“Dog rescue is a community responsibility.”
It is estimated that there are a thousand or more stray dogs in Detroit. On top of that, there are countless dogs who are abused and neglected. These are dogs with owners who don’t know or care how to have a dog as a pet, dogs owned by people who intentionally hurt them, or dogs used in dog fighting. Many of these dogs are what is known as “bully breeds”, pit bull-type dogs that are mixes of breeds like American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier, Boxer, Boston terrier, and Bulldog. Pit bull breeds in general have long been kept as pets in this country. They are loyal to their owners, gentle with children, and have no natural aggression toward humans. For many years they were known as “nanny dogs”, used to keep an eye on children. Famous pit bulls include Nipper the RCA dog (“His master’s voice”) and Pete the pup from the Little Rascals.
Because they are strong dogs, their lack of aggression towards and their loyalty to humans have made them the dog of choice for those wish to fight them. The hideous nature of dog fighting was brought to the nation’s consciousness when NFL star Michael Vick was convicted for running a dog fighting/gambling ring. Dogs used in dog fighting are denied the human companionship they crave and are trained to be aggressive toward people and, especially, toward other dogs. Pit bulls who don’t have the prey drive needed for dog fighting are often used as “bait dogs”, thrown into the ring to be torn to pieces by the fighting dogs as part of their training.
For these reasons, pit bulls have undeservedly become synonymous with vicious, dangerous dogs who can “lock their jaws” and who “turn on” humans with no warning. None of these things are true (it is a myth that they can lock their jaws, for example.) The sad truth is that these dogs are anything but vicious unless they are made that way by cruel humans who abuse them. They have become status symbols for gang members and criminals who cultivate this image to serve their own purposes. Sadly, more often than not, the dogs are the ones who pay the price rather than the evil humans who abuse and neglect them. However, when put into a loving, stable environment, pit bull-type dogs are truly wonderful pets. I should know. Anne and I have two of them who sleep in our bed every night. It’s no surprise to us that nearly all of the dogs taken from Michael Vick’s dog fighting compound – often called “Vicktory Dogs” – have found forever homes where they are happy and well-adjusted.
There are a number of groups in the Detroit area working on rescuing dogs. The need is great. Detroit Animal Control has faced severe criticism over mistreatment of animals in the past and the fact that they kill the vast majority of dogs that come to them. Although there’s hope that things will improve under their new director Melissa Miller, they lack the resources to adequately address the dog situation in Detroit. Some of the Detroit dog rescue groups have gotten a lot of media attention and have raised hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. However, too often, these groups are more style than substance.
Anne and I have come to know two people in River Rouge who are setting an example of how to do dog rescue right. They run a dog rescue called Pit Stop for Change Rescue & Rehabilitation. These two people, David McMurtrie and Kayli Sparks, have dedicated their lives to saving dogs (all dogs, not just pit bulls) in the Detroit area. Unfortunately, they are not as well-known and don’t have a celebrity to promote their effort. Operating on a shoestring budget from a residential home, at any given time they are caring for and rehabilitating between 35 and 40 dogs.
Unfortunately, they are about to be evicted.
I spent some time recently with David, a heavily-tattooed former skinhead who spent many years in prison, and Kayli, a tough-as-nails woman with a big heart and deep passion for saving dogs. I asked David about his past.
“I’m originally from Parma, Michigan which is in Jackson County,” he told me. “I was one of the unfortunate ones who decided to be a screw-up out of the womb. Not because I had to be, but because I wanted to be. I did that pretty successfully until I was 17 when I went to prison for the first time for a bunch of breaking and enterings and stuff. I did four years in prison, came out with a way bigger attitude and a way bigger chip on my shoulder. I made it about six months before I robbed thirteen credit unions. I went back in and got very lucky that they only sentenced me to 8-50 years. I made it out on my first date in 2007.
