It takes a community

This past week, we’ve been reminded again and again that the power of human solidarity is what makes it possible for us to help dogs in need.

First up, Caroline.  This beautiful young dog has been at Clay Co. Animal Services for a while, and when she developed skin allergies, a volunteer started fostering her.  The foster wanted to make sure that she would be adopted to a home that would continue to treat her health problems, so she looked for a private rescue that would be able to vet adoption applications carefully.  Another Clay volunteer put her in touch with us, and when we explained that we were both full and broke, she made an offer we couldn’t refuse: she would cover vet costs and foster until adoption.  We get dozens of requests to help nice dogs every month – sometimes it seems like dozens every week.  This time, one persons’ absolute commitment to a dog – and the shelter volunteer’s ability to put her in touch with us – made the difference. 

Speaking of absolute commitment, no one embodies it like Beth Reeb.  She has fostered for us before and is 100% solid, so when she talks, we listen.  Beth met Belle at Putnam Co. Animal Services (like Clay, a rural shelter with few resources and few adopters) and fell in love.  We told Beth that we are broke and full, and she asked what it would take to save Belle.  What it took was donations, a commitment to foster, and collaboration with a rescue group in Putnam Co., Their Lives, Our Voices, who can help with local vetting and adoption events.  Beth put it together and got Belle the next day.  Again, it takes a combination of a committed and generous individual (or two) and collaboration between organizations.

Dogs like Caroline and Belle – at high-kill rural shelters – don’t often have happy endings, even when they are as beautiful, young, friendly, and well-behaved as these two.  Another dog we’ve just been able to help had even lower odds.   Arabelle is one of the first dogs released from the second largest dog fighting raid in U.S. history, in which hundreds of dogs were confiscated in several southern states. We are honored to be collaborating with the ASPCA in this incredible case. She is older and has some minor health issues but she is a happy dog and we are delighted to be able to offer her comfort and love for as long as we have her.  Again, networking – in this case with a national animal welfare organization – and a committed foster made the difference.

Then there's Goose.  This little guy -- who probably should be a big guy -- came to our attention because of those same incredible Clay volunteers who never, never give up on the dogs they love. Because we love to work with Clay volunteers and because our Clay dogs have been amazing, we decided to meet him, with the thought that maybe in a few weeks, when we had room, we could take him into our program.  We knew he was heartworm positive, which meant that he would not need to worry about adoption for a couple of months.  So our most intrepid volunteer headed to the Animal Expo at Clay to meet him  today, only to find that he had been taken to No More Homeless Pets in Jacksonville because he had started coughing blood.  When she got there, she was told that he had been taken to a vet office for further tests.  (That's why we call him Goose -- because it took a wild goose chase to track him down!)  It turns out that he is suffering not only from heartworm but also pneumonia.  In addition, he is 10-15 lbs. underweight, his teeth appear to have been filed down, and he has some other dental problems as well.  However, in true pit bull fashion, he just wants to climb into your lap.  And of course, he's coming home with Lacey and will be getting round-the-clock vet care.  We're not sure how it will go, but if we have anything to say about it, he'll make it.

Last up (for this week) is a little brown dog without a name.  We received an email from a woman who was worried about her neighbor’s dog, who was emaciated, nursing puppies, and confined to a small, dirty pen.  We were in contact with her and working on communicating with Animal Services to see what could be done when the neighbor told us the adult dog was gone.  Within hours, we saw a post on Gainesville Pet Finder about an emaciated brown pit bull who had been found by a very kind and generous woman.  The finder took the dog to the vet and then posted her picture to see if someone was looking for her.  We put two and two together – or rather, put the neighbor and the finder together, and it turned out to be the same dog.  The dog is safe now and we are consulting with Animal Services to find how to keep the dog (and her pups, if possible) safe permanently.

Northward Bound

A couple of the dog books I’ve read lately have addressed the transport of shelter dogs (mostly puppies) from mostly rural shelters in the south to private shelters in the northeast.  Both the authors are journalists living in the New York area who adopted puppies relocated from the south.  One, Kim Kavin’s Little Boy Blue, is focused entirely on the story of how her dog Blue got from North Carolina to New Jersey.

The other, John Homans’s What’s a Dog For?, discusses the background of his dog Stella (from Tennessee) as one piece of a larger discussion on contemporary humans’ relationships with dogs.  In their discussions of the transport movement, both authors raise some important and difficult issues about dog rescue, breed identity, and more.

 Homans calls the transport movement “The Great Migration.” a catchy but inaccurate term.  The movement of dogs from south to north (or as Homans puts it, from red states to blue states) is not really migration as much as a redistribution of resources.  Some authors use the term “underground railroad,” again catchy but inaccurate, since the transport network is not illegal, as was the movement of slaves from south to north.  Nor is moving dogs around an act of civil disobedience, although it can certainly be seen, at least from some perspectives, as an act of protest against shelter conditions, the methods used to kill dogs in some counties, and the scale on which the killing occurs.

