The Parade Begins

The day is finally here. Our walkers, fosters, dogs and supporters all convene at Pine Tree Circle parking lot early Memorial Day morning for parade start at nine am. I feel slightly numb and out of my body as you do when you have no idea what you are doing and could very well fall flat on your face. I am wearing a long, vintage-style white dress, a big floppy hat (in lieu of a bonnet), and a pair of sturdy, lace-up brown leather boots. There are not too many occasions that I am able to appease my recycled soul and dress up like a pioneer women, but I decide this is one of them. Everyone else shows up excited and ready in appropriate attire: jeans, t-shirt, sunglasses and slathered in sunblock.

The floats are lining up, music is playing and there is a decidedly festive atmosphere. Drew, my business partner, has done a great job of making a beautiful banner that will introduce us and our mission as we march along the route. We have volunteers to hold the banner and the plan is for Drew to drive his Land Rover Defender out in front of us with lots of water and be ready to offer a ride or provide assistance should anyone become too tired or hot, four legged or two.

The Defender of Love

The parade pups all seem to be picking up on the energy of excitement and celebration. They all have big smiles and wagging tails, all except Kinzie, that is, my beautiful Rottie. She has spent the most time at the shelter of all the dogs and she is clearly dealing with some degree of shelter shock. I look her over and notice her spay incision looks a little raw as if she has been licking it. I can see she is stressed and showing signs of anxiety. It is possible she might be feeling pain from her recent surgery. She growls and lunges aggressively at the smaller dogs as they try to get into her space to say hello. Drew is worried, what if she bites someone; the liability would be enormous. Somehow, I stay uncharacteristically calm. I still feel strangely disconnected from my physical self and I have an overwhelming sense that all will be well. I have asked my friend Melissa to walk Kinzie in the parade as she has two Rottweilers of her own at home and knows how to handle them. I warn her gently to keep Kinzie at a safe distance from the other dogs and small kids, just in case.

Knut Knut's new family.

The pups are attracting a lot of attention, before we even get out of the parking lot three of them are spoken for! Theo, the Cairn Terrier, is claimed by my sister's friend, Emma, and her family. They had taken over the fostering from my sister one day in and naturally her two kids had fallen madly in love with the little man. Her children are there at the start of the parade to plead with me not to give away their new pal along the route. Another Topanga family and fellow parade participants rush forward to be first on the list for Knut Knut, and Nigel's foster, which happens to be Drew's cousin, Emily, wants to keep him also. Three down and we haven't even started, just three more to go! I feel, as we all line up and the parade starts its slow heave forward, that, whatever happens, it is already a success.

Kinzie

Sophie is in charge of picking up little Curly from the clinic and she has offered to foster him until the big day. I know he is in safe hands with her and so I head down to West Los Angeles Shelter looking for my sixth and final pup. I am going to try to find a large breed dog and female, if possible, as I already have so many little guys in the line up. I have noticed that there are a lot more males than females in the shelter. They separate dogs by sex, females on one side and males on the other. The girl's section is about half that of the boys, probably because unfixed males will wander off looking for the ladies and get themselves lost.

West LA shelter is modern and clean but not as big as West or East Valley, although it does have a large, grassy play yard. As I walk through the rows of dogs peering into each cage, I am approached twice by a volunteer and asked if I need any help. The valley shelters are not nearly so well staffed and I realize how much the dogs must enjoy the extra attention.

Soon I come across a gorgeous, young female Rottweiler, I was hoping for a Lab or something a little more easy to manage, but there is only one Labrador there and he is very young and big, a volunteer tells me he is quite the handful. I find an officer and a volunteer and ask to see the Rottie. We take her to the big play yard on leash and she does seem very sweet. I ask them how she is with other dogs, but they don't know. In the shelter they house large dogs in separate cages unless they are a bonded pair and they never put big dogs near one another unless they are leashed, and even then they keep them at a safe distance. The officer suggests bringing another dog in on a leash to see how Kinzie reacts. They bring in a large, male dog and walk him back and forth, but Kinzie doesn't seem to be interested, which is a good sign.

I decide I just don't have time to be looking at any more dogs, as it is, Kinzie needs to be spayed, so that will mean one more trip to pick her up the following day. I tell them I want her and strangely the volunteer tries to talk me out of it. She tells me how much time and work Kinzie will need. I know she is only trying to make sure I can manage a big, intelligent dog like a Rottweiler, and so I reassure her as best I can but I don't tell her about the parade. I just have the feeling that she might disapprove. I go to the front desk to pay for Kinzie and find out that because she has been at the shelter so long she is on sale and half price! My poor bargain basement Kinzie, so much life, beauty, and soul for just $64.

