Rescue Road

by Peter Zheutlin

  In the car, Tadpole takes a little bit of food—a good sign. He’ll need to be isolated from other dogs at first in case he has parvo or distemper. Within minutes, Alicia, using her iPhone, has posted his picture on Facebook looking for a foster willing to take him in. But when we meet Kathy Wetmore for a late dinner that evening, she agrees, even though he isn’t and won’t be a shaggy dog, to make Tadpole one of her Houston Shaggy Dog rescues. He’ll be in her care until he’s healthy enough for adoption and the trip north with Greg.

  Forgotten Dogs of the Fifth Ward Project doesn’t pull dogs from shelters for adoption as traditional rescue organizations do; their focus is on doing what they can for the dogs on the street, but sometimes they remove those in especially dire straits, like Tadpole, in the hopes of nurturing them back to health and finding them a forever home, or getting them into the hands of another rescue organization, such as Houston Shaggy Dog, that can assume that responsibility.

  “If we see a dog in critical condition that won’t make it unless we take it, we take the dog and fly by the seat of our pants, hoping to find a rescue that will take the dog and prepare it for adoption,” Kelle explains. “And we use social media and our personal networks to try and find a foster or permanent home.” In the past two years, the project has taken 520 dogs off the streets to save their lives.

  “Seventy-five percent of the dogs we take in have broken limbs from being hit by cars or have BBs in them because they rummage through trash and people shoot at them,” Kelle adds. “We work with seven different vets and they give us discounts. A single dog may cost us thousands of dollars. But we’ve been lucky; whenever we’ve needed money, someone has come forward to help.”

  “We have great supporters,” Alicia states. “So many rescue organizations are behind on their vet bills. We don’t have that problem. And we always find fosters. Boarding can be a huge expense for rescues.”

  Kelle founded the Project in 2006. She didn’t set out to start a street rescue, but volunteered after Hurricane Katrina to help save animals displaced by the storm. While in New Orleans, she learned how to trap dogs that needed care or were being sought by their owners. Then she started getting calls from various rescue groups to help with trapping strays, and one of her assignments took her into the Fifth Ward, where she was astonished to see how many strays wandered the streets.

  “It just evolved,” she says by way of explaining how she ended up staying here to tackle this immense challenge. Like most rescue organizations, the Project tries to bite off a small piece of what they know is a much larger problem.

  “Spay[ing and] neuter[ing] and education are the only solutions to this problem,” Alicia says, “but we don’t have the time or resources for that. We’re just trying to help the dogs we see and we just see the tip of the iceberg. For every dog we see, there are ten more just like it. People here don’t seem to notice the suffering of the dogs because their own lives are so hard.”

  • • •

  Shortly after leaving CVS and the mama pit bull, we pull into the parking lot of an abandoned strip mall. Under the marquee of a defunct movie theater are two older homeless women lying on filthy mattresses. They appear to be in their sixties or seventies, but given their living conditions, it’s hard to tell; they may have aged prematurely. A shopping cart filled with clothes and other belongings sits nearby, as do two dogs and three kittens. At our approach, the women sit up. Kelle and Alicia have spoken with them before and the relationship is cordial. Every week they bring food for the women’s dogs, Sugar and Lucky, and they’ve persuaded the women to let them try and find someone who can take better care of the kittens. The women keep Sugar and the ironically named Lucky tied up close to them because kids on bikes ride by and try to hurt the dogs if they’re near the street.

  Seeing dogs living in squalor is hard enough; seeing these well-meaning, destitute women living in the same squalor is deeply disturbing. They seem to be trying their best to care for the animals, but they can’t even take care of themselves. They are appreciative of Kelle and Alicia’s help, and are receptive to their efforts.

  “We feed as we see,” Alicia explains when we’re back in the car. “We’re always finding new situations and new regulars.”