Both books (published in fall 2012) sold well and were generally well reviewed, and Little Boy Blue has won several awards.  I found both smart, interesting, and ultimately unsatisfactory.  Part of my dissatisfaction came from the fact that neither author dug deeply enough, or thought hard enough, about the larger questions raised by their own dogs’ histories and the larger transport movement.  The biggest issue, perhaps, is raised by a Pennsylvania activist quoted by Kavin.  After pointing out that over 70,000 dogs entered Pennsylvania shelters in 2009 alone, she asks “Why the hell are these rescue groups bringing more into the state?”  In other words, is it ethical to transport puppies hundreds of miles to places where thousands of other adoptable dogs are already waiting for homes?

Behind this big question lurk a host of more specific issues, including the fact that transport spreads disease and the fact that the whole movement is largely unregulated, decentralized, and thus ripe for abuse.  All of these issues deserve attention (and to her credit, Kavin does address the last issue in some detail).  I want to focus here on two questions: one about geography and another about breed.

Regarding geography, both Homans and Kavin take for granted that there is a clear-cut and dramatic clash between northern and southern culture regarding the treatment of dogs, as most other issues.  As Homans puts it, “Most fundamentally the dog market is an ongoing transaction between the red states and the blue states, and it’s based on the same basic differences in core values that make our presidential elections so dramatic.  The flow of dogs, in general, is from south to north, and from flyover country to the coasts.”  Homans’s New York-centric view of the world, including a casual contempt for people who live anywhere but the coasts, is hard to stomach.  Both he and Kavin find southerners to be a foreign species, radically different from those in the civilized north in every respect, including their attitudes toward dogs. As Homans summarizes, “In many places in the south and west, a dog’s life just isn’t worth as much as it is on the coasts.”

Homans’s view of the south (based on his visit to Tennessee to see the shelter where his dog Stella came from) is a combination of Mayberry and Southern Gothic.  Most importantly, he believes all southerners live on small farms, which is the root of southern attitudes toward dogs: “The dog belongs on the farmyard, and the farm belongs to the farmer, and that’s the way it’s always been.”  Homans apparently does not know that a large and growing proportion of southerners live in cities.

 

Homans’s perceptions of the South, which Kavin echoes (albeit with less disdain), only harms dogs by making it harder to build bridges, to educate people, and even to identify the real problems.  Animals are abused and neglected in every part of the country, including New York  and Boston as well as Tennessee, California as well as the Carolinas.  The world does not (thank goodness) divide neatly into callous farmers and responsible Manhattanites.  There are callous New Yorkers and dog-loving farmers – and the vast majority of Americans are neither farmers nor New Yorkers. Most important, the large majority love dogs and want to do right by them.

Homans's unquestioning embrace of stock images of southerners is a result of a larger sloppiness about sources, data, and the generalizations to be drawn from them. This is evident as well in his attitude about breed.  He and Kavin both accept without question the (apparently) common wisdom that first, the vast majority of available dogs in northeastern shelters are pit bulls – or as Homans puts it, in New York, “mutts that aren’t part pit bull are from red states.”  Second, both Homans and Kavin assume that these “pit bulls” are not going to be adopted by ordinary people looking for family pets – including themselves.

Here is Homans’s discussion (or dismissal) of the New York Animal Care and Control website of adoptable dogs (or, as he puts it “the condemned animals”): they “are mostly alert, young, healthy-looking pit bulls (at least they look healthy in the pictures), either strays or dogs surrendered by their owners.  Most of them peer at the camera with the pit’s distinctive look of confident inquisitiveness – adorable.  The pictures were, of course, hard to look at, one reason I didn’t look at them."

Homans never explains why his family did not bother even to visit NYACC but instead chose a puppy imported from Tennessee. His Stella arrives as a young pupy and grows into a large, short-haired, high-energy adult.  Charming as Stella appears, nowhere is it clear how she differs radically from the New York-born “condemned animals” he could not bear to view, let alone visit or consider adopting.

(On a side note, the notion that Stella is mostly Labrador Retriever is oddly important to him, although he never mentions having had her DNA tested.  He spends a whole chapter on the breed origins of Labradors, even though his faith that Stella is a Labrador appears based only on visual identification – and in terms of behavior, he points out that she does not, in fact, like to retrieve.)

Kavin offers a slightly longer, though no more satisfying, discussion of breed.  Pit bulls, she says, “are so difficult to place with families because of stereotypes about the breed.”  (This comment comes up in her discussion of the Northeast Animal Shelter in Boston, which she describes as a “utopia,” other than the fact that they refuse to accept dogs they label as “pit bulls.”)   Pit bulls, she points out, are often wonderful dogs, victims of unfair stereotypes.  Surely this plight is not too different from the earlier plight of mutts and shelter dogs, as she describes it:  “Shelter dogs have been unfairly maligned for years as less valuable or less worthy than purebreds, when in fact they are often wonderful dogs like Blue who have simply found themselves in a tragic situation."

