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The Strange, Sad Story of the Local Animal Rescue
dozen cats, a few caged birds, two pigs (one fatter than
the other), and somewhere around 150 dogs: along
ft with two women. Sue Wells and Lynette Rowe, these
are the denizens of 19 acres of land in Elbert County known—welt
formerly known—as Northeast Georgia Canine Angels Rescue and
Referral, Inc. The property is mostly grassy—it was probably a cow
pasture not long ago—and is lined with large fenced pens holding
five to 10 dogs each. Near the two-lane country road that runs •
past the rescue sits a mobile home; in and around the house live
the 12 cats. The cockatoos are close by, but are unperturbed by
their feline neighbors. On the side of the trailer farthest from the
large dog pens are 15 or so small chain-link enclosures holding one
dog each. The pigs go where they please: a round, pink domestic
fellow mostly keeps to an ancient barn, and a black-haired, tusked
wild hog named Boris who was rescued as a piglet and suckled on
a baby bottle, roams the property.
The pigs, cats and birds have little to worry about, but the vast
majority of the dogs are on their way out of Dewy Rose, GA sooner
or later—likely sooner. All but 15 of them (15 are allowed tc
private citizens by county ordinance) are due to be gone by June
20, though as of this writing it is unclear whether the Georgia
Department of Agriculture even accepts that date. By the agricul
ture department's books, the dogs were to have departed on Friday,
June 2 and Saturday, June 3. Wells signed a consent order May 9
in order to avoid a court hearing (she signed it "under duress," she
says), in which she agreed that the state would have the power to
place any dogs that were not adopted by the June 3 deadline.
But when state officials arrived at Canine Angels on the morn
ing of June 2, they found the couple and their 150 dogs in the
company o f a small group of loyal supporters led by their new
friend Don hill, who stood at the cattle gate by the entrance
to the property wearing his cowboy hat and told the Animal
Protection officials that they couldn't take the dogs away. They
weren't Canine Angels' dogs any more, he politely informed them,
so they weren't the state's to give away.
Three days before. Hill had helped Jim Willis, an author
and animal advocate in North Carolina, adopt every dog on the
place. Willis, who founded an organization called the Tiergarten
Sanctuary Trust while living in Germany, had learned of Wells and
Rowe's legal troubles this spring through an active network (work
ing mostly on the Internet) of animal advocates—most of them
fiercely "no-kill" in philosophy—around the United States and the
world. Hill, who is currently caring for a family member in Augusta,
but whose professional career has been in animal control and
rescue, also learned about the situation recently through another
Elbert County rescuer from whom he’d once adopted a dog. Along .
with supporters from Elbert County and Athens who stand by Wells
and Rowe and see a crucially important no-kill facility (where the
state sees a overwhelmed and overpopulated one). Hill and Willis
stepped in at the 11th hour to buy the shelter a little more time.
But newfound help and last-ditch gambits are only the most recent
parts of the strange Canine Angels story.
Good Intentions
Sue Wells, a former neonatal intensive care nurse at Athens
Regional Medical Center, started a small rescue out of her Eastside
home in 1999. Eventually, the no-kill operation got too big for
Canine Angels co-founder Sue Wells with Bogey, one of the
rescue's dogs who has a new home lined up.
town, so she and Rowe bought the land in Dewy Rose. With more
land, the number of dogs they housed grew. Volunteers helped
with the tasks of running the place, and donations helped buy
food and veterinary care. They even accepted dogs, Wells says.
from their friend Spanky Reed, then an Animal Control officer for
Elbert County. Eventually, according to Wells, Reed turned against
the couple. She accompanied state agriculture officials on their
routine inspections, and soon they were cited by the state agricul
ture department's Animal Protection section. The record of state
law violations goes back to February of 2004, according to Venessa
Sims-Green, a manager in Animal Protection. Sims-Green says the
shelter's violations have had mainly to do with cleanliness: feces
piling up in the dog pens and cat urine inside the house. The grass
was too high, too, she says, the dogs' water not fresh enough nor
their food always plentiful enough, and some of the dogs had de
veloped a pack mentality for lack of sufficient human interaction.
The heart of the problem: there were too many dogs, and from the
state's perspective. Wells and Rowe were having a hard time ad
equately taking care of them all. Reed gives the same assessment,
saying she's never doubted the good intentions of her one-time
friends. But, like many observers, she says the operation was get
ting too big for just two women to handle.
Around the same time, the couple had two successive house
guests, each of whom came to their home terminally ill, and each
of whom passed away after a short stay there. One was Wells'
mother, and the other was a close friend who left her own 12 dogs
behind when she died.
As the number of dogs increased and the state recorded vio
lations, Wells and Rowe saw drop-offs in volunteer help and in
charitable contributions. Wells takes time to adopt dogs out to the
right people. She looks for a good match in temperament. As her
supply of help dwindled, she found less time to adopt dogs out of
the shelter. The number of dogs continued to grow and the state
kept citing the shelter; Canine Angels had nearly 250 dogs last
summer.
Battle Lines Drawn
For her part. Wells doesn't deny that the rescue reached a low
point after the deaths of her mother and her friend. She doesn't
deny the violations recorded by state officials. But she doesn't un
derstand the Department of Agriculture's continued aggressiveness
against her shelter, given the improvements she and Rowe have
made. The number of dogs is now near 150, and they all appear
well-fed, well-cared for, and well enough socialized. In late May
and in the first week of June of this year, many of the dogs' coats
looked ragged, as they hadn't all been groomed and trimmed for
summer. But none of the dogs were thin (some were a little fat),
their pens were all clean, and they mostly looked happy.
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