  A little farther away, we round a corner where Alicia mentions she saw a man running from an assailant firing shots last week. Drug dealing is pervasive in the Fifth Ward—so is violence. There’s a small pack of dogs Kelle and Alicia have been watching here, and sure enough they appear almost immediately. Alicia spreads some dog food on the ground and they circle us tentatively. Kelle has been trying to inoculate them to treat their mange, but they have to be calm and ready to be approached. Kelle and Alicia are still trying to earn their trust. Mange is relatively easy to treat but requires multiple treatments, so they’ll hopefully be able to treat these same dogs again over the next few weeks.

  As the dogs eat, I look around. These may be the forgotten dogs of Houston’s Fifth Ward we’re feeding, but all around are the forgotten people of America, mostly black and Hispanic, people living in dilapidated houses amid trash that has accumulated on nearly every street and in every ditch: old tires, chunks of concrete, rusting metal, building materials, mattresses, broken glass, plastic, almost every kind of detritus imaginable. I also notice dogs everywhere—lurking behind trees, asleep under cars, chained up in yards, in playgrounds, parks, and even in the openings of abandoned houses. Freight trains rumble through the neighborhood on tracks just twenty feet from the nearest houses, whistles blaring and shaking the ground. The poverty here is a grinding, grim, hopeless one, sadly just a few miles from the corporate headquarters of the world’s richest energy companies and the opulent homes of their executives. It’s a Third World ward in a First World city. For Alicia it still doesn’t justify the neglect and abuse of dogs she sees in the Fifth Ward every week.

  “I try not to be a judgmental asshole,” she says as we resume our patrol, referring to how dogs are treated here, “but it’s hard. I’m pretty jaded about people at this point.”

  “This is a people problem, not a BARC problem,” she adds, referring to Houston’s major shelter, which sits at the edge of the Fifth Ward. “We can’t adopt our way out of this. It’s too big.”

  Our next stop is a short street abutting the railroad tracks. A long freight train slowly rumbles its way through the neighborhood. Here we find Kaiser, a thirteen-year-old, unaltered male hound mix with advanced heartworm disease, pulmonary hypertension (caused by heartworms), a badly infected broken tooth, and a tumor in his mouth that has given him a snaggletooth.

  Though heartworm is, as noted, easily prevented with a monthly, chewable tablet, it is endemic in the South. Heartworm is also treatable in the earlier stages, but once advanced, the worms clog the heart and can infiltrate the lungs.

  Kaiser isn’t a stray; his owner has lived on this street all his life, as has Kaiser. Kelle and Alicia have been bringing food for him for several weeks. Alicia is visibly upset and it’s easy to see why; Kaiser lumbers and his breathing is labored. It’s horrible to see such a sweet creature in such pain.

  “He’s dying,” she says, her voice filled with a mix of anger and frustration, “and he’ll die right here on the street. I just want to bring him home. I want him to know a little bit of love, a full belly, and a soft bed before he goes.”

  Looking at Kaiser, it occurs to me it’s probably been fifty years since I’ve seen an unaltered adult male dog, yet I’ve already seen dozens this evening. When we were kids growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and 1960s we used to giggle when we’d see a dog with its testicles bouncing around as he ran. That’s when it hits me how different the spay/neuter issue plays out in the South versus the North. You can spend decades in the Northeast and never see a stray, let alone an unneutered male dog.

  • • •

  As early evening approaches and the heat subsides a bit, more and more dogs emerge from the shadows. It’s eerie; they just seem to materialize
from everywhere and nowhere. Almost all show signs of mange, fleas, and other biting insects; many have scratched themselves raw.

  A little farther down the road, we spot a dog about to dart between the wheels of a moving train and a young boy of about eight or nine trying to scare it away from the tracks, a small act of humanity on what has been an evening filled with inhumanity. When the dog is safely out of harm’s way, Alicia pulls the car over and yells, “Thank you.” The boy waves in response and disappears.