The image – and thus the life prospects – of shelter dogs has changed dramatically in recent years.  Many dog lovers in the northeast and elsewhere, including affluent professionals like Homans and Kavin, head first to the shelter or a private rescue for their pets.  This preference for rescued, usually mixed-breed dogs, is not an accident.  It is the result of concerted efforts by animal advocates to change perceptions about shelter dogs and also about the "purebred" dog industry.  Most Americans no longer see mixed-breed dogs or shelter dogs as inferior or damaged, and a large percentage of Americans – not just on east and west coasts – head directly to rescue groups or shelters when they are ready to add a dog to their family.  (And they are also increasingly willing to adopt adult and even senior dogs, another change from a couple of generations ago.)

Given the successful transformation of attitudes about shelter dogs, the next obvious step would be to take on the destructive stereotype about pit bulls.  Many groups have done this directly, and there are countless excellent models for successful campaigns, by nationally known groups such as Animal Farm Foundation, Stubby Dog, and BAD RAP.  And perhaps even more effectively, in many places – including southern towns like Gainesville – pit bulls are increasingly seen as ordinary dogs.  This shift has happened without much deliberate effort, simply because there are so many of these dogs that almost everyone knows one (or many) and the frightening stereotypes do not survive the reality.

Why, then, do Kavin and Homans take for granted the notion that “most people” will not even consider adopting a dog labeled a pit bull?  I asked Kavin about this directly in an email, quoting the Pennsylvania activist in her book who criticized the transport network.  In response to my question, Kavin wrote:  “She [the Pennsylvania advocate] believes that if only rescues would stop bringing cute beagles, terriers, and Labradors from the shelters in the South, that more people would adopt the pit bulls in the shelters in the North. I just don’t believe that’s true. I don’t think that people want 'any' shelter dog. I think that people want the kind of dog that they want, and that if they can get it from a shelter, fine. If not, then they’ll go to a breeder.  Do I think that’s fair to pit bulls? Of course not.  But I do think that it’s the present reality.”

Even if it is true that “people” just don’t want pit bulls, the moral response to injustice is not simply to throw up one’s hands in resignation.  (Imagine if advocates from other movements, ranging from women’s suffrage to civil rights, had been this sanguine about their "present reality.")  However, I don’t believe it’s true that people “want the kind of dog they want.”  Or rather, the kind of dog they want can change, when they have accurate information, positive experiences with both dogs and rescue organizations, and plenty of support before, during, and after their adoption. Kavin gives in way too quickly – fortunately for the dogs, many other people don’t.

So what's a dog lover to do?  Our shelter behavior group recently discussed this issue, and we all agreed that, first, it is never a bad thing for a dog (or any animal) to have a chance.  The transport movement has given a future to thousands of dogs who would otherwise have died before their lives had even begun.  And many of us in the group had in fact "transported" ourselves -- helping dogs from Gainesville get to rescue groups elsewhere, for example, or pulling dogs from rural shelters in surrounding counties, where the euthanasia rates are much higher than in Alachua County.  These transports, however, area almost always of adult dogs who are already on euthanasia lists, due either to overcrowding or to health conditions such as heartworm or demodex.

All of us had trouble embracing the transport movement in any unambivalent way.  While we talked about a number of problems (including the spread of disease), in the end what bothered us most about the transport movement was the fact that it creates a de facto caste system, with life or death as the result. Well-intentioned people dedicate truly enormous resources to save certain dogs without even a passing thought at other "condemned animals" much closer to home.

As Kavin points out, her little brindle puppy Blue was certainly not any less deserving than purebred dogs sold by breeders -- or even than other puppies fortunate enough to be born in the northeast ... and to be fortunate enough to look "the right way," to be "the kind of dogs people want." In the end, it's the willing acquiescence to injustice that makes both books so disturbing.

And on the other hand, it's the willingness to challenge injustice that makes many other dog advocates so inspiring.

Share the (foster) love

We love, love, love our foster families.  Without them, we couldn’t do anything.  A good foster is worth her or his weight in gold and most rescues will do everything possible to make fostering a good experience so it continues.  Like all volunteers, fosters do what they do for love.  They don’t get paid for their time or inconvenience, and many go above and beyond the minimum.

Most foster parents are amazing, generous, committed people who do everything they can to make things work well.  They know that the other folks working for rescue groups are also volunteers, with jobs, family commitments, and their own pets (and often foster pets as well).  They know, in short, that we're all in it together, and that we can only achieve our shared goal of helping animals if we all treat each other with respect, patience, and friendship. 

The majority of wonderful fosters more than make up for the occasional difficult experiences – which usually result not from bad intentions but from people committing before thinking it through completely.  To make things even better, here are a few tips that can help reduce the challenges.  Most rescue groups have gotten a call from a foster saying “come get my dog.  Now.”  Usually this is because the dog is more difficult than the foster anticipated, and they don’t have the patience to wait for things to get better. 