“I knew before I was coming home that I was getting a dog and I knew I was getting a pit bull because pit bulls are badass dogs and that’s what badass people get,” David continued. “When I came home, even this time, I was still… I wasn’t as active in the skinheads as I was at one time but I still had the same twisted ideology, I still had the attitude that the world owed me something.”
“I already knew my dog’s name was going to be Odin. I had already got his harness and his collar made. It was just a matter of getting home and buying him. I was home sixteen days and I found him through a breeder. He was like the super-runt of his litter. He was born on April 1st and I got him on June 6th and, literally, that day was the first day of the rest of my life.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because I’m a white kid from the country,” David answered. “I never experienced any racism or bigotry firsthand until I got my first American Pit Bull Terrier. Every single day I have to defend my dog for what it actually is versus the hypocrisy of what people have made them out to be. Basically I now have to eat what I fed people for twelve years. Because I was someone who recruited actively for the skinheads. I fed people propaganda, whatever it took to get people to do what we needed them to do. We took facts and twisted them to fit our way of thinking.
David with Odin
“But the day I got Odin, it kind of was an epiphany, man. It took me through Odin and dealing with what I was getting through him to put a face to what I was doing. I used to be real big homophobe. I used to warn people, ‘Don’t get near me. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to catch it.’ That’s how bad I was with it. Then I got a job at the Dearborn Animal Shelter and my friend Heather who was the director there, being around her changed my mentality on it. People are people. To each their own. And for people to be an open gay person, that takes balls. It’s not a choice because nobody would choose to have to deal with that shit on a daily basis. That’s just who they are.
“It’s the same thing with these dogs and that’s what motivated us to do what we’re doing. You can not like something or you can not like something and try to be part of the change.”
David and Kayli take their dogs with them when they go out into the public. I asked him why they would do that given the reputation pit bulls have.
“For a lot of people it’s the first time they’ve every encountered a pit bull in real life.” he said. “That dog is going to change opinions of people who see and interact with her a lot quicker than I ever could no matter how much passion I have or what I try to explain to you about what I’ve done.”
The stigma these animals face has led to the passage of misguided breed specific legislation (BSL) in many municipalities around the country. When BSL laws are passed, people with pit bull-type dogs in their homes are forced to get rid of their family members. The problem, of course, is that BSL doesn’t solve the problem of evil people who abuse dogs. This is why there is legislation pending in Michigan to prohibit BSL laws. Senate Bill 239 has passed the Senate and awaits action in the House. Another package of bills called “Logan’s Law” after a Huskie named Logan was tortured with battery acid would require nonprofit shelters to deny an adoption to anyone who has been convicted of animal abuse within the past five years and prohibit convicted animal abusers from adopting another animal for five years.
Unfortunately, there is also House Bill 4915 that I call the “Kill ’em Quick” bill. This terrible legislation would allow cats brought to shelters to be euthanized almost immediately rather than waiting the currently required 4-7 days, a holding period which allows family members to try to find them. If this bill becomes law, it’s only a matter of time before a similar law is passed to include dogs.
I asked David how he feels about BSL.
“BSL is nothing more than four-legged racism. It really is,” he said. “You are passing judgement on all because of the acts of one which really is asinine in itself because you’re talking about an animal that’s not a responsible, rational-thinking creature. If this was a kid that went to school and stabbed his teacher, well, yeah, the kid’s going to get into trouble but the one they’re going to hold responsible is the parent. And it should be the same way with dogs. That’s why we’re working toward getting rid of breed specific laws.”
Although David’s story sounds like a carbon copy of the Animal Planet show Pit Bulls and Parolees, he actually started rescuing dogs two years before it first went on the air. I told David that I understood why people just out of prison might gravitate toward working with dog rescue groups because they have little other connections and it gives them something to focus on, something to give their lives some meaning.
