A haven for the unwanted: Pets find a place to live out their years
Published: February 15, 2006
Six years ago Carlos Arreola purchased a tawny 15-acre plot beneath more types of trees than he can name, just two rights and a left off Interstate 45 in Huntsville.
It was intended as a haven for the 64-year-old — a place to retire, paint, raise a few pets.
But those pets — six adopted donkeys — soon inspired Arreola to change directions entirely.
“I never intended to do anything with dogs or anything except donkeys, but there was such a big need with the humane society,” said Arreola, an animal lover who adopted the rescued donkeys from Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison.
Now his haven has morphed into Little Woman Home for Animals, a nonprofit, no-kill animal shelter with close to 200 animals, mostly dogs and cats.
The term no-kill means animals are not euthanized unless they are in serious pain and cannot be appropriately treated. No-kill organizations are an alternative to the many swamped local shelters that rely on euthanasia — sometimes as many as 80 percent of animals at the shelters are killed — to combat overpopulation.
“Animals that go into (shelters) everywhere, if they have anything wrong with them, if they’re not social, they’re immediately put down,” Arreola said. “Very few of them are kept, and the ones that are kept are the ones they think would be adoptable.”
Little Woman — named after Arreola’s pet Chihuahua who died in 1976 — is a place where cages are rare, food is plentiful and no one says things like “too old,” “too sick” or “too ugly.” It is a place not of injections or incinerators but natural deaths and individual grave sites, topped with engraved headstones when Arreola can afford them.
Sometimes it is also a new life for animals who had been left for dead.
Like Mikey, a 2-year-old pit bull found chained to the railroad tracks in Huntsville.
Or Bounce, an elderly Chihuahua mix who is blind and deaf but lives for hamburgers.
Or Sandy, a nearly 100-pound yellow Lab who was rescued from an abusive home.
“I went to the humane society and said, ‘Give me a dog that you’re never going to be able to find a home for,’ ” he said. “They brought her out, and she was just shaking. Here was this huge dog, just afraid of everybody.”
Now Sandy is a sweet, gentle dog whose biggest problems are getting up on the bed — Arreloa added a ramp so the older animals can also enjoy the comforts of home — and occasional urine puddles on the vinyl floors.
“Some of these guys are getting old, and they pee a lot,” Arreola said.
Marjolein Lemmon, manager of Huntsville’s Rita B. Huff Humane Society, said the society euthanizes between 75 percent and 80 percent of animals brought in. She said she regularly calls on Arreola for animals she knows won’t be adopted.
“We’ll call Little Woman because they have the room for them to pretty much live out their whole lives there,” she said. “In turn, we help them getting theirs spayed and neutered at a low cost.”
Sunny Fulenwider, a 67-year-old retiree, said although she originally contacted the humane society about getting a dog, it was Arreola who called her about a little elderly Shih Tzu.
“I may not have her but three or four more years, but she’s going to have a good home and be spoiled rotten as long as I do have her,” said Fulenwider, who said she fell in love with the dog, which she named Miss Priss, immediately. “It’s hard to find homes for old dogs with medical problems, but this one was such a little cutie. As soon as I saw her I thought, ‘That’s the one.’ ”
Before Arreola’s house could become a shelter, some transformations had to occur, including ripping out the carpet, building kennels and turning a building originally intended for Arreola’s artwork into a “cat studio.” Then he registered the place as a nonprofit organization.
“The concept here is that there’s no cages, so they can go anywhere they want to,” he said, stepping into the spacious, temperature-controlled building cats of all colors and breeds call home.
Because every animal Arreola accepts from the humane society or outside sources is spayed or neutered and checked for health problems, those that are healthy freely roam the building, which Arreola and volunteer Mike Tichi remodeled with their every need in mind.
At one side is a screened porch so the cats can get some air, at the other individual nooks in case they want some alone time. Scattered about are a bed, a recliner and desks for lounging, topped with leopard-print cushions. At any given time cats play, nap, chase and nuzzle. There are 87 here — including more than two dozen brought in after Hurricane Katrina.
Some of the cats also live inside, and kittens get their own room — formerly Arreola’s music room.
“Some of these cats prefer dogs to cats,” he said. “We would bring dogs in with them, and they got used to having dogs around. That’s what we try to do. We try to train the animals to get along with each other.”
By “we” Arreola means his core volunteers: Tichi, his right-hand man; Kent Cole, who does the administrative work; Martha Hutchinson, who cares for the cats in the house; and Mike Atherton, who works in the cat studio.
“It gives us a reason to exist,” Tichi said.
This experience has also changed Arreola, a Vietnam veteran from El Paso who used to be a counselor at the Veterans Affairs Hospital and ran a private practice in Houston.
“I gave my share of time to helping people,” he said. “Now I need to give my equal share to helping animals.”
That share though, has been expensive, time consuming and, at times, exhausting.
It costs about $6,000 a month to pay for medical expenses, food and utilities at the shelter, the majority of which comes from Arreola’s retirement savings and the rest from donations and bequests. Arreola’s hope is to have an on-site art gallery to help fund the place.
“It takes a lot of work to be able to make them no-kill, because you have to have the resources and the planning and really be dedicated,” he said.
Like many no-kill shelters, the adoption process is also more stringent than many shelters. Candidates go through an interview process and a home visit before being considered, and, if approved, they pay a $100 fee and agree to return the animal to Little Woman and receive a refund if it doesn’t work out.
“The SPCA and the humane society are really not the problem,” he said. “The problem is we … have not made a commitment to spaying and neutering.”
As he spoke, the phone rang — a man asking if Arreola was accepting animals. He said he’s not — he’s at capacity — but warned of what would likely happen if he took his pet to a shelter.
In addition to no-kill shelters, some cities, such as San Francisco and New York City, are turning to citywide no-kill doctrines.
Ed Sayres, president and CEO of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said New York City is aiming to become a no-kill city within the next five years. He said that by pinpointing the number of at-risk animals and getting multiple agencies to make a long-term commitment to adoption and spay and neuter programs, it’s doable.
Sayres noted that in the past 30 years, the number of animals euthanized nationally per year has dropped from about 18 million to 5 million.
But with about 90,000 animals coming into Houston and Harris County shelters each year, Cynthia Shaw, shelter operations director for Citizens for Animal Protection, one of the major animal shelters in the area, said Houston has a host of issues to consider before it could go no-kill.
“Houston and the entire southern part of the U.S. has some climatic reasons because the temperatures are warmer, the food is more plentiful,” Shaw said.
Shaw, whose shelter euthanizes about half of the 14,000 animals it accepts yearly, said the ability of animals to be outside and breed year-round compounded with the influx of animals from recent hurricanes makes going no-kill unlikely any time soon.
Until then, Arreola said he is happy with the more than 200 animals who got a second chance from his shelter and the working relationship he has with the local humane society.
“If they can’t get adopted, they will stay here,” Arreola said. “This is going to be their home for the rest of their lives.”
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