  Kelle and Alicia now look for a very pregnant boxer they’ve seen regularly at the same intersection. On foot, they’re trying to find her when a woman emerges from her house on the corner and tells them the dog delivered her puppies a couple of days ago under an abandoned house across the street. Houses don’t have basements here and most sit a few feet off the ground. If there’s an opening, dogs can find shelter from the elements underneath. There are several places where the wood cladding has rotted or been torn away, and Kelle and Alicia are peering inside with flashlights for signs of the mama and her litter. After a few minutes, Alicia spots her and coaxes her slowly toward an opening in the wood planks. She sticks her head out and looks around. She doesn’t appear aggressive so much as exhausted, but she’s going to be protective of her puppies so the approach has to be as gentle as possible. Her mate soon joins her. Both heads show signs of mites and other insect bites. Slowly Kelle and Alicia lure them out with food, so they can better assess the dogs’ conditions. They’re frustrated a boxer rescue refused to take these two for adoption because without docked tails they weren’t “boxer enough.”

  Once they’ve been drawn out from under the house, Kelle and Alicia get a better look. The mama’s teats are enormous; she may have mastitis. The papa has severe mange, which is keeping him from gaining weight and he appears weak and thin. His skin is covered with small sores. Like the people around them, these dogs have been living a tough life.

  As the dogs eat, Kelle sits on the curb, drawing deeply on a cigarette. Sometimes the work is so draining, so overwhelming, a person just needs to sit down and pause.

  Microscopic lice transmit mange, and the papa needs to be treated or the pups will become infected. But he’s very skittish and moves away whenever Kelle approaches. They decide to try and get a slip leash around his neck when he returns to the food. Dogs living like this can be unpredictable, but these are two gutsy, fearless women. In fact, I feel safer on these streets in their company than I would alone—key to their continued presence here is that they aren’t timid and they move around like they belong here, projecting an aura both nonthreatening and assertive at the same time.

  When the papa returns to the food, Kelle gently dangles the slip leash in front of him and passes the loop over his head and under his neck and secures it. He resists a little at first, but remains calm as Kelle deftly gives him a shot of ivermectin, an antiparasitic. Kelle knows the ivermectin could be fatal if the dog has heartworms, which is very likely, but it’s a calculated risk. Better, she says, a quick death from the ivermectin than a slow, painful death from heartworms. She also uses her fingers to expose the gums of the mama; they’re pale from anemia. When they first saw this dog, she also had the beginnings of an embedded collar. Many young dogs are forsaken still wearing collars, and as they grow, the skin gradually grows around the collar. Usually surgery is required to remove it. In this case, people who Kelle and Alicia had been leaving dog food for, and who were able to approach the dog, removed the collar and treated the wound with peroxide and antibiotic ointment.

  “We picked up one dog with a chain completely embedded in its neck,” says Alicia. “Her face was so swollen she looked like her head was going to explode.”

  Any sign a dog is being properly cared for draws praise from Kelle and Alicia, a man walking a dog on a leash or a dog with a current rabies tag on its collar, for example. These small signs of responsibility are so rare here they stand out.

  Down yet another street, we see a large dog that has a smaller one pinned to the ground in the culvert that stretches in front of the yards. From the car Alicia tries to startle it so the smaller dog will be released. Scanning the street, I see at last a dozen strays wandering about in every direction. A young boy of about ten wanders into the yard.

  “Are these your dogs?” Alicia asks. “One of them was beating up the other.”

  Sheepishly he says yes, they are his dogs.

  “We’re going to give them some food, okay?”

  We hop out of the car. Tadpole is now asleep on the floor, wrapped in a towel. As Alicia spreads some food on the ground, Kelle scans the street, making a quick assessment of the curious dogs slowly walking in our direction. The first to the food is a muscular pit bull whose body language concerns Kelle. She tells us to keep our distance. There’s no argument.

  As we head back to the car, the young boy’s mother emerges from the house.

  “You need to get these dogs spayed and neutered,” Kelle tells her. “We can help you with that. We’ll come back.” She thanks us for the food and we’re off.

