Dear Maureen,

To get started quickly, do it yourself. Apply to whatever body in the US issues charitable status so that you can issue tax-deductible receipts; draft your aims; put an ad in the paper that you want to network with dog rescue groups in your area (they are everywhere). Only make local adoptions, resist the glamour of shipping dogs all over the country. That is shuffling - not rescue. Do not trust anyone who applies to you for a dog - when a person wants something that you have, they will try to figure out what you want to hear to convince you to let them have it. Do three screenings by three different dog-wise associates; do a home visit but do not leave the dog. Give adoptors time to change their minds - before the dog has to make a scary change. Try to make adoptions only to people who someone you know knows so that they are not complete strangers. Do not finalize the adoption until you are sure. Do not ignore or try to explain away any "bad feelings" you get about a potential adoptor - they are red flags and are real. Do not adopt to people who are very busy and where the dog will be alone for long hours. Do not adopt to anyone who would crate a dog for any reason (except if recovering from surgery, but we have not ever found even that necessary). Ask "innocent" leading questions that will reveal if the adoptor ever abandoned a dog, ever had a yard dog (the mention of a doghouse is a sign), or would leave a dog unattended in a yard for any reason. Who looks after the dog when its family is on holidays? Does the dog jump in the car and go with the adoptor just because it's more fun to ride around in the car than stay at home? Is the dog ever shut away in a room? Treat every rescue like one of your own dogs and you would not give one of your own dogs to someone sight unseen. Sterilize, tattoo and microchip every dog that you help; if you do not you cannot know if that dog is in trouble and needs you, and that is not true rescue. Do not move a dog on until it is fully rehabilitated. If you do, it will only have to go through the misery of being moved around and around and that is not true rescue. Only do as many dogs as you can give exactly what you would give your own. Getting overburdened, with too little money, too few helpers, and too many dogs is not truly rescuing.

And set 50% of your time aside for advocacy. If you don't, you are only enabling abuse and abandonment - you become one of the cogs in the wheel of cruelty.

Good luck,
AAS