When you get a dog straight from the shelter, you need to be prepared for surprises and for a transition period that can last several weeks (or more).  Your foster dog may never have lived in a home before.  She or he may never have had kind treatment from humans, may have been on a chain or in a pen and unable to socialize normally with other animals, may have been hungry or abused, or may just be very confused and scared.  Please do not offer to foster if you are not able to cope with common issues and problems with patience and a sense of humor.

Most problems can be resolved if you are consistent and patient. However, if you are going to throw in the towel the first time your foster dog howls when left alone, growls at your own dog (or vice versa), or has an accident in the house, then please do not volunteer to foster!  We would love to have you volunteer in other ways that are less stressful for everyone concerned.

Perhaps the most common reason that fosters want to return their foster dog is issues with their own dogs.  We recommend giving it at least two weeks before you give up!  During this time, please keep the foster pet separated from your dog(s) and follow our instructions for carefully managed interactions.  We have had good success with slow introductions even for dogs who were reactive and growly at first.  It’s hard for your dogs to accept a stranger into their turf, and it’s scary for the new dog to try to fit in.  If you are not willing to follow instructions and stick it out for a couple of weeks, then please do not try fostering.  The same goes for other common issues, including house training, leash walking, jumping up, etc.  If you follow instructions and it still isn’t working out, we will find a new foster home – but it may not be immediate.  Please keep dogs separated during this time and we will do our best.  We cannot always work miracles, but we try.

Remember, there is no backup home.  If you really have tried everything and cannot keep your foster dog, we will do our best to find a new foster home but it may take time.  Please understand this before you commit to fostering.  (The exception is when we take a dog from a current foster to try in a new foster home.  We do this especially for fosters with cats.  We can arrange this, but otherwise we take dogs from the shelter’s euthanasia list directly to the foster home and there is no backup.)

Okay, now for the happy part.  First and foremost, we love you.  We want you to be happy and we want you to keep fostering.  Please let us know whenever you have questions or concerns, about health, behavior, or anything else.

To keep you and your foster dog happy, we try to supply everything you need, from food and crates to advice about training and behavior.  We often arrange for playdates or group walks if you’d like your foster dog to socialize with other dogs in a controlled environment.

And finally, a few requests (you knew this was coming).

First and foremost, talk to us!  We want to know if you need more food, if you are worried about that red patch on your foster dog's back, or if you are about to lose your mind because he won't stop harassing your cat.  We can't say it enough:  we are more than willing to do what it takes to make this work, but we need to know what's going on.  If you talk to us, we promise that we won't judge, we won't ignore you, and we won't take away your foster dog (if you don't want us to). 

All the other requests are really more specific versions of "talk to us."  For example, we need you to tell us about health concerns -- and we need you not to take your foster dog to the vet without first getting approval (unless it is a life threatening emergency and you cannot get in touch with us). We also need you not to take your dog to off-leash dog parks without checking first.  Dog parks can be great fun but they can also be dangerous.  We cannot afford vet care or a lawsuit if something goes wrong!  Some of our dogs are experienced and well-socialized and do great at the dog park, but not all are ready for it.  Talk to us!

And as a corollary to talking, please listen to and follow instructions.  Don't second guess us about exercise, food, medicine, or other issues -- the rules are there because of past experience, not an arbitrary desire to be bossy.  This means you may not be able to do everything with your foster dog that you do with your dog. For example, do not let your foster dog off-leash in any other setting besides a fully enclosed yard or dog park.  No exceptions, no matter how calm and well-behaved the dog is.  It’s not worth the risk of having your dog hit by a car, attacked by another dog, or lost.  For similar reasons, please don't start or stop medicines, change a training routine, or otherwise alter your dog's routine unless we have talked about it and agreed.  You live with your foster dog and know her/him well, and we are happy to learn from you -- but at the same time, we need you to be willing to learn from our experiences (and understand that we are the ones who have to pay the bill or deal with other unpleasant fallout when things don't go well).

As always, we will try to work with you to make the situation better.  Please be patient with us and with your foster dog.  Did we mention that we love you?

Crossposter Confusion

Recently someone posed a poignant question regarding “urgent dog” postings:  “If we can't help them, then maybe these posts should stop...it's just too upsetting.” 

We all sympathize with that feeling, but the general consensus was that it was still worth asking for help, since sometimes it works out and we can help a dog.  Our group page has, in fact, proved a fertile recruiting ground for foster homes for dogs in need.  This is a good thing, in many ways, but there are some problems that are hidden to some of the folks involved.  These issues arise mainly as a result of the immediacy of the medium (Facebook) and the emotion of the content (cute dog will die!).  This combination can lead to a lot of difficult and confusing situations, all due to good intentions.

If we agree that we want to continue using our group page (and other social networks) to seek foster homes, donations, and other help for individual dogs, I’d like to offer some guidelines to make the process as constructive, clear, and effective as possible.  (Please:  This is not a criticism of anyone or a complaint – please, no one take this personally.  However, as we grow, we need some explicit guidelines and information for everyone involved.)

