The plight of animals in animal control facilities is more than tragic and the reasons for them being there, in many cases, is inexcusable. My husband and I spent eight years working with a rescue pulling victims of abuse, cruelty, and neglect and taking them to the rescue kennel. The director worked tirelessly to find them new homes. The dogs we pulled are more challenging to find homes for than most.

Michael and I volunteered for the Southern California Great Pyrenees Rescue. The dogs coming out of Animal Control shelters have a short time there because of their size. Five Chihuahuas stay in the same size kennel as one Great Pyrenees, and the feed requirements are about the same five to one.

Great Pyrenees dogs are fluffy white or marked white dogs that weigh in more than a hundred pounds for males and more than 90 pounds for females. We’ve seen one that topped the scales at 190 pounds, named Zeus. He looked like a white bear except for the wagging tail. He had feet in the quadruple-X Large size, and his head was as broad as a steer. But he loved people!

Great Pyrenees dogs think for themselves. They guard their owner’s property, livestock, and children from any intruder including bears, wolves, mountain lions, and creepy humans. They were initially bred by the shepherds in the Pyrenees Mountains to guard their flocks.

They do not move herds. That’s the job of herding dogs. They go on duty at dusk and off at dawn. They alert at any sound they find unusual. Translated, they bark at night. They sleep most of the day. They go over five-foot fences in the blink of an eye. They decide what is friend and what is foe and they are smarter about that than their humans.

They are not bothered by hot or cold weather because of their double coats. They shed like crazy twice each year when they “blow out” their coats to grow new ones. They need regular grooming. They take up the entire couch or six square feet of flooring. They do not do well off leash in public because they tend to wander, especially the males. But, this breed forms attachments to their owners that are so special, they will do anything to protect them, even if it costs them their lives. They are sweet, loving, affectionate, and huge.

We had one occasion to pick up a four-year-old male in Bakersfield, California, a two and a half hour drive from home. We were to take the dog to the rescue kennel, another thirty-minutes in the opposite direction. With a lunch stop along the way, we expected this to take most of the day.

When we got to Bakersfield, the animal control officer asked us to breed-identify four puppies they’d picked up the previous day. He said they found them in a field eating carrion and they were throwing up. The puppies hadn’t been seen by the vet yet. The AC personnel didn’t know if they were throwing up because of what they ate or if they were sick. We immediately identified them as Pyrenees.

The officer offered to give us the puppies if we would take them to our vet, no paperwork or fees. We paid the bail-out fee on the adult male and wondered how we were going to get him and four puppies back to San Bernardino in our small SUV.  Those puppies needed help!  They had almost no hair on their bodies from starvation. One puppy had no toes on one of his front feet. AC estimated them about six-months-old, and they were skin and bone. They were affection starved and desperately scared. But, being Pyrenees puppies, they were each the size of our 60-pound lab yearling. That was a lot of dog-flesh to stuff into our small SUV for the three and a half hour drive to the vet. We worried how the older male would take confinement with four active puppies.

We put the older dog in our vehicle first and carried the puppies one at a time. The dog sniffed each one as they came in. He was the best babysitter we could have. The puppies roughhoused in the back for the first 30 miles then laid down to sleep. Two of them gave me a near heart attack while they played and stepped on the electric window opener as I drove 70 miles an hour down the freeway. Mike handled the puppies while I rolled the window back up and set the child lock. The dog stayed up with the puppies and napped when the last puppy slept.

Puppies are like children. They sleep in short bursts. When they wake up, they need to relieve themselves. We were on a freeway with no collars and leashes for the pups and no safe place to turn off the road. One by one the pups woke, went to the back of the vehicle and peed. Once all four pups did their business, the older dog went to the same place and did the same. We had Lake Pyrenees in the back of our SUV!

I congratulated my husband for his purchase of the expensive rimmed cargo mat he bought. It saved our vehicle! We tossed the dog blanket it contained when we got home.

Our trip was in August. The temperature in Bakersfield was 112 when we left and 102 in San Bernardino when we pulled into the vet’s parking lot. The air conditioning in our vehicle kept us comfortable. The doggie smell was a bit much, so we kept the front windows cracked for fresh air during the drive. The vet’s office was closed for lunch when we arrived and not scheduled to open for an hour.  We couldn’t sit in our car, engine running and air conditioning on full blast, for that long with the dog and puppies in the back. The puppies were wide awake and wanted to play! None of them threw up during the drive, but more ominously, they hadn’t pooped yet either.

Fortunately, this vet had a small unlocked yard beside the office for people and pets. We rushed the puppies, two at a time, to the dog yard and set them down before rushing back for the other two and finally the older dog.

No sooner did we set them down in the dog yard but they each pooped!

One of the employees came out the rear door heading for her lunch and saw us. She made arrangements for us to take the dogs inside the office right away.

We made our delivery and headed for home. We followed up with the director of the rescue. The puppies were diagnosed with early-stage Parvo Virus. They all survived. The older male was quarantined because of his contact with them but never got the disease. The puppy with no toes on his front foot suffered a congenital birth defect. He had difficulty walking on hard or asphalt surfaces but was fine on carpet or grass.

Within four months the puppies were unrecognizable. Food and care did magic for them. Their eyes cleared, their hair grew, they gained weight, and they each found adoptive homes. Little Toe-Toe, the deformed puppy, found a home with a disabled child with special needs. He’s still looking after that young man today. The ringleader of the group, now Willie, lives in the lap of luxury. The other two got great homes with families of their own.

Mike and I adopted or fostered several. We adopted Boomer first and became a part of the rescue volunteer crew. We fostered Molly and Dolly, a mother and daughter pair found wandering an industrial park in Chula Vista nearly starved to death. Molly passed away 11 months later of congestive heart failure. Dolly lived another three years.

We got Ben, who was picked up in the center divider of the freeway near Bakersfield after we lost Boomer to liver disease. We fostered Samantha, who was in the night-drop-off at North San Diego County Humane, flea and tick riddled, starved, and scared to death of people.

We fostered Alpine, another Bakersfield wanderer after we lost Ben to a heart attack. We fostered Sahara, who’d been owner relinquished because of a cross-country move, after three years at the rescue kennel. Samantha and Sahara passed away at 14 years a month apart. Most recently, we took in Piper, an 8-year-old female whose owner has terminal brain cancer. And we would do it all again!