Bringing Mila Home
Tax deductible
Hi Everyone,
If you know our rescue, you know we hate having to ask our friends for help, but Reggie's Friends has had some very unexpected and costly events occur in the last few days and unfortunately we don't know what else to do.
For those who don't know us we are a foster-based dog rescue in Houston, TX and we have had a lot of success finding dogs homes both locally and in other states. In fact, we are very close to celebrating our 400th adoption! The way we get pups to their new out-of-state forever homes is usually through the United Petsafe program which flies them directly from Houston to their new home so it’s as quick and painless as it can be. While this is a fairly stress-free method, it isn’t cheap…and like a lot of other rescues we are 100% volunteer-run (everyone from the director of the rescue all the way down to our loving foster families) and we get lucky if we even break even on our adoptions given the flight cost and all the vet care that the pups require. So, when something big happens, we don’t have much of a reserve to dig in to which is why now we are turning to our community for any help they are willing to offer.
Enter Mila: a very sweet, beautiful girl who survived on the mean streets of Houston with her two babies and who made such huge strides becoming a normal, spoiled dog thanks to her foster parents (LaChrystal and Mike Ricke, founders of Reggie’s Friends). She was adopted by a family in Seattle who was very excited for her arrival. Unfortunately there was an accident when she got there and Mila was able to escape from the family at the airport and was at large in a strange city, alone and afraid. We had all sorts of amazing (repeat, AMAZING) volunteers step up for us to help search for Mila, but she proved to be too elusive on the first night she was missing. Not being able to handle the helplessness of being stuck here while her girl was missing, LaChrystal got on the next flight to Seattle, rented a car, got a hotel room all on her own dime in order to hit the street to look for her Mila.
LaChrystal was able to track Mila down to a cemetery but was only able to get within a certain distance. She could tell Mila was injured, and the stress in Mila’s brain probably would not allow her to accept any human help at that point. So LaChrystal sat there, about 100 feet away for hours upon hours until her very good friend had the sense to drag her out of the cemetery around midnight. They set a humane trap with a bed and some food, and hoped to come back to a safely-contained Mila the next day.
The next day started out with disappointment: they came back to the cemetery to find an empty trap. Mila had slid the bed out the other side of the trap just enough to get the food, but she was nowhere to be found. LaChrystal drove around to make sure Mila hadn’t gotten hit by a car, and eventually located her resting by a big tree in a field. LaChrystal started off sitting at the same distance (about 100 feet) and scooted closer very slowly so as not to set off Mila’s alarm. Another wonderful volunteer came out and brought her pup to see if that would peak Mila’s interest and it did which allowed Mila to get close enough to actually realize that the person calling her name all this time was her mom! Once she finally realized this LaChrystal was able to get Mila on a leash and in her arms. Lots of happy tears and a vet visit later, Mila is safe and sound with an absolutely fantastic foster family. She will need to see the vet again later in the week, but for now she is safe. We want to thank and acknowledge everyone in Seattle that called, emailed, networked, and came out to help us. We feel so lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives and we could not have done this without your support.
If you have it in your heart to contribute to all the various costs that went into making sure this beautiful girl was found safe we would absolutely appreciate it. It was a pretty big financial hit to our little rescue but if we had to go back and do it over we wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. We have Mila and that’s what matters.
If you’d like to read about the story you can check out this article: http://abc13.com/pets/shelter-volunteer-from-tx-flies-to-find-runaway-dog/1441629/
If you know our rescue, you know we hate having to ask our friends for help, but Reggie's Friends has had some very unexpected and costly events occur in the last few days and unfortunately we don't know what else to do.
For those who don't know us we are a foster-based dog rescue in Houston, TX and we have had a lot of success finding dogs homes both locally and in other states. In fact, we are very close to celebrating our 400th adoption! The way we get pups to their new out-of-state forever homes is usually through the United Petsafe program which flies them directly from Houston to their new home so it’s as quick and painless as it can be. While this is a fairly stress-free method, it isn’t cheap…and like a lot of other rescues we are 100% volunteer-run (everyone from the director of the rescue all the way down to our loving foster families) and we get lucky if we even break even on our adoptions given the flight cost and all the vet care that the pups require. So, when something big happens, we don’t have much of a reserve to dig in to which is why now we are turning to our community for any help they are willing to offer.
Enter Mila: a very sweet, beautiful girl who survived on the mean streets of Houston with her two babies and who made such huge strides becoming a normal, spoiled dog thanks to her foster parents (LaChrystal and Mike Ricke, founders of Reggie’s Friends). She was adopted by a family in Seattle who was very excited for her arrival. Unfortunately there was an accident when she got there and Mila was able to escape from the family at the airport and was at large in a strange city, alone and afraid. We had all sorts of amazing (repeat, AMAZING) volunteers step up for us to help search for Mila, but she proved to be too elusive on the first night she was missing. Not being able to handle the helplessness of being stuck here while her girl was missing, LaChrystal got on the next flight to Seattle, rented a car, got a hotel room all on her own dime in order to hit the street to look for her Mila.
LaChrystal was able to track Mila down to a cemetery but was only able to get within a certain distance. She could tell Mila was injured, and the stress in Mila’s brain probably would not allow her to accept any human help at that point. So LaChrystal sat there, about 100 feet away for hours upon hours until her very good friend had the sense to drag her out of the cemetery around midnight. They set a humane trap with a bed and some food, and hoped to come back to a safely-contained Mila the next day.
The next day started out with disappointment: they came back to the cemetery to find an empty trap. Mila had slid the bed out the other side of the trap just enough to get the food, but she was nowhere to be found. LaChrystal drove around to make sure Mila hadn’t gotten hit by a car, and eventually located her resting by a big tree in a field. LaChrystal started off sitting at the same distance (about 100 feet) and scooted closer very slowly so as not to set off Mila’s alarm. Another wonderful volunteer came out and brought her pup to see if that would peak Mila’s interest and it did which allowed Mila to get close enough to actually realize that the person calling her name all this time was her mom! Once she finally realized this LaChrystal was able to get Mila on a leash and in her arms. Lots of happy tears and a vet visit later, Mila is safe and sound with an absolutely fantastic foster family. She will need to see the vet again later in the week, but for now she is safe. We want to thank and acknowledge everyone in Seattle that called, emailed, networked, and came out to help us. We feel so lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives and we could not have done this without your support.
If you have it in your heart to contribute to all the various costs that went into making sure this beautiful girl was found safe we would absolutely appreciate it. It was a pretty big financial hit to our little rescue but if we had to go back and do it over we wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. We have Mila and that’s what matters.
If you’d like to read about the story you can check out this article: http://abc13.com/pets/shelter-volunteer-from-tx-flies-to-find-runaway-dog/1441629/
Organizer
Michelle Dowell
Organizer
Houston, TX
Reggie S Friends
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.