Here are some rules for those who post dogs on the Plenty of Pit Bulls group page:

1.  Post only local dogs, not those that are too far away to be rescued or fostered locally. If you want to donate to rescue groups in New York or Miami, that’s great – but go to their pages to do it.

2.  Be selective: Please do not post every single dog at risk at a given shelter and please post only pit bull type dogs.  People can visit the general pages for each shelter if they want to see more.

3.  Post each dog only once.

4.  Post only dogs that have a rescue group interested, and please be clear about that in the post.  For example, I could say about Valentyn, the black dog pictured at the top: “Valentyn is a 10 month old unneutered male at Alachua County Animal Services.  He is heartworm positive and on the euthanasia list for Tuesday morning (Feb. 5).  Plenty of Pit Bulls will pull him if we have a committed foster home.”  This is more work than simply sharing the original post from the shelter’s page, but it will add to clarity.  If there is no rescue group interested in a dog you want to save, please contact them privately until you find someone who will pull with a foster commitment.  This may add to the work of crossposters and reduce the number of dogs posted on our page, but it will make life much easier and less frustrating for many others.  (And remember, there are lots of other pages where you can also post dogs in need.)

5.  Please follow-up on the dogs for whom you advocate.  If you beg a group to pull a particular dog and it turns out that the dog needs expensive medical treatment, transport, or a new foster home, step up to help with just as much dedication as you put into getting that dog out of the shelter in the first place.  Remember, “rescue doesn’t end with the pull.”  If groups are left stranded with expensive or difficult dogs, they will be understandably gun-shy and may end up not wanting to take in more.

Here are some rules for potential fosters:

1.  Do not offer to foster unless you are 100% certain that you will keep the dog until she or he is adopted, regardless of what happens.  This may mean sticking with a dog who chases your cat, pees on your carpet, or howls in his crate.  It is completely understandable i you are not willing to make that commitment, but do not ask a group to pull a dog without a solid commitment.  (If it is not working out, you should certainly talk to the rescue and ask for help finding a new foster, but understand that it may not happen quickly and be prepared to hang in there for as long as it takes.)  There is no backup.  If rescue groups only pulled dogs when they had a second backup home available, they would never pull any.

2.  If you are fostering for a particular group (or have offered to do so), please do not take in a foster dog for another group without checking with the first group.  Don’t make a commitment to foster for one group and then offer to foster a dog whose picture you just saw posted.  This is just a request for clear communication.  Even if you have not explicitly committed, if you are fostering for one group and want to switch to a different group after the current dog is adopted, tell everyone about it (and make sure you know which group is pulling which dog).  Since there is no pool of backup fosters, your spur-of-the-moment offer to take in one dog may well mean that another dog cannot be taken from the euthanasia list elsewhere.

3.  Make sure you know what is involved in fostering before you commit.  For example, you will need to be able to get your foster dog to vet appointments and adoption events, follow instructions about vet care, feeding, and training, and more.

4.  We know you’re a volunteer, but so are we.  We have jobs, families, and other commitments.  We do this for love, and it is only possible to keep doing it if everyone communicates clearly and respectfully and shares the necessary cost and work.

Looking back, looking ahead.

In 2012, Plenty of Pit Bulls helped more than three dozen dogs, mostly as a result of collaborations between that loose collection of volunteers called POPB and a variety of different organizations.  We worked with private rescue groups including the Alachua County Humane Society, Helping Hands Pet Rescue, Marion County Humane Society, Phoenix Animal Rescue, Pit Sisters, Puppy Hill Farm, and Second Chance Farms.  Our initial  -- and continuing -- goal was not to replace these organizations but rather to help them expand their resources so that they could save more dogs.  To this end, we contribute pull fees and veterinary costs as well as connecting rescues with foster homes, transporters, and other volunteers.

Opie went from a cruelty case straight to the arms of his loving foster mom.

We continue to have a close relationship with Alachua County Animal Services, where most of our dogs come from.  The dedication of the shelter staff, especially Dwinnie Slade and Susan Clontz, saves countless animals every month.  They go above and beyond the call of duty to get animals to safety.  We also rely on shelter staff for recommendations about animals’ temperaments – they have never steered us wrong.  Noah (called Berrin at the shelter) received several reprieves from the euthanasia list because Dwinnie knew he was special.  He is an absolutely wonderful dog and we are thrilled that he is alive and enjoying life because we could put together the resources to help him.

Noah was all smiles as he left the shelter.

We also helped dogs from Gilchrist and Levy counties, in collaboration with volunteers and  veterinary professionals who have asked for our help.  And in turn, we were able to send a heartworm positive dog from Gainesville to be treated at the Marion County Humane Society in Ocala.  (That was Lilly, a perfect little dog who was adopted before she could come back to Gainesville!)

Lilly took to the creature comforts immediately.

Of the dozen dogs we took in directly as Plenty of Pit Bulls, eight were heartworm positive and most of the rest had other medical issues, ranging from Ella’s puncture wounds to Satchel’s eye condition.  Several of these dogs have finished treatment and been adopted, while others will continue to need treatment in the new year.

