Desert Mountain Foster & Rescue began in 2017 with a bucket of kittens and an abandoned pit bull. I had been searching for a service dog for my special needs daughter. I knew we couldn’t afford a highly trained service dog, which can reach upwards of $12,000, so we decided to search for a dog that needed a home and train him or her ourselves. We did indeed find that dog, her name is Lucy and she has been a great addition to our family. My other children will attest that she is not always a “perfect” service dog, but she showers the kids with unending love and goofiness and sometimes that is the best service of a service animal.
On that search we found the underbelly of a world that we had never been exposed to. We had always visited shelters, adopted, not shopped, supported the work of the Humane Society and the ASPCA, but really never had a grasp on how insurmountable a problem the homeless and abused pet population truly is within our society. We had viewed pages and pages of animals sitting at the Humane Society or the local pound and lists and lists of dogs and cats and critters on Craigslist waiting to be “re-homed.” Sadly, we knew we could’t help them all, but perhaps we could make a dent and give some hope to the sad eyes that stare out at you from behind the cold bars of a shelter or the pages of Craigslist.
We began training with the Humane Society to become foster parents to bottle baby kittens and puppies. We would care for them until they were ready for adoption and the Humane Society would place them up for adoption when they were ready. One day we got a call asking to foster 6 wee kittens and one crazy pup. We fed the kittens around the clock, as though they were human babies and they struggled to survive, some of them didn’t. It was devastating, heartbreaking and life changing, but we were hooked. As for that tiny foster pup, her name is Harley and she is the face that you see emblazoned on our insignia! She is our poster child! We have expanded beyond simply fostering for the Humane Society. We take calls from people losing their pets, strays, TNR groups, animals that are not doing well in the shelter, and our favorite, bottle babies, you name it, we will be there.
Animal rescue is a never ending, continual job. It can be heartbreaking. It can exhausting. There are times you want to quit, to stop, to give up. You convince yourself that what you are doing doesn’t make a difference. What does giving one animal a home really mean when there are thousands that die alone each week in just THIS STATE alone? The crisis seems impenetrable, hopeless. But then that one single dog or cat that you saved from the street, the cold, the heat, the loneliness, is why we don’t stop.
That one dog matters, that one cat matters.
That is why we keep going.
The Desert Mountain Foster & Rescue Staff.