Theo

There were just four days left until the Topanga Days Parade. I still needed to locate three more dogs, neuter or spay them, place them in a temporary foster and get all this done while working full-time. I decide to take a quick run back to West Valley Shelter. Luckily, I find two cute little dogs there almost immediately. I grab the nearest animal control officer and over the utter din of barking dogs, I yell at him that I want them both. Theo is a handsome, Cairn Terrier mix and thankfully he is already fixed and ready to go. Curly is a sweet, creamy, miniature Poodle and he is not neutered, so he will need to spend one more night at the shelter before being taken to the clinic the next morning for his surgery.

I go to the front desk and fill out the paperwork and pay the $202 for both dogs. As always, I experience a huge rush of joy. I know that I am saving a life and to have the opportunity to do so is a gift I give to myself. The next moment I am I handed a leash with little Theo on the end of it. He looks hopefully up at me. We walk out through a glass door to his freedom. I can sense his excitement as smells the fresh air, hears the birds in the trees and sees the world once again without bars. It is thrilling for both of us!



These photographs are before and after shots of Theo. His body language in the shelter says it all, but the second we get into the car, he gets a big smile on his face. He knows he has just won the doggy lottery and I promise him that he has had his last bad day. I drive him straight to Topanga and drop him off at my sister's house as she has offered to foster him. Her three little boys are excited to be involved and are planning to help us walk the dogs in the parade. They can hardly wait to have little Theo to play with them for a few days. Next, I call Sophie, my youngest daughter and ask her pick up Curly the following afternoon from the clinic. I now have five very lucky dogs, just one more to go.

Knut Knut

Next stop on our quest for parade pups was Agoura Hills. Agoura Animal Shelter is the local shelter for Topanga Canyon and in my opinion it is the country club of LA shelters. It is tree lined and spacious with large, grassy enclosures, a vet clinic on site and plenty of volunteers giving love and care to a comparatively small number of dogs. Our Roxy, all grown up now, actually ended up there once after she dug her way out of our yard hoping for a free romp in the state park. Tom quickly checked the shelter website and sure enough, there she was, smiling and wagging her tail in her mug shot just minutes after being admitted. I, like any good parent wanted to leave her to spend a cold night in the slammer so she could think about what she'd done, but Tom just couldn't do it and he raced over there at top speed to bail her out.

So now, just five days from our big day, Hannah suggested we head there looking for more pups. I was doubtful as there are usually long waiting lists for anything remotely cute at Agoura, but I was wrong. It was here we found the star of the show, an adorable white, fluffy puppy of unknown breed. Hannah immediately named him Knut Knut after a polar bear cub she had read about in National Geographic. We couldn't believe such a ridiculously, irresistible creature was available in any shelter but particularly in Agoura.

Now with little Knut Knut safe in Hannah's care, we were halfway there. We had three of the six participants. The next day, encouraged and excited we took a quick trip to the South Central Shelter. This proved to be a complete waste of time as it reduced Hannah to hysterical, body heaving sobs within ten minutes and we decide it is best to leave. My advise, do not go to South Central Shelter if you have a tender heart. Fortunately, I do not. Years ago at one thanksgiving dinner during the general upheaval of my divorce from their father, I asked my girls to say something nice about each person at the table. When it came to Hannah's turn, she could not seem to come up with anything nice to say about me even when heavily pressed. She turned her head this way and that as if she was really having to think very hard. Finally, with the dinner getting stone cold in front of us, she said quietly, "You're as tough as old boots, Mum." Let me say now, she was not far wrong and this quality has served me well over the years and never more than in my efforts in dog rescue.

Nigel and Dora

Prior to my shelter shopping spree for the Topanga Days Parade, I had been to an LA Shelter exactly once and that was back in the mid-eighties. I remember it being a depressingly dark,  windowless dungeon that I couldn't wait to escape. I was expecting more of the same when I headed out to West Valley Shelter with my youngest daughter, Sophie, but I was surprised and happy to find it modern, bright and clean. The enclosures were a good size with an indoor space which could be heated and cooled and outdoor space so the dogs could sit in the sun and get fresh air. The staff were caring and helpful and an information sheet on the front of each cage gave details about the animal, which made it easy to identify such things as the available date, name, sex, breed, age and health.

