Zheutlin - Rescue Road: One Man, Thirty Thousand Dogs, and a Million Miles on the Last Hope Highway

A portion of all proceeds from the sale of Rescue Road will benefit Greg Mahles Rescue Road Trips.

Copyright 2015 by Peter Zheutlin

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zheutlin, Peter.

Rescue road : one man, thirty thousand dogs, and a million miles on the last hope highway / Peter Zheutlin.

pages cm

1. Dog rescue. 2. Animal welfare. I. Title.

HV4746.Z44 2015

636.70832092--dc23

[B]

2015012970

For my brother, Michael, with love.

IN 2012 THE BERLIN WALL FELL . OKAY , not that Berlin Wall; the Germans knocked theirs down in 1989. Im talking about my own wall of opposition to having a dog in the family. That Berlin Wall survived the end of the Cold War by more than twenty years. But when it fell, I fell hard for a dog named Albie.

For years my wife, Judy, and sons, Danny and Noah, had pleaded with me to consider adopting a dog. I held them at bay with turtles, hamsters, fish, and eventually a cockatiel named Houdini whose messy cage I cleaned every week for ten years and who I secretly hoped would live up to his namesake and escape all on his own. But I insisted: no dog. Too much work. Too much responsibility. You cant travel with a dog. I have allergies. The dog will shed everywhere. Ill be the one getting up in the wee hours of those subfreezing February mornings risking life and limb on sheets of ice so the dog can poop. Even though I had a dog growing up, sorry, not going to happen . I used every excuse in the book. Then, I ran out of excuses.

Weve had Albie, a yellow Lab mix, for three years now, and hes the love of my life, the apple of my eye, my best friend, and every other trite clich you can think of. Im sixty-one, and were going to grow old together. Chances are I will outlive him and Im already dreading the day we part. Believe me, when I used to hear people talk this way about their dogs, I thought they were slightly daft or had difficulty forming relationships with other people. Now I get it. Completely. I was totally unprepared for the depth of my feelings for this beautiful, trusting, loving creature.

I can trace my change of heart to the weekend we took care of Reilly, our friends black Lab, while they were away. Reilly nudged me in the right direction. I told Judy we could look around, but I wasnt ready to commit. Around the same time, a guy in Judys yoga class brought his dog, Tige, to class. He told her hed adopted her through Labs4rescue, a Connecticut-based organization that matches families, primarily in the Northeast, with Labs rescued mainly from high-kill shelters in the South. Tige, he said, was absolutely the best dog hed ever had. Judy started looking at pictures and videos online of dogs available through Labs4rescue and filled out an application.

When Judy first said the words rescue dog, I imagined a Saint Bernard with a small barrel of whiskey under its chin, roaming the Alps in search of avalanche survivors. I was completely ignorant. When she explained, my headlike many peoplesfilled with preconceived notions about shelter, or rescue dogs. I assumed they were damaged goods, behaviorally unpredictable, susceptible to health problems, and maybe even slightly dangerous. Nothing, I have since learned, could be further from the truth. But at the time I was especially uncertain about adopting a rescue dog. Nor was I aware of the enormous number of beautiful, deserving dogs desperately in need of homes, especially in the South.

A few weeks later, my older son, Danny (then twenty-one), and I took an outdoor grilling class taught by our friend Chef Chris Schlesinger. He brought along his new black Lab, Sal, who was mellow and unobtrusive. A little jolt of envy passed through me, and not just because Chris has talents at the grill I can only dream of. It was his bond with Sal. The dog adored him and vice versa. That , I thought, is a beautiful thing .

By the time I came home that evening, my reticence had turned into determination. I said to Judy, Lets get a dog.

We quickly learned that the rescue movement was much bigger than we imaginedonce we started asking it seemed everyone we ran into with a dog had a rescueand that the matching of dogs and families largely takes place online. The Internet has played a huge role in the growth of the canine rescue movement, especially in pairing and moving thousands of abused, abandoned, and neglected dogs from the South to forever homes in the North. (Well come to the question of why there are so many southern dogs later.) Sites such as Petfinder.com, used by many rescue groups including Labs4rescue, are the Match.coms of the canine world. On these websites, eager adoptive families can peruse pictures of countless dogs waiting for their forever homes, read what their temporary caregivers have to say about them, learn what is known about their previous liveswhich is usually littleand, in some cases, watch a short video showing the dog interacting with people, fetching a ball, or just generally looking absolutely adorable.

And this is exactly what we did once our Cold War over canines finally ended. When Judy came across Albie online, she thought shed met the One. In the short video, his eyes were soulful, his tail was always wagging, and he seemed to be pleading for someone to love him. She hurried into my office with her laptop so I could see for myself. Somewhere between two and three years old, hed been found wandering, frightened and alone, by a country road in central Louisiana. Now, he was in a high-kill shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana.