New partnership will save hundreds of dogs

Hundreds of dogs each year are going to be wagging goodbye to Barnwell County to head to a nationwide rescue in search of life-long and loving homes through a partnership secured by The Animal Advocates.

“If we're going to really help these animals in Barnwell County, we've got to be progressive and we've got to keep up with other states, other counties,” said Vikki Scott, founder and chair of The Animal Advocates as well as director of the Friends for Life Center.

“We have to think outside of the box, and like in any Southern rural town, rescues are struggling,” said Scott.

Counties in the rural south are facing an overpopulation epidemic. Vacant lots have become homes for colonies of feral cats and drivers are more cautious for dogs rather than deer on the road.

When animals are picked up by animal control officers for being a nuisance, they are brought to an already exhausted county shelter for taxpayer funded care and a cage they may never leave to no fault of their own or the often dedicated shelter staff.

The root of the issue is a lack of spaying and neutering, and local laws that do not provide repercussions for individuals who perpetuate this issue.

“It's not fair to them. They're not asking to be born into an overpopulated community,” said Missy Platts.

Missy Platts is the office manager at the Friends for Life Center, the Animal Advocates’ adoption facility. She has been working with the rescue for six years and sees the overpopulation issue first-hand on a daily basis.

“When they're born, they're looked at as a problem,” said Platts. “And they’re born because of the problems that we have, which are no restrictions and people are not made to get their animals spayed and neutered.”

To aid in their continued effort against overpopulation and serving the animals of Barnwell County, the Animal Advocates partnered with Big Dog Ranch (BDR) – a national rescue whose mission is to rescue, rehabilitate, and educate until every dog has a loving home.

BDR has saved over 50,000 dogs since 2008, and recently expanded their facilities from their base in West Palm Beach, Florida, to a newly built rescue in Shorter, Alabama.

The rescue in Alabama was formerly a greyhound training and racing facility and has been converted into a place where dogs can come for solace rather than be used as gambling pawns. This transition particularly impressed Laura Buice, Barnwell County Animal Shelter Foundation member who visited the Alabama facility alongside Scott, Platts, and others.

“It went from being such a negative place to such a positive place,” said Buice.

The Animal Advocates have sponsored a building set to be used as an intake/quarantine/evaluation area where the needs of each dog will be assessed to best place them in the many areas of the facility.

“They will stay there at least 10 days, and that's where they evaluate if they need to be spayed, neutered, medically treated, need heartworm treatment or ready for adoption,” said Scott.

BDR is partnering with the College of Veterinary Medicine at Tuskegee University and Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine as well as a New York based orthopedic surgeon who flies south once a month to ensure every dog at BDR receives prompt and necessary care.

In this partnership, the Animal Advocates is required to send a biography of each dog being sent to the ranch and is only required to perform the first set of vaccinations. BDR will then handle spaying/neutering and any needed procedures.

“It’s going to have a huge difference in the number of dogs being sent [out of county] to be adopted,” said Barnwell County Animal Shelter Foundation member Denise Elkins.

John Simpson has been involved with the Animal Advocates since 2015, and after visiting the BDR facility feels this is a much-needed partnership.

“It'll increase our abilities to rescue. There's so many dogs and cats in Barnwell County that need help,” said Simpson. “Right now we're just busting at the seams, we don't have space for anymore.”

Scott finds only one negative in this partnership: BDR does not accept ‘purebred’ pitbulls. During the visit, Scott took note of some of the dogs who looked like pitbulls, but were mixed with another breed allowing them to reside at the ranch.

Although Scott finds this part of the partnership to be less than desired, she hopes it will allow more space and funds to be available for pitbulls here as other breeds clear the shelters.

Scott hopes this breed prejudice will not counteract the amount of dogs headed to BDR, even though pitbulls are historically the most common breed in the shelter through no fault of their own.

With this partnership, between 16 to 30 dogs will be transported via a souped-up Greyhound Bus to the Alabama rescue each month to receive any needed medical care and hopefully a permanent home they are unlikely to find in Barnwell County based on adoption statistics.

“We get very few adoptions from Barnwell County. Ours are from other cities in South Carolina, other states even,” said Scott.

The Animal Advocates frequently pulls animals from the Barnwell County Animal Shelter to either house at their facility, find a foster home, or send north to another partnering rescue.

However, their Friends for Life Center is only so big and the overpopulation issue is larger than imaginable.

With this partnership, fewer dogs will be the responsibility of the shelter and therefore the county will ultimately save money.

“We'll be pulling from the county shelter and this is going to save the county and us money,” said Scott.

An asset of BDR that particularly impressed Scott and other advocates who visited the facility was their policy toward active duty servicemembers and veterans.

“I was very impressed with the fact that they train service dogs for veterans, and I was even more impressed that they board dogs for people that have been deployed while they're gone and they do it for free,” said Scott. “That tells me a lot about their character and integrity.”

BDR shares many of the same morals as The Animal Advocates, according to Scott who feels “their philosophies are very much like ours.”

Scott hopes to not only aid the animal crisis in Barnwell County with this partnership, but also in Allendale County.

“We intend to not only help Barnwell County and our animal shelter, but we also want to help the Allendale shelter because they need help too,” said Scott.

This partnership marks a new beginning for many dogs in Barnwell and surrounding counties.