Moving Puppies Out of the Midsouth
After spending part of our day at the Ripley Trade Market nightmare, it was wonderful to spend some time with Meridith Perry, the president of Midsouth Animal Welfare Foundation, whose rescue partners with OPH(our rescue) in Mississippi to save dogs.Blond, petite, and determined, Meridith has never known a time when she wasn’t rescuing animals. Growing up, before rescuing was a ‘thing’, her parents were always bringing home dogs and cats that the family would foster and then find homes for.In Mississippi, the need is endless and when we arrived at Meridith’s home, what she needed first was pictures of her foster horse, Apache. The sun was just setting, so Nancy set right to work snapping pictures. This was Nancy’s first horse shoot, and while Meridith and I talked, Apache munched grass and occasionally held his head up regally for Nancy, who seemed awfully tickled with her sizably larger subject.
I wished we could scoop Olga up and take her with us. I’m certain she would make a lucky family really happy. Instead, I offered more treats and this smart pup learned really fast that if she held still for a few moments of pictures she’d be rewarded with treats.We didn’t want to hold Meridith up, she’d only just arrived home after a business trip to Orlando for her company Texas Haynets. Meridith designed a haynet to solve the problem of spilled hay in the large hay feeders and then turned her idea into a successful company. I think of my own spilled hay at home, my blacksmith always teases me about ‘all that money on the ground.’ Hay is expensive and hay spilled from feeders is trampled and wasted.Meridith is a get-it-done kind of person and a smart businesswoman (plus she has pink cowboy boots!). She saw a problem and fixed it. If only the problem of unwanted and under-valued animals in Mississippi was as easy to solve.We headed back to our B&B for the night. These are the best accommodations we’ve ever had on one of these trips, courtesy of the woman we will spend the next morning with. Charlotte and her husband Luke moved to Mississippi twenty-five years ago to run a B&B and like so many dog-hearted people, they were sucked into animal rescue and nine years ago Charlotte became the director of the local shelter. I can’t wait to hear her story and share it with you.There are so many incredible people to meet, stories to tell, and dogs to advocate for. Stick with us—we are just getting started.
Until every cage is empty,CaraPlease help us by subscribing (button on right side) to and sharing this blog. You can also keep track of us on Facebook and Instagram.Who Will Let the Dogs Out (we call it Waldo for short) is an initiative of Operation Paws for Homes. If you’d like to contribute to our work, we encourage you to click on the how to help link above and give directly to a shelter. You can also donate to our work via OPH’s donation page by designating Who Will Let the Dogs Out in your comments.My upcoming book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, July 7, 2020) tells the story of not only our foster experience but how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. It is available for preorder now and a portion of proceeds of every book sold will go to help unwanted animals in the south.
Until every cage is empty,CaraPlease help us by subscribing (button on right side) to and sharing this blog. You can also keep track of us on Facebook and Instagram.Who Will Let the Dogs Out (we call it Waldo for short) is an initiative of Operation Paws for Homes. If you’d like to contribute to our work, we encourage you to click on the how to help link above and give directly to a shelter. You can also donate to our work via OPH’s donation page by designating Who Will Let the Dogs Out in your comments.My upcoming book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, July 7, 2020) tells the story of not only our foster experience but how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. It is available for preorder now and a portion of proceeds of every book sold will go to help unwanted animals in the south.
