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Saving Kayla

If you are reading this, chances are you are an animal rescuer. You know better than anyone the satisfaction experienced when you save the life of an animal.
Unfortunately you probably also know first hand the horror and desperation experienced when the animal you have tried to save, is executed in front of your very eyes when there was a rescue willing to save the animal. If you are an animal rescuer I would please ask you to SHARE this post today, in the hope,, that something like this doesn’t happen again.

We all know those cases, we all remember those names… Oreo, Scruffy, Lennox and so many others animals that were executed through no fault of their own just because someone, usually a disgruntled shelter manager or petty civil servant decides to make it his “mission” to have the animal killed. But what we didn’t see before is an animal advocate condemning an animal to death, and that’s what would have happened yesterday had we not intervened.

Yesterday in Nashville (North Carolina), a tired, old and beaten up old dog, initially reported missing two toes, limping, full of fleas and ticks and with the kind of hair that tells a tale of abandonment and neglect found herself at the end of the road. Below is the post written by Carol Vierela, Founder of Nash County Animal Friends, and the person whose mission was to save this animal.

To sum it up… Kayla had hours to live, she was too old to attract anyone’s attention, too tired and sick for any rescue to show an interest, and, to add insult to injury, although she did look like a Belgium Shepherd, a Breed Specific Rescue group considered that she wasn’t 100% pure breed, so they left her behind to die.

At that stage, without an adoptant, without a foster and with merely hours pending a brutal execution in the gas chamber (she wrote lethal injection but no the gas chamber is Nashville preferred method of killing) Carol Vierela made a last plea.

Kayla had three hours to live….

A couple of comments, but noone really came forward.

This was too much for us to bear so we decided to take on the case and launch our own plea.

Within minutes, we had a foster available in Texas, and we committed ourselves to pay all necessary veterinary treatments for poor Kayla.

At that point we contacted Carol Vierela, and the answer was NO. Kayla would not be rescued and would surely die. She was first on the list. But we were told: “Come get her Viktor if you want…”

And so we did…

A few calls to some good friends and Kayla was pulled by the SPCA Alliance of North Carolina on our behalf. We would be responsible for all of Kayla’s veterinary, transport and rehoming expenses, responsibility that we accepted with pleasure, because that’s what we do, because we save animals from extreme situations, and nothing as extreme as what we witnessed yesterday.

Nashville County Animal Friends turned out to be not so good friends of Kayla after all. Vierela’s answer and refusal to save Kayla was puzzling specially considering that last year, Let’s Adopt! Global rescued close to 100 animals in what is probably the largest rescue by a single organization ever to take place in that shelter. During that operation Let’s Adopt! spent tens of thousands of dollars in veterinary bills, material purchases, crates, we transported animals both by air and by road to all corners of the USA and to Europe. It was amazing, it was beautiful, it was awe inspiring…. but it was far too much for an old fox defending the status quo. The rescue operation stopped for two reasons:

1. We audited the expenses submitted by Carol Vierela and we realized we had been probably paying for the bills of other rescues. Vierela was notified, and in what we took as the acceptance of their mistake, she didn’t mentioned the matter again.

2.  Whilst we were moving Heaven and Earth (literally) to rescue all those animals, right at the same time, Vierela systematically defended the methods an rationale for killing. There would be no N0-Kill in Nash County.. the excuses for not pushing for that goal were too many to enumerate here, but amongst them: Rural population, too difficult, you cannot change old minds, bla bla bla…

The situation couldn’t stand. We had to stop rescuing from Nashville (NC). Whilst we conducted our campaign no promoted animal died… the moment we left, they started dying again.

But where is Kayla now? Kayla is with us, at our vet…

Kayla is now with us being treated for a variety of ailments, including being Heartworm positive and having a tumor in one of her paws. Kayla was covered in ticks and fleas and at this moment we don’t know what else she may have.

Kayla is the type of dog most rescues will shy away from. She is very old, 12 or 13 years old, she is sick with a disease that is quite cumbersome to treat, and she is probably going to need thousands of dollars in veterinary bills. In the traditional rescue system in the USA noone is going to pay an adoption fee for a dog like Kayla.. so why bother? Which is good for us, because Kayla’s case is precisely the type for which we were created.

We need a very special person to open her home to Kayla. She is an amazing dog and deserves to spend the last years of her life in peace and dignity.

To show you how big our commitment to our dogs is, Let’s Adopt! will cover all of Kayla’s veterinary bills for as long as she lives. For life.

I don’t know of any rescue that offers this kind of commitment. We do.

Would you want to offer a final place for Kayla? Please contact me: viktor@myletsadopt.com

Please, if you can and you in your heart to help an old dog abandoned by everyone, including those that were meant to save her, please, contribute to Kayla’s Chipin today.. This will really help her.

Viktor

P.S. We will be providing periodic updates to our donors about the evolution of Kayla’s condition.