“Absolutely,” David answered. “The reason that I’m not in prison or dead is because of these dogs. I never in my life was responsible for anything including myself. When shit got hard, I booked. I wasn’t attached to anything, I had no loyalty to anything. I got very lucky that I have one of the greatest moms in the world because I was – and I’m not proud of it – I was the worst kid I knew. I was the kid who would break into my parents’ house on a Friday and steal my mom and dad’s paycheck and leave ’em broke with two brothers. I literally was only concerned only about myself. That’s because I always wanted to fit in. So I did ridiculous things. Money in my life was a way to fit in with people so I did whatever I needed to. I have no relationships prior to going prison with anyone outside of my family members who choose to deal with me.”
David told me he ended up in the Detroit area after he got out of prison thanks to a relationship he had developed before he was paroled. “I met a girl when I was in prison and we started talking,” he said. “She lived in downriver and when I paroled out of Jackson prison I went to stay with her. She really did help me out. She was there when there weren’t a lot of people there. It just didn’t work out for us, though. The thing with dog rescue is it’s kind of like being a drug addict. You’re not going to have a successful relationship unless you’re with another dog rescuer or another drug addict because there’s no comfortable middle. There were plenty of times in my past relationships where I would get a call about a dog and I’m going to go help this dog and it would create serious problems in my relationship.
“It’s not that I was okay with it but I’m not able to have the same callousness towards animals that I do towards people. I’ve seen really bad things and I’ve been a part of really bad things but people are … we’re really bad creatures where these dogs aren’t. You take the worst of the worst and 99% of the time if you take them out the environment, introduce them correctly, give them some stability and some leadership and you’re going to end up with a good, balanced dog. Michael Vick’s dogs are proof of that.”
Kayli, David’s partner in the rescue, told me she came to Michigan from Arizona. “I was born in Lake Arrowhead, California,” she told me. “Then when I was seven my parents and I moved to Arizona. My dad has a really successful excavating and pipeline business. I grew up in Fountain Hills, Arizona and it was pretty easy-going childhood outside of the fact that my parents are both alcoholics and abusive crazies! I moved to Michigan with someone I was in a relationship with to be near his family because he was experiencing medical issues at the time.
“Well, I didn’t know anyone up here,” she continued. “I didn’t have any friends. Michigan is very different than Arizona or California. No In-and-Out Burger, no nothing! I had rescued my dog Gator from Maricopa County Animal Control on the day he was going to be euthanized and I had Bubby who is also a pit bull. I just found the amount of hatred and unnecessary comments aimed at my dogs, it wrecked me. It would keep me up at night. Then I got on Facebook and then it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what can I do? I need to MORE! I need to help out my babies!’
“So I started transporting every weekend. I would help out, whether it was through Kindred Hearts or The Liberty Train…”
“Transporting? What’s that?” I asked.
“Transporting is when a dog gets pulled from a kill shelter and a shelter will pull it in because it fits maybe what an adopter is looking for or what they feel is easy to adopt out or they really like the dog and it may be in a different state. Or it can be a dog from a rescue that adopted a dog out and had everything checked out but the adopters lived ten or twelve hours away. So I would do the Michigan or Ohio legs and help out pretty much every weekend or whenever I was able to do that.”
When I asked Kayli how she and David met and became partners in dog rescue, she became uncharacteristically emotional. “There was a pregnant feral mama that I was tagged to go and help with,” she told me. “It was the middle of winter and there was this poor, old dog freezing to death on a 40-pound tow chain there, too. An off-duty animal control officer told me that, because this dog had a shitty little house, Michigan law said it was ‘acceptable’. I was horrified and extremely upset. They thought that he was the dad to this pregnant, feral mama’s puppies because she would hang around next to him.
“I named him Mr. Sweets because…”
At this point Kayli began to cry.
“He was just so sweet and the first time I went up and met him he was the nicest dog,” she said in a quiet voice behind her sobs. “Even after being abused and neglected, he just wanted attention.”