Sophie and I walked around and around, so many Pits Bull, row after row of them. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the barking and the number of dogs to the point that I just wanted to leave. Sophie spotted a little black, male Chihuahua named Nigel. He was in a cage with a couple of other small dogs that seemed to be bullying him. He was cute because the other dogs would bark right at his face and he would squint his eyes tightly as if he was trying to shut them out. Sophie talked me in to taking him.


Out of the six dogs I pulled the week before the parade only two were already fixed and Nigel was one of them. I filled out the paperwork and paid the adoption fee of $102, twenty minutes later we were out of there. It was that simple. Nigel couldn't believe his good fortune. He was such a happy little guy on the ride home and even happier when Sophie took him to the dog park that afternoon.

The next day I headed to East Valley shelter, which is where found I Dora. She was not spayed so they took her up front for a check up to see if she was fit for adoption. Dora thought I was going to take her for a walk and as you can see in this picture she is wagging her tail, excited to be out of her cage.

The following afternoon I picked Dora up from the clinic and brought her straight home. My husband, my daughter, Hannah, and my friend, Skye, were all there waiting for me and I was anxious to see there reaction. Hannah and Skye agreed that even though she was a rather bizarre looking creature it might just work in her favor in the parade. My husband wasn't so complimentary. He poked his head out from his office and took one look at her and scoffed, "No one's going to want that dog, that dog isn't going anywhere." I couldn't help but feel a little disheartened by this, but as it turned out his words were quite prophetic. Samantha Long-Board, as she is known today or Sammie for short, never did go anywhere.

How it began

Every year in Topanga Canyon there is a Memorial Day parade. It is a ragtag affair of home-made floats, decorated cars, bands playing rock music on flat bed trucks, outlandishly costumed people, bicycles and assortment of animals including dogs, goats and horses. The whole event is an opportunity for Topanga to celebrate her hippie roots and the locals turn out in force, wearing everything from bikinis to full-on sixties regalia. They line the boulevard, making themselves comfortable in little encampments of friends and family, enjoying the warm weather, community spirit and festive atmosphere.

I decide that year that I am going to walk the parade route with my friend Skye and her newly adopted Bichon named Cabbot and our new puppy, Roxy. As we head down the boulevard we are stopped again and again by people that want to meet the dogs and cuddle Roxy. Everyone it seems loves puppies and Roxy in particular with her bright blue eyes, chocolate coat and wrinkles is creating quite a stir. Repeatedly, I am asked what kind of dog she is and if she is available for adoption.

I realize later that day that I could have given Roxy away twenty times on that walk and an idea begins to formulate - what if I were to find a few dogs at the shelter next year and pull them out right before Memorial Day and walk them in the parade. I could ask my daughters and friends to each walk a dog. We could carry signs or wear t-shirts drawing attention to the shelter dogs and to the fact that all the pups were available for adoption at no cost.

It is two years later when I finally get it together and make up my mind to actually do this. I decide that six dogs would be a manageable number. I ask around and found six homes that are willing to foster a dog for the week lead time. What I didn't know, as I hadn't been in to an animal shelter in over twenty years, was that the shelters in general don't spay or neuter until you adopt your pet and most dogs in the shelter are not fixed. One week, I found out quickly, was too short. It put a lot of pressure on me as it involved two trips for each dog. One to choose the dog and one to pick them up from the clinic. Worse than that was the lack of recovery time for each dog both in terms of their surgery and in terms of what I call shelter shock.

It is a four mile walk for the parade participants in the heat which wouldn't have been so bad on my shelter pups if I had just walked into East Valley Shelter one week prior and pulled all six out then and there. But it just wasn't that easy. For one thing, I really did not want to be stuck with six shelter dogs at the end of the parade, so I couldn't just take any old mutt. I was going for totally irresistible, so basically purebreds and puppies. I am surprised to find the shelters packed with Pits and Chihuahuas and not an awful lot to choose from in terms of other breeds at that time. To find my purebreds and puppies I end up going to six shelters over the course of that week. The only exception to my criteria was Dora I found her in East Valley Shelter. I walk around and around that shelter and end up back at her cage every time. I am not sure why I pull her out because she is a rather odd looking creature, half Basset Hound and half Aussie Shepherd about four years old. She has a big head, long body and short legs. There was a cartoon quality to her, but something told me I had to take her.

