdoor kennels a bit larger and more protected than the ones in town. Each dog had a raised kurunda type bed and an igloo or a plastic barrel for shelter. A few had toys, mostly Kongs. They greeted us, jumping and barking, but then settling back down and waiting for Tabi.

Seeing the kennels and all of the dogs, made me grapple with how fragile this situation was. There was no money to pay Amber and her family for the work they did. I didn’t want to be rude and ask how they could afford to do this, as they didn’t strike me as the independently, wealthy type (but I sure hope they are independently wealthy). But what if they weren’t there to do it? What if health or life or some unexpected challenge got in the way? What would become of these dogs. Tabi was only one person — and an older person not in tip-top physical shape who had a full-time job away from the kennels — she could not run this show on her own determination and the occasional donations.

It was clear that they loved every dog and knew it well. The kids clamored in and out of the kennels, playing with the dogs, helping when asked. Amber applied flea/tick preventative to a big coonhound and a small black happy pittie pup. All of the dogs looked healthy, and considering their situation, happy. There was no board, no wealthy benefactors, although Tabi did tell me she has one lady who sends her $150 a month which she uses to buy dog food. I’d guess that $150 would only feed this number of dogs for a week, tops.

I asked her why she didn’t ask the city or county for money to support these dogs, which were technically their responsibility and she said, “I’m afraid if I did, they’d just go back to killing them.”

Like so many people I have met in rescue and in shelters, she’s afraid to make waves. They are afraid their demands will be met with not just resistance, but interference.

If the county or city took over, put up a building, set up guidelines, they might tell Tabi that she has to euthanize sweet Maxine, the longest resident who is gray all over now, but has a sweet smile and a happy attitude. Her only crime being an elderly large dog in a county that doesn’t care.

During one of their encounters, the mayor did tell Tabi to write a business plan. “I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t have time to do it either-I’m too busy trying to save dogs.” And keeping the records for the police department. And scrambling to find enough money each month. And driving dogs to meet rescues. And loving on 59 dogs. And answering calls about stray dogs or dogs living in dangerous conditions or dogs people want to dump. There are no Animal Control Officers in Greenfield. There is just Tabi. Who could never do what she does without Amber and her family who show up every day because they choose to and not because they have to or because they are receiving a pay check.

Some of the dogs have been living out here for two years or more, most at least several months. The rescue does what they can to find adopters or rescues for the dogs, but finding time to take pictures or write up clever information about the dogs is not easy. I asked if anyone ever came to adopt them and Amber laughed and said, “We get someone out here maybe every couple months.” The rest of the dogs are moved out through rescues, mostly out-of-state.

That’s where Laura comes in. Laura was our host during our trip. She lives in Columbia (two and a half hours east). She works full time, but spends the rest of her time moving dogs for Tabi and other rescues and shelters in the area. She has a vast network of rescues all over the country and her own transport van, plus a garage stacked with crates. While we were staying with her, we witnessed her preparing a transport of dogs to leave for Illinois on our last morning at 5am. One had already arrived at the house, but the rest would begin arriving that night and fill her finished basement.

We left Tabi and Amber with a few donations of treats, dewormers, toys, and flea/tick preventatives. Despite their meager budget, Amber does manage to give the dogs heartworm preventatives every month. Most of the dogs are not neutered or spayed. There is no vet in Greenfield and the ones that they find beyond are not willing to give any discount to the rescue, so they travel forty minutes to Paris to a vet who works with them there.

As I took this all in, I thought of the Williamson Shelter, where we’d been yesterday with their well-stocked inhouse veterinary suite, on-staff vet (and two techs), their army of volunteers. Williamson is over two hours from Tabi and Amber, but would make a great big-sister shelter. I wondered how they could help. Share some of their wealth? Take dogs on a regular transport?

The other thing I wondered as I drove away was, What if something happens to Tabi or Amber? What then?

How can there be a place in this country- a place with an adorable downtown with a wide street and slanted parking and a train track running right down main street, with cute cafes and stores, a city hall with a flag flying out front, and its own police department, that doesn’t spend a penny to take care of its lost dogs? But instead, depends on a single woman with limited income to care for all the unwanted animals in their town, to pick up the strays, respond to calls for help, and deal with abuse or neglect? How can this town do nothing to help or change the situation? Is it because they don’t care or because they don’t know?

Back at Laura’s, I looked through the pictures that Ian took. I just loved a big black and white dog named Meathead. He had a bulldog’s face and a goofy smile. How long will he linger alone on his cement floor? He is well loved by Amber and Tabi and Brandon and the kids, but their love has to stretch fifty-nine dogs thin.

What about the young, blond pitbull that just arrived? I scratched his chin and laughed later as we watched him soaking in his own personal baby pool, cooling off from the ninety-degree heat. He was six months old. Will he still be here in a year, like Claude and Maude, siblings who also arrived with Tabi at six months of age?

Today we are headed west again. This time we will travel with Trisha and see the situation through her eyes. I wish that Tabi’s situation was rare, but I’m pretty sure in this part of our country, her dogs are the lucky ones.

Thanks for reading. More tomorrow.

Cara

Originally published at http://whowillletthedogsout.org on June 27, 2019.