“So, I went back and kept feeding him and nobody would help me. The rescue that I was helping out at the time, they said they wouldn’t accept the dog if I somehow magically got him. I had been friends with David on Facebook for a very long time, we had met at a anti-dog fighting rally and told him about Mr. Sweets and I showed him the pictures and he was the only one who would come to the neighborhood with me.
She continued with her story. “We actually got chased out of there the first couple of times but we continued to go back and feed him. I tried to buy him. I tried to take him to the vet, all that good stuff. But the owners always told me ‘no’. The worst part was they had indoor dogs, indoor small dogs. And Mr. Sweets, he had been left outside on this 40-pound chain for seven years.
“Then, on October 20th, 2014, we went and liberated him. And he was so happy!”
“He was!” David chimed in. “He was boogeyin’ to the car. ‘Let’s go, what are we supposed to do here?!’ But, here’s the thing: we had exhausted every remedy there was and we weren’t going to let that dog just die on a chain. If you look up the definition of ‘liberate’ in the dictionary, it means ‘to free from bondage’. And that’s what we did; we liberated him.”
“And that’s how we got Mr. Sweets and how me and David met,” Kayli finished.
David and Kayli with Mr. Sweets
“He’s such a good dog now,” David told me. “These dogs, they don’t hold a grudge. That’s the thing, man, they don’t carry their scars with them like we do.”
David and Kayli worked at dog rescue independently with David housing 15 or 16 dogs at a time. He earned income through boarding and training dogs, teaching people how to properly work with their pets so that they were happy, well-behaved, and socialized.
David explained: “I was doing a lot of board-and-train with dogs. We get dogs that people say are just complete nut cases and within five days, they’re just completely transformed. It’s just that we people screw shit up. That’s how I made the bulk of my money. Three, four, maybe five times a week I’d be going to do training at people’s houses and stuff. I was working with Better Life Canine and they were on me to get a bigger place because they had a list of like 30 dogs waiting. And I had another group saying the same thing. And I didn’t have a problem with that because this was what I would rather being doing.
“So I found the house that we have now and then all of sudden there wasn’t all of these dogs needing training that there were before. It was like a switch turned off. So I went from making between $500-700 a week doing boarding and training because most boarding facilities won’t take pit bulls to basically nothing. At that point I ended up doing more rescue instead.
“And now that’s mostly what we do,” he said. “I haven’t had a day off, I kid you not, in over three years. Every day we get tagged on Facebook on 30 or 40 dogs that need help. And if one of us gets on there and we come across one that needs help and we have the ability to help whether we should or not… How do you say no?”
“Do you say no?” I asked. “Do you tell people we just can’t take any more dogs right now?”
“We do,” he said. “But…” He paused.
“We’ve had an intake freeze for six months now,” he went on, “And I bet we’ve had at least 25 dogs come in counting puppies in that time. The last batch of puppies we got was dropped off on our board member’s mom’s porch or something. And we’re like, where are going to take ’em? We take ’em to any shelter and they’re euthanizing them. So, it’s not like we wanted ten puppies. We didn’t go searching and looking for them. But people bring them to us because they know they can trust us.”
I asked them how they pay for all of the work they do.
“Well,” David said, “It’s not easy. Mostly through donations and Kayli has a part time job. I’m not exaggerating when I say it costs $103 a day to feed our dogs. And, believe it or not, they want to eat every day! You’re talking almost $730 a week for food. That’s not counting the fact that we have 68 dogs that have open files at our vet. But we do a bunch of fundraisers, we have friends that have helped us like when we have car problems.”
I asked them for another example of how a dog might come to them.
