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A few years ago, a local girl received the gift of a camera and what she did with it altered the lives of hundreds of dogs in the Little Rock animal shelter. She began taking photos of the homeless dogs and sending them to her friends. One of those friends suggested she start a website and post the photos there.

Last Chance Arkansas was born and eventually became the domain of its current executive director, Carrie Kessler in 2005. The organization gained nonprofit status and began networking with animal rescue groups all over the country. Like many local rescue groups, Last Chance aimed to get good dogs and cats into good homes, but then the Internet connected the organization with Mosaic Rescue in Canada and helped Kessler narrow her focus: good dogs that were heartworm positive.

Often a dog that has tested positive for heartworm is unadoptable at the shelter. The treatment can cost hundreds of dollars, Kessler said.

Many people are unable to cover the costs when their pet becomes infected, so the animal is abandoned. Once they end up at the shelter, the added costs of treatment for heartworm-positive dogs and cats is often a turn-off for potential adopters.

Mosaic Rescue’s Janet Land saw this problem from her home in British Columbia — where heartworm infection is rare and the shelters have a shortage of adoptable dogs. Land runs Mosaic Rescue and offered a deal to Last Chance Arkansas: You find the dogs worth saving, and I’ll pay for their treatment, their transportation and find them good homes in Canada.

“We have animal control facilities here, and they place dogs, but we don’t have the same numbers,” Land said. “Here people tend to spay and neuter their pets, which doesn’t seem to happen in Arkansas. It’s a different mentality.”

So, that’s how Arkansas dogs have found themselves in Canadian homes over the past few years. Land said she has complete faith in Kessler to pick the best dogs.

“She’s done a wonderful job. She’s never recommended a bad one yet. She identifies the dogs that are most at risk, assesses the dogs and recommends them to me.”

Land said she finds homes for about 25 dogs a year. Once their heartworm treatment is complete and they are checked out by a vet, the dogs head up to Canada two at a time.

“Last Chance volunteers drive the dogs to Memphis, they put them on a flight to Seattle and then I go to Seattle and pick them up,” Land said. “Delta has an agreement with Last Chance to have a reduction in the fee. I pay for all of the vetting of the dogs” in addition to the airfare.

Land charges an adoption fee to the adopting families in Canada, but she says it really doesn’t cover all of the costs. The balance comes out of her own pocket.

The animals receive heartworm treatment in Little Rock for numerous reasons: The vets in Canada aren’t used to treating it, no one wants to risk creating a heartworm problem in Canada and the veterinarians up north are not as skilled in treating the infection. Oh, and the process is cheaper in Arkansas.

While the dogs undergo treatment, they stay with Arkansas foster families, like Christine and David Meroney. They’ve been fostering dogs for about a year and a half and have housed “about 12 to 15 dogs” in that time, in addition to owning two other dogs, said David Meroney.

“Most are heartworm positive. It’s the nature of the situation in the South — dogs that end up in the shelter have been abandoned and dropped off there, and I don’t know if it’s particularly bad as far as the economy goes, but people haven’t been able to afford heartworm treatment.”

The majority of the dogs he and Christine Meroney fosters have the heartworm infection.

“It’s a big surprise when one comes through that’s heartworm negative.”

Meroney admits their small contribution to Last Chance Arkansas is just a drop in the bucket.

“I don’t know what the kill rate is [at the Little Rock animal shelter] now, but that’s what we’re faced with. They get several more thousand a year than they can adopt out. There are so many good dogs that could be adopted, and they aren’t,” Meroney said.

Last Chance could help more dogs if it had access to more foster families.

“I think we’ve sent 150 or so dogs up to Janet in Mosaic. We’ve sent more than that to other places. The limits on us are foster homes, if we had more foster homes and funding [we could help more],” he said.

Last Chance’s Carrie Kessler agrees.

“The more fosters we have the more dogs we can save,” she said. “We have about 10 foster families in all and we probably need about 10 more.”

The fosters are not responsible for paying for anything except food, but sometimes that’s donated.

In potential foster families, Kessler looks for a caring home with a safe environment and “we prefer somebody who is willing to work with the dog a little bit, just teaching it basic manners and housetraining. We like it usually if they do have other dogs. It’s usually a healthy thing when they do, but it’s absolutely not necessary.”

Last Chance also allows those who want to help but can’t foster to sponsor a dog.

With more foster families and volunteers, Kessler says Last Chance might have the resources to expand into other local shelters, but right now Little Rock alone keeps them very busy.

Mosaic Rescue prefers dogs that are smaller than 36 pounds, but the bigger dogs are often transported up to shelters in the Northeast. A local company called Got Orphans takes them on that trip in an RV dubbed the “puppy-bego.”