 Roxy came from the same cruelty case as Opie

Both were treated for heartworm at Shelter Medicine.

We ran up a huge debt to the amazing veterinary team at UF’s shelter medicine program.  The debt is psychological, not financial – we paid all the bills, thanks to generous donations and pledges from people in Gainesville and beyond.  Rescue groups put hundreds of dollars into every dog even without additional costs for conditions like heartworm or demodex.  There are pull fees, monthly flea and heartworm treatments, food, microchipping, and supplies like crates, collars and leashes, and unexpected veterinary costs that often arise during the time a dog is in foster care.  (Ella, for example, had a very expensive secondary bacterial infection after her original wounds were treated.)

Lucky Ella had a professional photographer for her foster mom.

We are amazed at how much we can accomplish when we connect people who want to help dogs.  When two young male pit bull mix dogs (Mr Big and Mr Little) at ACAS tested positive for demodex mange, we helped arrange a collaboration with Phoenix Animal Rescue in Gainesville, who took them into their adoption program, and Pit Sisters in Jacksonville, who provided the medicine to treat the demodex.  (Pit Sisters later did the same for another dog who went to the Alachua County Humane Society.)

Mr Big and Mr Little, later Champ and Chase, heading out.

We built relationships with several local dog trainers, who helped teach some of our volunteers and dogs.  Training and behavior work is crucial to making dogs more adoptable and increasing retention in their adopted homes – and it also makes them easier to place and keep in foster homes.  Training is also fun for dogs and handlers alike, adding to the bond and the enjoyment that make it all worthwhile.

Relationships -- between people and between people and dogs -- make everything we do possible.  Building trust and communication helps a lot of dogs, including Bonnie, who was found by a Levy County volunteer and adopted to friends of a Gainesville volunteer, after being vetted thanks to Phoenix Animal Rescue.

Bonnie got a family of her own for Christmas!

Relationships of mutual trust also make it possible for us to help and be helped by groups out of town -- as in the case of Bandit, whom we pulled from ACAS and then transferred to an out-of-town rescue organization.  In other cases, we have received similar favors from groups that pull from other shelters, such as Levy County.  Working together and being flexible enables us to help more dogs.

A shelter volunteer fell in love with Bandit and made it possible

for him to be rescued out of town when local groups were full.

We worked with Stubby Dog, a national pit bull advocacy organization, to feature both Ella and Sadie as rescue dogs of the week.  (Both were adopted, Ella through POPB and Sadie through Helping Hands.)

Harper sports his tutu with pride.

For 2013?  It’ll start off with a bang, as Harper, a heartworm positive dog rescued from Levy County Animal Services. appears as the new year’s first Stubby Dog rescue dog of the week.

We have applied to pull dogs from Putnam County Animal Services, a neighboring shelter which, like other rural southern counties, has a high kill rate, low adoption rate, and few private or public resources.  The dogs at Putnam are especially needy because the shelter refuses to let any dog labeled a pit bull or bulldog mix to be adopted out directly.  They can leave the shelter alive only if they are pulled by a rescue organization.  We look forward to being able to help a few of these dogs in the new year. 

Like so many of the dogs we helped rescue,

Copper left his difficult past behind.

We have a few other plans we need your help with – all in collaboration with other organizations in Gainesville and beyond.

First, we would like to recruit more committed volunteers.  We need people who can help train foster dogs and also take them on outings to socialize them and expose them to potential adopters.   We also, of course, always need foster homes – both for the dogs we pull as POPB and must keep in foster homes during their treatment and for the dogs who are transferred to rescue partners for adoption.

Sadie was scared and depressed at the shelter.

A loving foster home put a smile on her face,
and Helping Hands Rescue found her a family of her own.

Second, we would like to have some successful fundraising projects, so we are not relying so heavily on individual donations.

Sterling (formerly Jesse) had nearly starved to death by the time he was rescued.

Today he is happy, healthy, and ready for adoption from Phoenix Animal Rescue.

Third, we would like to have some community events that are fun and educational for everyone involved.  In addition to events like Pit Walks, picnics, and dog hikes we’d like to try something a bit more ambitious, like free or low-cost vaccinations in low-income areas.

To us, a "pit bull" is any dog who needs a little extra help,

including our gorgeous hound mix, gentle Jack.

For all of these projects, we need people with all sorts of skills as well as patience, a sense of humor, and persistence.  Please email gainesvillepitbulls@gmail.com if you would like to get more involved!  With your help, we can continue our mission – bringing people together to help the dogs we love.

One-eyed, heartworm positive Asha was dumped from a truck with her puppy.

The puppy was killed by a car, but Asha was rescued and is now safe, happy, and loved.

The Story of Ella

In the first installment, she was a street waif, scruffy and scared and bleeding from deep puncture wounds.  Cue music from any story of a hard-luck orphan who encounters a good Samaritan at the crucial moment.  

