At the Westlake Petsmart, nonprofit organization Life and Pet Rescue has been hosting adoption days for 32 years every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The adoption days, where prospective pet families can meet the rescued dogs, have been a staple since the store opened in 1998. Once in a while, we’ll do some special events.
Founder Emily Bernie explained the journey of the program.
“I was 17 and my family and I had an accident with one of our dogs. He got out through a broken board in the fence and ran out and got kicked by a horse and he pretty much died in my arms and it changed my life,” she said.
Instead of attending college in Indiana to study television broadcasting, she started volunteering at the local shelter after her dog died.
At the shelter where Bernie worked, a pregnant dog came in 32 years ago, and at the time, they didn’t hold dogs or have fosters and rescues like they do today.
“They were taking her back to put her to sleep because they couldn’t hold her for the 8 weeks it would have taken to have her babies and put them up for adoption. She passed by me to go be put down and I couldn’t do it,” Bernie recalls.
She took the dog home and took care of all the puppies when they were born.
“Little by little that’s how this started and I never ended up going to college,” Bernie said.
The rescue places 250 dogs a year and 35 cats a year. Bernie describes the joy she gets from this program.
“The happy ending, what these animals go through and where we rescue them from and the horrible beginnings they have to face, finding a perfect family and going home,” Bernie said. “We see pictures and updates of their amazing life now, the happy ending makes it all worth it.”
For the first 20 years the rescue was done locally, all the shelters around the area that needed help and almost 12 years ago they started doing it internationally.
“We rescue from meat farms in South Korea, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Thailand,” Bernie said. “The CDC has made it harder to bring animals from other countries, so we primarily work with South Korea and then we still take medical cases from the local shelter that need surgeries,” said Bernie.
The entire program is volunteer based and they have about 80 volunteers that work with them.
“They come in three times a day to the rescue to play with the dogs. We have a playground where the dogs run around three times a day. It’s a really nice place for them until they have a permanent home they can go to.”