  It’s nearly 8:00 p.m., and we’re supposed to meet Kathy Wetmore and Tom English for dinner in a few minutes but we’re running late. As we head for the freeway, we see an older man in a ball cap, shorts, compression stockings, and flip-flops walking with an unleashed pit bull in a small field near the freeway entrance. Unable to tear herself away, Alicia pulls over, rolls down her window and asks the man if he needs food for the dog.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he says. “I can really use some help with this dog. I have some burn injuries and this dog was abused and abandoned, and they put me in that roach-infested house over there and they say I can’t keep a dog there.”

  It’s not clear who “they” are, but the man is polite and articulate. He’s missing most of his teeth, save for a few on the lower left side of his jaw. He says the dog’s name in Sasha.

  “These people over there had him for fighting,” he says, pointing at the dog’s ears, which have been crudely docked with a sharp instrument. Fighting dogs often have their ears clipped to keep opponents from latching onto them. “But he wouldn’t fight so they abandoned him and I’m trying to take care of him.”

  As we talk, the dog, which wandered over with an old empty beer can in its mouth, is scratching furiously.

  “That dog has fleas and mange,” Kelle explains after she’s gotten out of the car to have a closer look. The man is listening intently. He clearly wants to help this dog.

  “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to give him some medicine for the fleas that will work almost immediately. And I’ll give him an injection that will help with the mange.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful, ma’am, thank you, thank you,” he replies. “I knew there was a reason I got up this afternoon.” Kelle gives him a bag of dog food and a plastic syringe with an oral medication to help with the mange.

  “Now, give him this in two weeks. Squirt it into the corner of his mouth, OK?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, thank you. I know it’s a little late but happy Fourth of July!”

  • • •

  Now we are officially late for dinner with Kathy and Tom and the restaurant is fifteen minutes away. But we’re not done yet. Just as we approach the freeway on-ramp, Alicia suddenly veers sharply to the right.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” she shrieks. “There’s a dog on the ramp! He’s going to get run over! Oh no, no, no!”

  She does a quick circle around, stops the car by a vacant lot across the way, jumps out, and begins crossing a wide street toward the entrance to the on-ramp. There, huddled against a concrete embankment supporting the freeway, is a medium-sized black dog lying on a narrow berm, just inches off the ramp.

  This is a dangerous situation for the dog and for Alicia. If she spooks the dog, it may run right into traffic, but approaching slowly means Alicia is vulnerable to high-speed traffic entering the freeway. Kelle tries to keep her from crossing, but she’s already halfway the
re. The dog doesn’t bolt, but Alicia is now crouched next to the dog at the edge of the ramp. I see a panel truck approaching and step into the road and wave my arms to slow it down.

  The dog is wearing a collar, and Alicia leads it back to the vacant lot near the car. She puts some food out. The dog is very thin and has large scars on its head and bald spots covered with scabs.

  I’m puzzled when Kelle removes the collar, the only way we might restrain the dog if it decides to head back into harm’s way.

  “It’s just something I do,” she says. “This dog used to belong to someone, but they gave up on it.” My sense is that removing the collar is Kelle’s way of setting the dog free from a past life in which it was never valued. After eating, the dog walks slowly back into the neighborhood and away from the freeway.

  When she sees my confused look, she says, “I can’t take him. I already have forty at home that need homes. This is the hard part; we have nowhere to take him.” It’s one thing to hear statistics (like the 1.2 million strays on Houston’s streets), but ironically, the magnitude of the tragedy can only be appreciated when you look at the small picture. It’s much easier to wrap your head, and your heart, around the suffering of one desperate animal than to try and fathom a million or more.

  “It haunts you,” Alicia says to me. “No matter how much you do, it’s never enough and you feel like a piece of shit.”

  And with that, Kelle, Alicia, Tadpole, and I head off, quite late, for dinner with Kathy Wetmore and Tom English.

  • • •

  After an eye-opening and depressing day, dinner brings some happier news, a welcome relief, especially for Kelle and Alicia: Kathy offers to take Tadpole (a name she bestowed on him right after seeing him), nurse him back to health, and find a home for him through Houston Shaggy Dog Rescue. If all goes well, in a couple of months Tadpole will be on his way north with Greg.