director, I wanted to try to verify that what I’d been hearing out of their mouths was actually the truth.
Blue, I’d been told, was the last dog Turner and Beach worked together to rescue. The women had a falling out around the time that I adopted him, and Beach went on to create her own rescue organization. Blue was apparently one of several reasons for their split. They’d been at odds about the way that a rescue should be run, and when I called asking questions about Blue’s rash and background, the finger-pointing about who had done what to him became something of a last straw.
From what they’d told me on the phone, though, they did agree that Beach is the one who first saw Blue in the long row of non-preferred cages at Person County Animal Control. The way Beach remembers it, Blue crawled to her slower than a snail bound for a pot of escargot. He didn’t once bear his teeth or do anything else to make her think that he might be aggressive, or that he might bite her out of pure fear. Instead, she recalls him putting his head way, way down so that she could pet it. After a few minutes, Beach decided that Blue was a dog who was just plain terrified. He struck her as the kind of dog who would be all right if he got into a foster home where he’d feel safe and have a chance to act like a puppy instead of a death-row prisoner.
Beach tagged Blue as a dog to be rescued, and the shelter put a note on his cage that kept him alive for the next few days. Then Beach and Turner went to the shelter together to collect Blue along with a few other dogs. Turner offered to take Blue home as a foster dog, something she had done many, many times before. Beach had never been to Turner’s home, but as a fellow member of Canine Volunteer Rescue, she assumed that everything would be fine there.
Blue, from what Turner and a friend of hers told me, continued to hang his head low at her house. It was as if he were constantly ducking in anticipation of incoming fire or shrapnel. While rescuers don’t always know the history of dogs like Blue, Turner and her friend came to believe that Blue had been abused. If anybody raised their hand above his head, even if just to pet him without warning, Blue would try to bury himself in the floor and hide.
That characteristic alone is something that can get a dog like Blue tagged for death, both Turner and Beach told me. Beach said she has met many, many dogs like Blue inside county-run shelters, and that she has had to overcome resistance to rescuing them from Person County Animal Control specifically.
“I would go to the shelter again and again,” she told me, “and they kept telling me that most of the dogs were unavailable. They’d tell me they had maybe two or three dogs available, that only two or three dogs in that whole building had okay behavior and attitudes. It was just insane.”
It sounds counterintuitive, that a shelter would want to keep any rescue group out when so many dogs are being killed, but the blocking of rescue volunteers is so common that several states have actually passed laws that require animal-control directors to work with them. In California, for instance, a law had to be passed to force shelter directors to work with rescue groups that were willing and able to find homes for death-row dogs. And that California law was, at the time it passed in 1998, regarded as groundbreaking. The same type of law did not pass in Delaware until July 2010, with the signing of the Delaware Companion Animal Protection Act. It’s widely regarded as the most progressive of its kind in the country today. It legally pro- hibits shelters from killing an animal if a rescue group is willing to take him, and it requires shelters to post photos of stray dogs online so they can be recognized and claimed by their owners instead of simply being held in a cage until they’re killed at the end of the state’s mandated waiting period.
Beach told me that when she first approached Person
Blue, I’d been told, was the last dog Turner and Beach worked together to rescue. The women had a falling out around the time that I adopted him, and Beach went on to create her own rescue organization. Blue was apparently one of several reasons for their split. They’d been at odds about the way that a rescue should be run, and when I called asking questions about Blue’s rash and background, the finger-pointing about who had done what to him became something of a last straw.
From what they’d told me on the phone, though, they did agree that Beach is the one who first saw Blue in the long row of non-preferred cages at Person County Animal Control. The way Beach remembers it, Blue crawled to her slower than a snail bound for a pot of escargot. He didn’t once bear his teeth or do anything else to make her think that he might be aggressive, or that he might bite her out of pure fear. Instead, she recalls him putting his head way, way down so that she could pet it. After a few minutes, Beach decided that Blue was a dog who was just plain terrified. He struck her as the kind of dog who would be all right if he got into a foster home where he’d feel safe and have a chance to act like a puppy instead of a death-row prisoner.
Beach tagged Blue as a dog to be rescued, and the shelter put a note on his cage that kept him alive for the next few days. Then Beach and Turner went to the shelter together to collect Blue along with a few other dogs. Turner offered to take Blue home as a foster dog, something she had done many, many times before. Beach had never been to Turner’s home, but as a fellow member of Canine Volunteer Rescue, she assumed that everything would be fine there.
Blue, from what Turner and a friend of hers told me, continued to hang his head low at her house. It was as if he were constantly ducking in anticipation of incoming fire or shrapnel. While rescuers don’t always know the history of dogs like Blue, Turner and her friend came to believe that Blue had been abused. If anybody raised their hand above his head, even if just to pet him without warning, Blue would try to bury himself in the floor and hide.
That characteristic alone is something that can get a dog like Blue tagged for death, both Turner and Beach told me. Beach said she has met many, many dogs like Blue inside county-run shelters, and that she has had to overcome resistance to rescuing them from Person County Animal Control specifically.
“I would go to the shelter again and again,” she told me, “and they kept telling me that most of the dogs were unavailable. They’d tell me they had maybe two or three dogs available, that only two or three dogs in that whole building had okay behavior and attitudes. It was just insane.”
It sounds counterintuitive, that a shelter would want to keep any rescue group out when so many dogs are being killed, but the blocking of rescue volunteers is so common that several states have actually passed laws that require animal-control directors to work with them. In California, for instance, a law had to be passed to force shelter directors to work with rescue groups that were willing and able to find homes for death-row dogs. And that California law was, at the time it passed in 1998, regarded as groundbreaking. The same type of law did not pass in Delaware until July 2010, with the signing of the Delaware Companion Animal Protection Act. It’s widely regarded as the most progressive of its kind in the country today. It legally pro- hibits shelters from killing an animal if a rescue group is willing to take him, and it requires shelters to post photos of stray dogs online so they can be recognized and claimed by their owners instead of simply being held in a cage until they’re killed at the end of the state’s mandated waiting period.
Beach told me that when she first approached Person
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