She ended up at Alachua County Animal Services (ACAS).   Since the shelter was very full, there was no room for her to stay there while she was recovering from her wounds.  She was placed on the euthanasia list the day her three-day stray hold was up.   Shelter staff sent out an email to rescue groups, which said  “Sweet, sweet pit mix on Friday’s euth list. Gives kisses!!! Needs TLC before and after wounds heal. Interested? Let us know before 8:30 a.m. Friday.”  Her ridiculously cute underbite sealed the deal.

Ella is the only dog we have pulled without a confirmed foster home.  Something about her was special enough to make us take the risk.  We took her to Sun Kiva, an amazing rescue-friendly boarding kennel (thank you, Louise Kuttler) and came up with a plan that was not much of a plan:  we’d get her a Facebook page, call her “Cinderella,” recruit a bunch of fairy godmothers, and hope that her lost slipper would show up one day in the form of a great permanent home.

Maybe we should have named her “Blanche,” because if anyone ever relied on the kindness of strangers, it was this little dog.  Every step of the way, someone came through to get her to the next stage.

After a week at Sun Kiva, we moved her from the kennel to a temporary foster home, where we learned that she is house-trained and that she is a very picky eater.  After a few weeks there, she moved to another temporary foster family, where we learned that she adores children. 

Fortunately for us, everyone who spent time with Ella fell in love and both her temporary fosters kept her long past their initial commitments.  Ella is typical of many of the pit bulls we have pulled from the shelter – affectionate, athletic, full of energy and enthusiasm for people and life in general, which she demonstrated with a constantly wagging back end and energetic kisses.  But Ella also had a certain je ne sais quois, manifested in her characteristic head tilt. 

The story of Ella is a tale of two rescues – the good and the bad.   The bad part was that we had no plan, and this is a crazy-making and expensive way of doing rescue.  The good part was, well, Ella.  Not once did anyone involved with her rescue regret going out on a limb for this little bundle of charm.

After about a month and a half of antibiotics and temporary foster care, Ella was ready to go to a longer-term foster home and to get ready for adoption.  Once again luck was with us, and Ella became Hillary’s very first foster dog.  Hillary fosters like she’s been doing it all her life.  She took Ella to obedience class, where she learned about being with other dogs, among other things. Because of the attack she had suffered, we were afraid she would be scared of other dogs, but it turned out her barking was friendly excitement.  With a lot of work on Hillary’s part, Ella learned to sit quietly (more or less) when she met new dogs. 

Thanks to generosity of Phoenix Animal Rescue, she spent every Saturday at Petsmart, and every time she was better and better behaved.  Still, no one seemed interested in adopting her.  Ella was black, she was a pit bull, and she tended to express her enthusiasm a bit too forcefully when she came out of her crate at adoption events.  She had some interest, but nothing came through.  Still, we held out hope that our little gremlin princess would have a fairy-tale ending.

Then one day we got a message.  Could it be THE message?  It came from someone who sounded like the adopter ever rescuer dreams of.  Nanci described her life with her pit bull, Bella, who was the love of her life and had recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer.  Nanci’s first response was “I can never go through this again with another dog,” but then she realized that the joy Bella had brought into her life made her never want to be without a pit bull.  Fearing that Bella did not have long, she was starting to look at Petfinder, and had been struck by the pictures and descriptions of two of our available dogs – Lilly and Ella.  As luck would have it, Lilly had just been adopted (through her foster in Ocala), but Ella was still waiting.  We talked, Nanci thought, and she decided to meet Ella even though Bella was still very much with her and loving life.  Could she possibly handle two dogs?  Could Bella, who was sometimes dog-selective, adjust to life with another dog?  Would Ella create stress for Bella or perhaps add to her quality of life?

Nanci met Bella at an adoption event, liked what she saw, and we moved to the next stage: a meeting between Ella and Bella on neutral ground, a park.  That worked out pretty well, so we tried a longer walk together.  So far, so good.  Nanci decided on a trial week at her house.

Nanci did everything right.  Because Bella was fragile due to her illness, and because Bella was sometimes selective about which dogs she liked, she and Ella did not meet face to face immediately but instead got to know each other through baby gates and crates.  The fact that they had already met on neutral ground helped a lot, as well.  Soon Ella and Bella were lying nose to nose on either side of the baby gate, and Nanci let them meet face to face, leashed to make sure that play did not get too rambunctious for Bella.  It was a brilliant success – the girls had a great time play-biting, chewing, and head-wrestling.  Both dogs were extremely gentle with each other and followed all the rules. 

This was a great lesson for everyone involved: two female pit bulls, one young and goofy (that would be Ella) and one older, sick, and dog-selective, showed us that they can live together just fine, thank you very much, as long as the humans don’t do anything stupid.

So it’s official.  Ella’s ship has come in and everyone is riding off into the sunset.  The story of Ella is now the story of Ella, Bella, and Nanci.  The end.

Fault lines.