“Well, there’s this dog recently named Scooby,” David said. “I was on Facebook and… I don’t get on Facebook very often. I have enough to deal with just looking around my own house, I don’t need to go on Facebook and see all these terrorists… But I was on Facebook and I see this dog that everyone’s sharing and saying, ‘This dog has been sick for three days, it’s puking up blood and shittin’ blood…’ So I told them to have the owner inbox me. Well, the owner never even did inbox me but someone else did. I told them we’d help, let’s find out what wrong with this dog, does it have parvo or what? We took it to the vet and he doesn’t have parvo, it’s eaten rat poisoning. Now the options are either send the dog home where he’ll probably die or treat the dog. Not that we can afford to treat it but the owner can’t. At least we can run a balance at the vet. And, even though the owner ended up being a real douchebag, it’s not the dog’s fault. It’s not the dog’s fault that somebody put poison behind their house and he found it. So, we stepped up and covered the cost.”
David with Scooby being treated for rat poisoning, courtesy photo
David and Kayli told me that this is the sort of thing that’s gotten them into the situation they’re in now financially. Last summer they helped five people with their parvo dogs. They also had the other dogs with parvo that came into their program. They made arrangements with the owners to pay them back for the vet bills but, too often, that doesn’t end up happening.
“What happens when you get a dog? I asked. “In addition to giving them a place to stay and food to eat…”
“They get fully vaccinated,” Kayli said “If they have heartworm, they receive heartworm treatment. All the dogs that we adopt out have basic training; you know, sit, stay, basic things. They are spayed or neutered…”
“Are you bringing in dogs that are injured?” I asked. This is a common problem with so much dog fighting in Detroit. On top of that, many people simply abuse dogs.
“Yes, we get injured dogs all the time,” David replied. “We have one that we’ll pick up tonight from the vet that has got heartworm, he had hookworm, he was half-starved. He’s one we got from a call from the River Rouge Animal Shelter. They called us three days ago around 8 o’clock in the morning from Patty at the shelter asking if we could help with a dog that was basically on some lady’s porch. Patty knows if she has a problem, all she has to do is call. We met her over there and, sure enough, there was a dog on the porch. She had called us because it’s an aggressive dog which I know usually doesn’t mean it’s actually an aggressive dog. Because if it’s hanging out on somebody’s porch, chances are it ain’t too aggressive!
So, we get there and I go up there. He rumbles under his thing I know instantly that it’s fear because he’s trying to retreat and an aggressive dog will come at you. I got a slip lead around his neck and he’s instantly a new dog. He comes right to us. He was kinda schiz’ed out until we got his collar off him and once we did that, suddenly he was chilled out and his collar was his toy. His name is Mordecai and he’s about two. He tested positive for heartworm, he’s probably 20 pounds under weight, he had hook worm. He’s got sores on his body. He’s reactive to other dogs which may just be that he’s just so excited to see them and he’s not socialized. But once we get him on his feet again and get him some training, he’s going to be a great dog for someone.
Here are some photos from the rescue of Mordecai:
Please meet Mordecai !!! Poor guy was making a nest on this sweet woman's porch. She called the police asking for…
Posted by Pit Stop For Change Rescue & Rehabilitation on Wednesday, February 3, 2016
As much as David and Kayli love what they do, it’s hard and they seriously lack the resources they need to do all that they do.
“What people have to realize is that we have around 40 dogs and it’s just the two us,” David said. I could hear the weariness in his voice. “99% of the time we’re the only ones there. We have some supporters who come by once in awhile to help out walking the dogs and stuff. But we don’t have any regular volunteers who we can count on to come in and take care of things without being supervised. Basically, three of four times a week I need to have a handful of people in my house to walk dogs. We got into this to help people help dogs. Now we’re just basically trying to stay afloat and not allow our standards to drop.
“Dog rescue is a community responsibility,” he said. “We do the bulk of the legwork. We chose to do this. We didn’t get tricked. We didn’t get misled. We didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Holy shit, how did these extra 15 dogs get in here?’ We did this. But where community steps in is to help with the financial aspects and the donation of time. We’re doing all the legwork as far as the feeding and the cleaning and getting the dogs to the vet. But that takes up ALL of our time. I told Kayli last year, there’s no doubt in my mind that we should be the biggest rescue in Detroit because we do all of this with just two people.
