In a Better World, Mary Doane Would Need to Save Fewer Dogs

The phrase “man’s best friend” is not necessarily so, depending on where you live in the United States, especially, sometimes, in the South, where unwanted dogs ending up in shelters are more likely to be killed than adopted.

So says Mary Doane, owner of Mary’s Dogs Rescue & Adoption, in Deerfield, N.H. Ninety percent of the dogs Mary rescues are from a “high-kill shelter” in Akin County, S.C., an area that borders Georgia. She points to a cultural difference between the Southern United States and the Northeast about what it means to keep a dog as a pet, and that extends into whether that dog should be spayed or neutered.

“Bottom line, many people treat animals as only property without inherent worth, and this happens a lot in the South; they’re just property,” she says. “It also happens in the North. However, in our rescue we are looking for people who consider dogs family members. In the South many dogs don’t come inside at all. They live outdoors, not across the board, not everybody in Aiken, S.C., feels that way. They treat their animals well, but others, their animals just keep breeding and breeding.”

Dogs are also coming from a lot of rescues in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi, all of which are high-kill states. That is so, again, because many of these folks don’t spay and neuter.

”It’s not always lack of money; it’s how we treat our animals,” says Mary. “People think, ‘We’re just not going to do this, spay or neuter our dog. We don’t believe in that.’ Females have litter after litter. Then the dogs are just dumped into shelters and dumped along the side of the road.”

Four million cats and dogs—about one every eight seconds—are put down in U.S. shelters each year, according to The Humane Society of the United States.

Mary works with the Friends of the Animal Shelter in Akin County, a county shelter and rescue group. A look at the numbers on the Aiken County Animal Shelter Web site (http://fotasaikenpawprints.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html) is revealing. For the week of May 14^th – 20^th, the Aiken County Animal Shelter took in 84 dogs and 88 cats. Eleven dogs and 12 cats were adopted; 76 dogs and 77 cats were euthanized. And that’s one shelter out of hundreds of U.S. shelters.

“We probably pulled 8 of the dogs,” she says. “We’re pulling 15 to 20 dogs every two weeks.” Mary’s Dogs is responsible for the kill rate coming down from 95 percent to 85 percent. “We’ve been very active.”

But, obviously, it’s not enough.

“I wish we could figure out how to make things better in the South that we don’t have to rescue any more dogs. But it’s got to be a cultural change.”

Humane educational programs in schools, K through 12, are beginning to take hold nationwide, and that’s what’s happening now. But it’s going to take a lot of time to develop care and respect for other beings, maybe a few generations.

The SPCA in Stratham has a different experience with dogs, Mary says. “Their numbers of euthanized dogs are very, very low. And those euthanized would only be unadoptable dogs. They wouldn’t put the dog down. If it can find a home, it will find a home.”

But there are differences here, too, between a rescue operation like Mary’s Dogs and a shelter such as the SPCA, a difference not as stark as between the Northeast and the South.

Mary’s Dog rescue ensures that dogs who are rescued belong in homes. “When a family gets a dog, the relationship with the shelter or rescue should be starting, not ending. But it requires knowledge, commitment to the process, commitment to the dog and commitment to the family, overall a huge time commitment, and that’s what I spend my time doing. The relationship doesn’t end once the family gets the dog; it lasts the lifetime of the dog. If the family is thriving, the dog is thriving. And that’s one reason people are calling us for their dog.

In the last 18 months, Mary’s Dogs has been close to 100 percent successful in its placement of dogs in homes. “All 300 dogs we have adopted, we know who they are. Some needed a second home because there wasn’t a great fit, but we know where everyone of them is.”

Mary’s Dogs is a business partner of Green Alliance, a local green business union that certifies its member businesses green and advocates greener choices to the public. Finding a home for dogs in shelters, instead of buying a puppy in a pet store, is sustainability in action.

For more information about Mary’s Dogs, visit www.marysdogs.com,
and for more information about Green Alliance, visit www.greenalliance.biz .