Mutt Scouts Love

The Mutt Scouts are at it again! Terrah and Nikki, the two young women behind this small L.A.-based rescue, spend a lot of their time at the city shelters taking pictures of dogs (they are professional photographers) and networking them around the Web and local pet community to facilitate adoptions. They also usually have about a dozen or so dogs under their care that they've pulled from the shelters and are trying to rehome.

Which would all be fine and good, but the thing about the Mutt Scouts is that they rescue the dogs that need rescuing the most: dogs with f'ed up legs and twisted spines; dogs with weird neurological problems or eye issues; dogs with "so-called" behavioral issues; red-listers, all.

It's a no-brainer to rescue a purebred puppy or a trendy breed (not to malign any kind of rescue - I'm just saying.). It's less easy to pull a dog like Sonja (above), who was brought in to the South L.A. shelter as a stray with a tire mark across her back, who probably has some damage to her spine and cannot straighten her rear legs or walk normally. Her vet bill is already in the thousands. If Terrah or Nikki connect with a dog, they will go to great lengths to see that that dog gets the care and love it deserves, often at great risk to their own organization.

Some might say that with the money spent on a single special-needs dog you could rescue two or three or four others, and that may be true, but there is something so wonderful and beautiful about the obvious compassion that these two women bring to dog rescuing; how, in the end, it's about saving a dog's life and sticking with that dog the whole way no matter what the bigger picture looks like. And when economic reality becomes too overwhelming to ignore, how they're still out there at the shelters taking pictures - still networking, still trying to get the dogs out.

That's love.

As I was saying some paragraphs earlier, the Mutt Scouts recently rescued sweet little Sonya, a 2-year-old boxer mix, and are already knee deep in vet bills. (This on top of a handful of their other dogs who have various, very expensive medical issues.) They need help. They need donations.

You can go to their Web site and see the dogs they've rescued; you can read about them on Terrah's dog blog and witness their commitment for yourself; and you can contribute the $20 that you could spend on a movie and a box of popcorn and help one of their dogs conquer a debilitating condition and have a better life, instead.

You know you want to. It's grassroots activism at its finest.

The Mutt Scouts

Sonja at the shelter before her rescue last week