Visiting the Heart of Lucky Dog’s Life Saving Work
On a weekend in early April, I joined 6 Lucky Dog volunteers along with our CEO to visit Lucky Dog's Rescue Campus in Florence, SC, and several shelters that the Rescue Campus works with. The Rescue Campus is our facility where animals get medical treatment and care from loving staff and volunteers until they are ready to come to DC to find their forever homes. We came to see the places where the dogs we work to find homes for come from; we left with a renewed sense of purpose for this lifesaving mission.
We visited 3 shelters in communities that surround the Campus in Florence. Our first stop was at Horry County Animal Care, where the animal population far exceeds the facility’s capacity, to the point where they’ve converted storage facilities to make more room. Like all the places we visited, a dedicated animal-loving staff fights to save as many animals as they can, challenged with limited resources and a continuing demand from the community to handle surrendered and stray animals.
Our next stop was the Marion County Shelter, where in spite of recent facility expansions, they still had great challenges handling the volume of animals from the local community. Our hearts went out to these dogs, waiting in a crowded facility and just hoping to have a human family. We gave walks to as many of them as we could, just to give them a chance to be outside, and spend time wandering like a dog should.
Our final stop was Darlington County Humane Society, which had only recently moved into a brand-new state-of-the art facility. With play areas easily accessible from the kennels, which are themselves designed to keep the dogs safe without constraining movement, we were glad to see these dogs had an improved situation. Even these dogs, however, yearn for a human family, and as we walked by each pen, they tugged at our hearts. And in spite of this excellent new facility, even here they have an “overflow” facility to help them manage the population.
At each location, we identified several dogs to come to the Rescue Campus and eventually find homes in the DMV area. After visiting the partner shelters, we returned to the Rescue Campus to conduct some playgroups with dogs there, and give them a chance for walks outside their kennels.
While Lucky Dog is able to accomplish much with the current campus facilities, our visits to the partner shelters reinforced the need for continued expansion of the campus, and recharged our passion for bringing as many dogs as we can to the DC area to find them loving homes.