 I have been reading a lot lately about the supposed divisions between “traditional” shelters and advocates of a “no kill” approach.  The public disagreements and mutual criticisms sometimes obscure the many values that the two groups share, including most basically the belief that companion animals are valuable and people should try to make their lives better.  The conflict is not about whether or not we should help them but rather about the best ways to help them given the limitations imposed by available resources.  Traditional shelters believe that the central issue is that there are not enough homes for all the dogs and cats in the country, which means that the most important goal of animal welfare is to reduce population through spay/neuter programs.  Because, as they say, “There are not enough homes for them all,” the population of dogs and cats must be sharply reduced.  That has begun to happen, but continuing overpopulation still makes it necessary for many animals to die in shelters.  From this perspective, shelters that euthanize animals do society’s “dirty work.”

This “traditional” view sees “no kill” rescue groups and shelters as privileged precisely because of the population reduction done by other shelters.  Craig Brestrup, author of Disposable Pets (1997), quotes the director of a Midwestern shelter which kills almost 80% of its animals:  “These shelters aren’t really ‘no-kill’ shelters.  They are ‘you-kill’ shelters meaning that their clean hands and pure hearts exist at the expense of other shelters like [her shelter] which accept the animals they will not.” 

In response to this criticism, no kill advocates point out that some public shelters have managed to reduce their euthanasia rate dramatically while remaining open access.  The main difference, they say, is that shelters aspiring to kill fewer or no animals work hard to increase adoptions (and reunite strays with owners), usually because they have directors who implement several key programs.  (Low-cost spay/neuter programs remain central in the no kill paradigm as well.) 

In addition, it is important to point out that many private rescue groups take in primarily, and sometimes only, animals who have been slated for euthanasia at traditional shelters.  They do not cherry pick the most adoptable pets but rather wait for the ones who have no other options.  This is not true of every rescue group, but many – including a number of our local private rescues – consistently take in animals who have been slated for euthanasia at one of the local public shelters either because they have run out of time in the adoptable section or because they never made it to adoptables because of health or behavior issues.  In other words, they are taking the “least adoptable” animals – and they are turning around and adopting them out to good families, often very soon after rescue. 

Private rescue groups in our area have higher adoption rates than public shelters for several reasons.  First and foremost, many people prefer to adopt from no-kill groups because it is a more positive experience, both because they know that the animals left behind do not face an uncertain fate and because the adoption venue is usually more pleasant than the cement and steel of most public shelters.  In addition, private groups often advertise adoptable pets more energetically, get them out into the community, and have events on weekends when potential adopters can attend.  Further, the fact that most private rescue groups house adoptable pets in foster homes means that they have much more information about the animals’ behavior, temperament, and other factors that help adopters make good decisions.  Foster homes also socialize and train animals so that they can make the transition to permanent homes more easily. 

 

Using these methods, rescue groups take in countless animals that did not seem “adoptable” at the public shelter and find them loving permanent homes.  This fact counters the accusation that “no kill” is achievable only by preselecting highly desirable animals. 

This season of giving thanks is the right time to acknowledge the amazing work done by many of our local private rescue groups.  Here’s a special thank you to just a few – there are more of you out there, and we love you all. 

 

Second Chance Farms specializes in dogs who do not even make it to the adoptable section because of treatable medical conditions.  Typical of their dogs are these two bulldog mix pups (above), both placed on the euthanasia list because they had demodex mange.

 Many other local rescues also take in dogs who have no other chance.  Helping Hands Rescue gave a future to Lady Penny, who came to the shelter as a young puppy with a broken leg and other medical problems.  (After a long recovery, she was recently adopted!)

Rescued dogs often require enormous investments of time and money before they can move on to permanent homes.  Like other local groups, Phoenix Animal Rescue regularly takes in hard-luck cases, including Homer (above), who was so terrified in a rural shelter that he cowered and urinated every time he was approached.  Homer’s behavior was transformed as soon as he reached a loving foster home, where he enjoys a soft bed and plays with other dogs.

 

The Alachua County Humane Society is the largest rescue no kill group in our area and the only one with its own facility.  ACHS regularly takes in animals who have run out of time in adoptables as well as those with treatable medical conditions, like Chloe (above), a sweet adult pit bull mix who was slated for euthanasia because she is heartworm positive. 

The Humane Society and Gainesville Pet Rescue are the oldest no kill groups in our area.  Both began with the mission of taking animals from the local shelter’s euthanasia list.  In the past decade or two they have been joined by many other groups, including the ones mentioned above. The animals they save are diverse, countering both the claim that no kill groups cherry pick and also the notion that only certain kinds of dog run out of time at the shelter.  Their success at placing these animals in loving permanent homes does not prove that euthanasia is never necessary, but at the least it challenges the conventional wisdom that “there are not enough homes for them all” and that some animals are simply unadoptable.  These groups do not leave the "dirty work" to someone else -- they roll up their sleeves and make miracles happen on a daily basis.

And for this we are thankful.