Pit Stop dog rescue is often, quite literally, the last resort, even for other rescue groups. David told me about one dog who they were supposed to get from another group last year. However, one of the top people in their group didn’t like David and wouldn’t allow the dog to be sent to him. Ten months later, after the dog had been returned from people who had adopted him three different times and they were ready to euthanize it, they decided to send it to Pit Stop dog rescue after all.
“We trained it and got it walking with six other dogs,” David finished. “Now the dog has been adopted and is living in another state. When a dog has no chances left, it often ends up with us.
“But the frustrating part is that I don’t have what I need to do my job,” David explained. “And I’m not talking fancy stuff. Like, I need to have three mop buckets and three mops so I don’t have to drag mop buckets up flights of stairs seventy times a day. And I am so busy that I don’t have time to network and coordinate volunteers. I basically need people who can work independently, do orientation for new volunteers, and then have folks who come in regularly and take care of walking the dogs without someone to help them. This is something we really need help with. The more people interact with our dogs, the better socialized the become. The more the dogs are out of the crates, the better it is for everyone. That’s what the ultimate goal is: to have dogs out of their cages. If we’re spending all of our time cleaning and doing vet runs, that means that dogs are sitting in their cages.
“What sorts of things do you guys need to make this work?” I asked.
“We need to get into a bigger space so, right now, it comes down to finances,” Kayli explained. “We found the building that we want in River Rouge. We’re trying to stay in River Rouge because we don’t want to have to deal with the politics in the city of Detroit and our mayor is trying to work with us. He knows that we’re helping the city out. We do community outreach, we hand out dog food, hand out straw in the middle of the night for dogs that are left out in the cold during the winter, we help out with vet care if someone can’t afford vetting for their dog. That’s why we’re trying to stay in River Rouge.”
The building they have their eye on is a very spacious 12,000 square feet. However, a 12,000 square foot building costs a lot to heat and maintain and David and Kayli don’t want to move into a new place until they’re sure they have enough support to keep it going.
“This place is perfect for us,” David said. “It’s self-contained. It’s fenced in. There’s an acre of land attached where we can cut our own path out and folks would never have to leave our compound to walk dogs. That’s not only a safety issue, but a vaccine issue. You wouldn’t have cross-contamination between dogs coming in to our shelter with other dogs in the community.”
When I asked them what sorts of things they hope to have one day, they said that they’d like to be able to put in an above ground pool to exercise and rehabilitate the dogs. “It’s about the only exercise that really wears out a bully breed,” David said. “You could walk them 20 miles on a treadmill and they’re still ready to go. You swim them for an hour and they’ll sleep for two days!”
“So you need reliable volunteers in addition to your supporters,” I said. “You need financial support to get into the new building. What else? Money for vet bills? What other things do you need?”
“We need an industrial washer and dryer,” said David. “I might even need two of them. I do 17, 18 loads of laundry a day and it’s still not enough. When we get home tonight I probably still need to go to the laundromat to do laundry. I’m going through, on average, 80 blankets a day.
“We need people who can transport dogs to the vet for us, stay there with them, then bring the dog back home. We need someone who can do reference checks when we’re adopting out a dog or sending one to a foster.”
Fox 2 Detroit filming a segment about Pit Stop for Change dog rescue
I asked them what what sorts of things they’d like to be doing once they get established and have time to lift their heads up.
“Well, we’d like to have more time for doing outreach and to have more training time,” Kayli said.
“What do you mean by ‘outreach’?” I asked.
“Going and finding dogs that are having a hard time,” Kayli said. “Living on a chain like Mr. Sweets with owners that either don’t care or just don’t know that’s not acceptable. We’d also like to have a class at a school every month, talking to kids, teaching them how to approach dogs if they don’t know how. And teaching them what to do if they see something bad happening to a dog.”
