Rescue Me with Puppy Love

Jul 07, 2021

The first thing Gladys wants to tell me is that she’s very proud of herself.

At least, that’s what I infer from her body language. She’s smaller than I expected from her Facebook photos, short and compact with bright eyes that lock onto mine as soon as I come through the door. She nods and gestures with her nose for me to follow, an impressive set of teats undulating beneath her as she clicks across the living room.

“Is she always this friendly?” I ask Cody Shelley when she opens the door, presumably because Gladys does not have opposable thumbs.

“She really is, but you know, I basically just met her myself,” says Cody, who welcomed this charismatic little lady only ten days before into the Twickenham home she shares with her wife, Savannah firefighter Captain Chela Gutierrez.

Abandoned somewhere in rural Georgia, Gladys arrived late at night by way of Renegade Paws Rescue, not quite on a midnight train but let’s imagine it like that anyway. She waddled into the lovely Victorian that functions as a safe house for wayward creatures to find refuge among the couple’s four other dogs, a vocal cockatiel, a run of clucking chickens in the sunflower-studded sideyard, and upstairs, a rotating cast of kittens in varying stages of ferality. (More on Capt. Chela’s kitten room later.)

Shortly after settling in on a pile of old towels—barely ten minutes according to Cody—she serenely gave birth to a litter of ten puppies. Nine survived, and my Facebook feed has been flooded with photos of extreme cuteness since. Gladys has been the perfect puppy mother, licking, nursing, eating every last one of those ten placentas, and showing off her little miracles. The baby brindle girl is called Aretha, the only other female is white with a black eye named Sister Rosetta. The rest are all boys and thus far known as “the Pips.”

Looking back over her shoulder to make sure I’m still there, she dives into a kiddie pool lined with cozy blankets and circles herself to present her brood, tail wagging as the furry lumps amble over to her ample breasts. (I have always wanted to use “ample breasts” in a contextually appropriate, non-My Dad Wrote A Porno way; check that off the literary bucket list.)

Gladys allows me to gently pick up her puppies one by one, keeping an attentive eye out as the others tumble over each other, eyes still closed. I cup their tiny foreheads in my hand and touch the buttons of their velvet paws with my fingertip. The sadness I’m carrying for so many things—from the bad news from Miami to people’s inability to control their pyrotechnic impulses to my own littlest puppy leaving the country for a month—melts with each inhale of sweet milk breath.

As I place each baby back, Gladys gives me a nod, closing her eyes briefly in our shared acknowledgement of her competency and cleverness.

“You are SUCH a good mom,” I tell her, and she blink-nods again. “You must be exhausted.”

“We really are,” confesses Cody, carrying off another laundry load of sheets. (I would like to note that in spite of its multi-species menagerie, this home smells as fresh and clean as a forest meadow; I would not be surprised to learn these magical women got ahold of some type of potion from Hogwarts’ janitorial closet.)

This is the third litter of puppies Cody has fostered in the last year as part of Renegade Paws, which takes in direct surrenders and diverts furballs from local animal control. With so many wonderful animal rescue organizations in the Savannah community—more than I can list here, though I must mention our longtime friends at Coastal Pet Rescue as well as the angels at One Love Animal Rescue who helped facilitate the adoption of our two hairy weirdos—you’d think at some point they’d run out of dogs to save.

Alas, that is not the case. While COVID temporarily emptied out shelters last year, the numbers of abandoned pups in the region has surged back like a bad case of mange.

“Every rescue in the area is full right now. There are hundreds of Gladyses,” sighs Jen Taylor, Renegade’s tireless founder and champion foster mom, currently living with 13 canine roommates.

Jen founded the organization in June 2019 with a handful of volunteers including Cody, and this group of “rebels for the paws'' remains 100 percent volunteer-staffed. Jen, a nurse, works night shifts so she can be available during shelter hours, and Cody recently started back in person as house manager and tour guide at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home. Community partnerships are essential, and a hefty food discount and donated van from local pooch resort The Hipster Hound has been a godsend.

