Saving the Giants
When we pulled up at the gate for our first stop in Alabama, enormous dogs loped towards us. My photographer, Nancy, and I waited while Rhonda, the director of Brindlee Mountain Animal Rescue, put the giant creatures in their kennels and opened the automatic gate for us.
Rhonda is a smart, efficient, sensible woman who created BMAR so she could save animals her way — which we would learn is not only dog-centered but creates excellent, adoptable pets who probably don’t know they are living in a shelter.
Around these parts, they know Rhonda as the ‘Dane Lady.’ Not only does she love the monstrous dogs, she knows how to manage and train them. Danes find their way to Rhonda from all the surrounding county shelters and she places them via Petfinder when they are ready to be adopted.
Rhonda has about ten to twelve dogs at a time, knowing that’s how many she can manage well. Each dog stays an average of two to three months as Rhonda works with it to prepare it to be successful once adopted.
“There’s a fine line between rescuing and hoarding,” she tells us. She says the way she keeps herself from crossing is by making sure every step she takes is an improvement — like only taking as many dogs as she can handle.
The dogs rotate between living in her home and living in her kennel. The kennel has five huge runs that can each hold several dogs. The kennels sit on a paved pad under a shelter in a shady spot in her yard. An enormous swamp fan blows on them to keep them cool in the Alabama heat, and each run has raised beds and plenty of toys.
Beside the kennels is a small air-conditioned shed. Each dog has its own crate inside the shed where it sleeps each night, just like it would in a real home. “I want them to learn how to be family pets, or if they already were pets, I don’t want them to lose any manners they already have,” she explains.
There were a handful of Danes and Dane mixes, but also a sweet hound dog Rhonda had recently taken in who was heartworm positive. She was trying to raise funds for his treatment.
There was also a friendly brown dog with faint brindle markings (named Brownie of course) who had been there two years. Rhonda can’t understand why no one adopts Brownie as he was a true lovebug who wiggled when you petted him.
Rhonda shared all the dogs’ stories, which like so many we have heard, were heart-breaking. We met Sandy, a dog she does not plan to adopt out. Instead, she plans to spoil her all of her remaining days since she spent her first eight years chained to a front porch. She has no front teeth because they were ground down to nothing from a lifetime of eating off the ground with no bowl.
Dogs land at Brindlee via owner surrenders or shelters that seek her out for her expertise and her care of the Danes, and also by community members who contact her about an abandoned dog or stray in need of help. Each year she helps around 600 dogs find loving homes. This year she’s had two surgeries so her numbers are fewer, but her energy and dedication have not abated and I imagine she will be saving dogs and advocating for them for years to come.
After we toured the kennels and met some of the dogs, Rhonda invited me inside her home to see the dogs living there and to grab water bottles since all three of us were melting in the unforgiving heat. Her home is a neat, organized house trailer with a large covered carport. I paused to flirt with the two shepherd puppies in a puppy pen on the carport.
Rhonda and her husband didn’t always live in a house trailer, once upon a time they had a house with a mortgage and two cars, but they sold that so they could buy the property in Joppa and rescue dogs.
We asked how we could help and Rhonda said she needed some nice pictures of a few of her dogs. Nancy set up a little studio under the tree beside Rhonda’s house and we got work. I held the lights and wrangled the dogs (a job that is not easy to do with only two hands, particularly when the dog is bigger than you are). Rhonda was hoping to get some pictures of her dogs for the local Subaru dealer’s ad campaign that will feature dogs (and maybe support what she does).
I’ve never been so close to so many Great Danes. They are enormous, yet so gentle and their personalities were sweet and goofy and affectionate. Right now I can’t imagine life with such a large dog, but someday I might. I promised Rhonda that if I ever did, I would come to her for my Dane. Anyone looking to rescue a Dane should certainly look her up. All of the Danes we met and handled were not just beautiful but had perfect manners. Some of that may be the breed, but a lot of it is from life with Rhonda at Brindlee Mountain Rescue.
After we left, I thought about the life Rhonda has built for herself, surrounded by dogs in a quiet, shady spot in Alabama. I wondered if it was a life I might have someday. I’m sure it is not an easy life, but I also can’t imagine living out my days on a beach chair. I think I’d much rather spend them with dogs. They are good for the soul. Rhonda confessed that she doesn’t think this problem of too many unwanted and mistreated dogs will be solved in her lifetime. I don’t want to believe that.
In a message, someone mentioned that what I’m seeing is hard to see. Maybe sometimes it is, but the problem is that not enough people are seeing it. Yes, it can be hard, but then I meet people like Rhonda, and I realize that they need us, and more than that, they inspire us. We can do better. We can save these dogs, and we can solve this problem.
It is people like Rhonda, with a heart as big as the dogs she rescues, who are leading the way, but this will take all of us. As I travel mile after mile, I see solutions everywhere, but first we must acknowledge the problem.
It is time to let ALL the dogs out. #TogetherWeRescue #100dogsandcounting
Read more about Brindlee Mountain and other shelters and learn what you can do to help let the dogs out in Cara’s new book, 100 Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books July 2020)