Kayli explained that, in memory of their friend Jeff Bungard who died a year ago on February 8th, they came up with the idea of the “Bungard Bundle” for chained up dogs who are left out outside even in the coldest weather. After spending the day with the 40 or so dogs in their house, the two of them go out into the night and help dogs who are being neglected. The Bungard Bundle consists of and Igloo dog house, straw, a heated water bowl, and education for owners. The fact is, without their help, these dogs may well die, something that nearly happened to a dog recently found frozen to the ground in Westland. And, the fact is, other rescue groups don’t go to the areas where David and Kayli go.
Jeff Bungard with David, courtesy photo
“You do home checks of the dogs you adopt out and foster, too, correct?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied David. “We don’t do same-day adoptions. Normally it’s 7-10 days from the time that you apply before the dog will be placed in your house because we’re calling references, we’re calling your vet if you’ve had animals in the past. If you can’t keep up and maintain your current pets, we’re not going to put more stress on you and we’re not going to put our dog at risk. For us this isn’t about ‘moving product’. You’re not going to see a number on door saying we’ve adopted out 164 dogs or whatever. Because that doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s great if we can adopt out 5,000 because you have 5,000 dogs that are in good homes. But, since we’ve been doing this, we’ve only had one dog returned to us and it was because the lady learned that she was allergic to dogs through this dog. We’ve never had a dog returned because we do extensive checks first.”
I asked them how many dogs do they adopt out in a typical year.
“Around 35 to 40, somewhere around there,” David said. “Maybe more if you include puppies we sent to Dogs for Heroes. Right now we have around a dozen that can be adopted out and we’ll have ten puppies in a couple of weeks.”
David finished our chat by reflecting on why he has given up his life to save Detroit dogs.
“I earned my way into a jail cell, multiple times,” he explained. “These dogs didn’t earn that shit, man. They don’t deserve to sit in a fucking cage for 20 hours a day because they were brought into this world by greedy assed humans who fucked them over. I deserved to be where I was at. That’s why we do this. Because they don’t deserve this.”
What Kayli and David need most right now, of course, is financial assistance to get them into a new facility. River Rouge is forcing them to move or close down their operation because they are in a residential area. And, frankly, with 40 or so dogs, they are simply too big for their house.
In addition to money, here is a list of other things David and Kayli need to keep going:
Food donations
Laundry soap (Must be Tide, no other brands, please.)
Bleach (Must be Clorox, no other brands, please.)
Kuranda dog beds
Blankets (Thin, small blankets only. No comforters, please.)
Gas cards
Nylabones (these are the only toys they’ll accept)
Heated water bowls for outreach dogs
Igloos for outreach dogs
Industrial washer and dryer
Rescue vehicle (van, minivan, or SUV, something they can mount four or more kennels in)
Reliable car
Donations to veterinarian (Nearly $4,000 in bills – Dix Animal Hospital, Dr. Rajbir Chadha. Be sure to indicate donations are on behalf of Pit Stop Dog Rescue)
That last item is crucial for Pit Stop dog rescue. They must have the ability to get their dogs vet care and they have developed an excellent relationship with Dr. Chadha. Here is the contact information for their vet:
Dix Animal Hospital
1127 Dix Hwy Lincoln Park 48146
Phone: (313) 383-7387
Fax: (313) 383-7466
Website: DixAnimalHospital.com
For information on how you can help this important, essential duo, click HERE. If you’d like to volunteer, send them an email at pitstopdogrescue@gmail.com. Also, be sure to stop by their Facebook page to see lots of photos and to see what dogs they have up for adoption.
If you’d like to adopt one of their beautiful dogs, visit their website PitStopDogRescue.com.
Anne and I have spent time walking dogs for Kayli and David. We’d take them around the neighborhood for a bit and then return back to their house. EVERY time, the dogs were eager to get back, tails wagging and smiles on their faces. These dogs have been saved from some of the worst situations you can imagine and are now in a loving environment, many of them for the first time. David and Kayli are literally giving up their lives for these animals.
Dog rescue IS a community responsibility. Please help be a part of this amazing community.