In 2020 they took in 545 doggos and adopted out 507, a real fine turnaround, though Jen remains focused on the mission to keep as many healthy dogs as possible from being euthanized in shelters. “Sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night knowing you could save one more,” she says wistfully.

Every animal rescue has its own distinct identity, and Renegade definitely brings a rock ‘n’ roll vibe with recent fundraisers at the Wormhole and The Rail Pub (photos by dog and music lover Valentin Sivakov.) It serves a particular niche as well, stepping outside comfort zones to deliver food and heartworm prevention meds to homeless folks and public housing residents in exchange for letting them spay or neuter their dogs. (If you know a dog owner in need, please direct them to the free Paws & Praise event on July 10.)

“This is a harm reduction model. We want to meet people where they are and give them the tools they need,” says Cody of building trust within these populations, many of whom are understandably concerned that “rescue” means someone taking their best friend away. “When they see that we bring the dogs back, they tell others. It’s slow, but that’s how reducing pet population works.”

Unfortunately, there’s still plenty of resistance towards sterilizing pets, even when it's low-cost or free. Cody, Jen and the rest of the renegades know that for every dog they save, more unwanted puppies will find their way to Wal-Mart parking lots and Facebook pages only to die in shelters, chained in backyards, or worse if owners don’t surrender their dogs to the snip.

“Men tend to anthropomorphize their dogs’ balls,” says Cody, rolling her eyes. “But we cannot rescue, foster and adopt our way out of the overpopulation problem. Spaying and neutering is the only way.”

Just then, Gladys pops up and runs over to the back door with an urgent look in her eyes. (Listen, if you ate ten placentas in one sitting you’d have some gastrological issues, too.) I take this opportunity to sneak upstairs to see Chela, who has converted the spare bedroom into a refuge for feral kittens, including Morticia and Fester, born in a spare coffin at the recycled prop wonderland Film Biz Savannah.

Savannah’s intense feral feline problem deserves its own column, but suffice it to say that if the dog situation sounds dire, imagine trying to corral wild gangs of robot cactuses on a meth bender. Chela works in her neighborhood as part of the Islands Feral Cat Project, using the Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) approach to control the cat colony in the vacant house down the street and taking in the smaller ones to socialize for adoption.

“This is not what I had planned for my life,” shrugs Chela as a striped tabby walks across her shoulders. “But my wife is saving the dogs, and I figured I had to do something, too.”

If your house doesn’t have a kitten room are you really living?

If this is not the Lord’s work, I’m not sure what is. While the pet overpopulation problem might inspire many of us to donate to the cause, taking on the actual animals is some next-level empathy. I am already overwhelmed by the dogs and humans living in my home; the thought of any more of them, even temporarily, makes me break out in hives.

Back downstairs, Jen is smiling broadly. One of the pips has opened his eyes! Just in time for their next stop in the foster network: The day after my visit, Gladys—who we’re guessing is part pittie, part dachshund, and part Golden Girl—and her pips will go to an experienced altruist for another few weeks for weaning. Then the puppies will be sent out in twos and threes until they’re ready to be spayed or neutered; after that, God willing, everyone will be adopted to forever homes, including Gladys.

I whisper to her that if I didn’t already have a neurotic rescue princess who screams with jealousy every time a new dog looks my way, I’d take her home in a minute. She gives her big boobs a shake and bobs her head in understanding. Whoever adopts this precious mama is one lucky human; hope you don’t mind if I pop over for a visit sometime.

Anyway, if I ever need extra fur love, I suppose there will be no shortage of snuggles at Cody and Chela’s house anytime soon.

It’s another strange Savannah paradox: The answer to a troubled mind is more puppies and kittens, please. And yet, the answer to this troubled town is less puppies and kittens.

The rescuers’ work may never be done, but here’s to hoping—and to helping the cause.

God bless all the animals, including us ~ JLL