In the future, Kessler hopes to start a program that places dogs or cats with local veterans returning from combat. The story of Hiker, aka Arkansas Pete (which can be found on page 14) inspired the “baby idea” that Kessler is tossing around. She’s thinking of a program that would play matchmaker for veterans and dogs.

It’s just another way Kessler is working toward her goal of eliminating homeless dogs and cats.

“This is an area that we have chosen to focus on because [the animals] truly, truly cannot help themselves, and I think that’s why we feel called to work with these helpless animals. We actually are helping so many people when we hear the stories and get emails from people who adopt these animals, and they talk about what a difference they have made in their lives.”

Horror stories with happy endings

Animals survive abuse and disease and find forever homes.

Animal abuse stories unfold more often than we would like to believe here in Arkansas. Although the state made aggravated cruelty to cats, dogs and horses a felony on the first offense in 2009, abuse cases are still popping up. As recently as June 30, 10 horses, six cats, and three dogs, all badly starved and dehydrated, were rescued from Mountain Home. Authorities believe the animals were rescued with just enough time to save their lives but many animals are not so lucky. Here’s the stories of a few animals who managed to survive terrible situations and find happy endings.

Arkansas Pete

In February, Hiker the dog was rescued from an animal-hoarding situation. As is common with hoarding cases, he was very underweight from having to compete for food. Hiker had two more special needs that would potentially hurt his chances for adoption: he was missing one leg, and he was heartworm positive.

Volunteers at Last Chance Arkansas, a non-profit group that rescues dogs with good temperaments that are often thought of as undesirable due to complications like heartworms, found Hiker at Little Rock Animal Services and immediately recognized something special about the dog. When he was featured on their website, a Minnesota woman saw him and offered to pay for his heartworm treatment. She had someone in mind for Hiker’s adoption.

Enter Rob Rieckenberg. Rieckenberg was looking to adopt, and when he saw Hiker, he knew is search was over. “To put it in Rob’s words: they bonded instantly,” said Last Chance Arkansas Executive Director Carrie Kessler. An accident several years ago took one of Rob’s legs, and he felt an immediate bond with the amputee dog.

Hiker flew to Minnesota to meet his new dad.

“Rob the amputee met Hiker the amputee, and it was love at first sight,” said Kessler. It seemed appropriate for Rieckenberg, who is on the board of Wiggle Your Toes, a foundation that supports amputees and families of amputees, to adopt Hiker. “My cousin joked that he had heard of dogs looking like their owners after awhile but never an owner getting a dog that looks like them,” Rieckenberg said. Although Hiker may be a comical name for a three-legged dog, Rieckenberg now fondly calls him Arkansas Pete.

Grace

Though Jennifer Rottinghaus was already looking to adopt a dog, she never expected to find a dog like Grace staring up at her from the newspaper. “I felt like Grace was destined to be in my home,” she said of the German Shepherd mix she took in from a severe case of cruelty. When the sheriff found Grace in March 2010, she was chained under a tablecloth-covered picnic table. And she had been beaten within an inch of her life with a shovel. A witness had phoned in the abuse. Grace was handed over to the Humane Society for a long and difficult rehabilitation.

“She really was touch and go for a very long time. She was in such bad shape,” Humane Society of Pulaski County director and certified cruelty investigator Kay Simpson reported. “She was black and blue, eyes swollen shut, the whole thing.” Simpson believes that her survival was truly a miracle.

Though Grace’s recovery was arduous, she survived the abuse, and her case became one of four in the state of Arkansas to convict an abuser as a felon. The previous owners pleaded guilty to felony animal cruelty and paid $2,000 restitution for Grace’s expensive medical bills. “We rarely get compensation for anything. It’s like getting blood from a turnip,” Simpson said.

Rottinghaus could barely bring herself to read Grace’s tragic story in the newspaper, but when she did, she knew immediately that she had to play a part in this dog’s life. Grace not only survived an exceptionally cruel torture, but she was rewarded for her undeserved punishment with a new home and a loving owner.

“I read it and felt a myriad of emotions. Sorrow for her; anger towards the offenders; and appreciation for those who not only treated and cared for her, but fought for justice for her. I felt shame and sorrow that a fellow human could be so heartless and cruel,” Rottinghaus confessed. “But most of all, I felt a desire to take Grace and love her and spoil her and try to make up for all the abuse she had endured in her short life.”

It took Grace about a week to warm up to her new home, but that did not deter Rottinghaus’ efforts, and the dog soon found her place in the family. “I think she knows she is in her forever home,” Rottinghaus said. Though Grace did suffer permanent damage from head trauma manifesting in grand mal seizures, she is alive and well, which is an undeniably better fate than many animals in abusive homes meet.

Grace still resides with Rottinghaus and enjoys nightly walks around the neighborhood. Rottinghaus advocates the Humane Society’s work and the adoption of abused animals. “These shelter animals have just as much love to give, and they can be a blessing to the family,” she said.

­— compiled by stacey bowers