All Our Dogs Come From TRACS

Why I support Thompson River Animal Care Shelter

On a cold night two Decembers ago, my mom arranged to foster a dog from the shelter where she volunteered.

Max had been at TRACS for too long. Born in Texas, he and his siblings had contracted a horrible skin condition that made them lose all their fur and turned them red all over.

After TRACS paid to transport them up to Montana (they were in a kill shelter in Texas), they spent months at a ranch for troubled youths being trained to feel comfortable around humans. Still, Max was desperately scared.

When the siblings’ fur grew back, all but Max were adopted. He languished in the shelter, terrified of all who came near. This is when my mom stepped in. He needed to go to a home for a little while, get in a new environment.

I went with my mom into town to meet the man who had transported Max down from TRACS and was transferring him to us. As my mom stood talking with the man outside the car, I looked in back and saw Max’s glistening eyes through the bars of his carrier. I felt an instant connection.

“I will never leave you,” I told him.

My parents, who I live with, insisted that we wouldn’t be adopting a third dog. Max was only passing through. I begged and pleaded, explaining my promise to him. They wouldn’t budge.

Not, that is, until a week later, when they decided that Max was unadoptable — by anyone but us. They figured he was so scared that no one would want him, so we had to give him a home. I was overjoyed.

Max is part of the family now and my parents are as attached to him as I am. He will never be able to walk on a leash or go out in public, but he’s happy as a clam running loose at the river with his “sister,” Leia.

Leia came from the TRACS shelter, too. This summer, after my dog-of-a-lifetime, Casey, died, I had a gaping hole in my heart. We had lost Casey and our Chihuahua mix, Angel, in the space of a year and it felt unnatural to have only one dog in the house.

So we went up to TRACS — Thompson River Animal Care Shelter — in search of another. My mom and I had one in mind, a 45-pound female who resembled Casey.

When we walked into the dog building to fetch her, we were met with a storm of barking. I was struck by just how many dogs there were — two per kennel, each jumping up eagerly for us to pet them. I wanted desperately to give each of them a home.

The gorgeous girl didn’t work out because our cats were afraid of her and Max was too jealous of her size, so she had to go back to TRACS after her two-day trial period. I was devastated.

But the next Friday, when I was in the painful throes of what turned out to be appendicitis, my mom brought home a ten-pound Chihuahua girl who I named Leia, after Princess Leia in Star Wars.

Leia came to have a legend, too. Four days after we adopted her, she vanished from the yard. My parents were gone, so I searched for her alone, traipsing through pastures in 100-degree heat, my appendix scar still throbbing. There was no sign of her.

Later, my parents and neighbors couldn’t find her, either. For the next two and a half days, we searched and waited, searched and waited. My dad slept outside in case she came home during the night.

Nothing. Then, a woman who had seen our posts on Facebook said she thought she saw Leia cross the road in the dark. I had just gone to bed so, unbeknownst to me, my parents went down, looked around fruitlessly, and returned back up the driveway. Once back in the house, my mom opened the door to let Max out.

And there was Leia on the porch! She had followed their scent up the driveway. My parents came into my room and turned on the light. I woke up blearily. “Guess what?” my dad said happily. I was shocked to see Leia cuddled up in my mom’s arms.

Our other Chihuahua, Angel, nearly had an adventure on the way home from TRACS. As my mom and I were driving down the highway, Angel stepped on the controls to the window and opened it halfway. She then stuck her body out and was about to plop out onto the road when we pulled over and got the window closed again. We learned to put on the child lock after that!

Back in 2009, I got to see TRACS in its infancy. Not even a week before, I had returned from a year of grad school in Scotland. Now I was finally going to get the dog that I had longed for.

Naturally, I would adopt. I knew that a staggering amount of unwanted animals were killed in shelters each year and I wanted to give a shelter dog a home.

I had composed long lists of potential names in Microsoft Word, but as I rode in the car up to TRACS, I suddenly thought, “If it’s a medium-sized, light-colored dog, a good name would be Casey.”

When my parents and I pulled up to TRACS, six or so dogs bounded out of a row of sheds and into chain-link dog runs, barking excitedly. At the end of the row was a white and tan dog with a curly tail, about forty-five pounds. “That’s Casey!” I thought.

And the rest was history:

I support TRACS not just because all our dogs since 2009 have come from there, but because they are a no-kill shelter with a 98% adoption rate. Hundreds of dogs pass through there every year and they adopt out nearly all of them. It’s amazing.

As a volunteer and later an employee, my mom has seen first-hand the dedication of the staff who serve the animals. Every effort is made to give each dog and cat the best home. Often, if an animal has special needs or has been in the shelter for a long time, a staff member will adopt them themselves.

If you’re looking for an animal shelter to donate to this holiday season, please consider TRACS. It’s a small shelter in rural Montana that doesn’t get much attention. Big charities like the Humane Society and ASPCA get a lot of donations, but it’s the small shelters that need money the most.

Writing Prompt: Emma Vincent asked, “What cause do you care about and why?”