Roxy

I have always been an animal lover but my foray into dog rescue began with our dog, Roxy. Tom, my husband had just lost his old dog, Jack and we were thinking about getting another dog to be company for our little Terrier mutt, Maggie. We really liked the look of Australian Shepherds and I had actually called a few rescue organizations to try to adopt one but was put off by the long applications with their trick questions. The fact that we lived in coyote country in the middle of the Santa Monica mountains was a deal breaker for most of those groups. We grew frustrated with the process.

So one morning, two years ago, I am sitting in my office, when Tom walks in with an armful of puppy. I see right away she has the coloring of an Australian Shepherd, but her fur is short and smooth and she has big, baggy wrinkles around her paws and mouth like a bull dog. She is clearly very young and a little unsteady on her feet. Tom thinks she might be about 10 to 12 weeks old. I fall in love instantly with her bright blue eyes that look almost human. She must be a gift from Jack we decide at once. 

After Jack passed away that miserable day about six weeks prior, Tom had asked Jack to send him a sign so we would know that he was safe somewhere in that place that beautiful souls go after they leave us, but mostly we wanted to know that we were forgiven for choosing the time of his death. We weren't prepared for him to go. There was no middle ground where we held him in our arms while he slipped away. Instead, he went fast, not departing his body, but escaping it. One moment he was there and the next - poof - he was gone.

Tom and I both felt a lot of guilt. It was our decision for Jack's life to be over on that day, not his. Maybe he would have wanted to see it to the finish line and to leave us when he was ready and on his own terms. We had done what we thought was best for him. We played God that day and ended his sweet life. Our intentions were pure, but it still didn't sit right. There was no blessed release by ending his suffering - only guilt. We missed terribly him and felt off balance. Before there had been four of us and now just three, we needed to readjust.

Maybe this puppy was the sign that Tom had asked for. Maybe she was meant just for us, someone to fill the hole in our hearts that Jack had left behind. Either way, it didn't matter Roxy was our sweet new baby girl, and as it turned out the first step on a journey for me.

Shelter Shock

Dog rescue is not for sissies. It is certainly one of the most rewarding things I have ever done, but it is also one of the hardest. I wouldn't even call myself "a dog person." I actually prefer cats when it comes to pets. But I would say I am an animal lover and my heart goes out to the plight of shelter dogs more than any other creature on this earth. It isn't as if we can neuter or spay them and release them all back into nature to fend for themselves. These are not wild animals that have merely been tamed. Poodles, Spaniels and Corgis are not skipping around the forests and fields of North America. They don't exist in nature. We have designed and manufactured them to be our little buddies, completely unable to fend for themselves and worse than that, to be totally miserable without us.

Dogs caged in a shelter with limited human contact and the constant sounds of barking grow more and more insecure and stressed as time passes. Perhaps one could debate that it is kinder to destroy them than to leave them to a life of incarceration, devoid of human contact and affection.

When I bring an animal out from the shelter, almost all of them to some degree have what I call "shelter shock." How long it takes them to recover depends on the dog and also the foster home. I can't bring them home with me. I wish I could, but we already have four dogs with dubious backgrounds and I have promised my husband my rescues won't spend the night at our house again. I think that is fair, bringing them into our home in the past has been quite disruptive on the both of us and our canine pack of four. 

Shelter shock means to me that the dog has lost his trust in his world and needs some "normal time" to regain it. This is sometimes just hours but it can be several weeks depending on the dog and the shelter experience for that particular dog. Even as you are driving away from the shelter the dog may appear fearful and confused. Once you have them safe at home, all sorts of problems begin to emerge. They may have forgotten their toilet training skills - this is a common one. They may shake, growl, cower and appear nervous and aggressive with your other animals or family members. They may sleep a lot, refuse food, develop respiratory infections, be destructive or just follow you around to the point that they are dangerously underfoot. Often they have such severe separation anxiety that they will cry, bark or howl constantly and loudly which means you are unable to go about your day for fear the neighbors will call the police.  


Of course, we can't do without shelters. There will always be circumstances that force someone to give up their beloved pet and indeed, animals manage to get themselves lost from time to time and end up there before being reunited with their owners. But according to the Humane Society of America, somewhere between 3 to 4 million dogs and cats are euthanized every year! This is our shame and completely unnecessary and worse, totally preventable. Every one of those sweet faces staring out from behind  bars is hopeful and trusting, with a loving heart and a pure soul and I believe has a right as our "creation" to be treasured and respected.