The devastating infernos that turned 38,000 acres of LA County to ash affected far more than just the humans who lived there. Animals, displaced from their homes, flooded animal shelters in the City of Angels and its surrounding counties. This surge in population lead to kennels hitting critical capacity. When organizations reach critical capacity, permanent decisions no one wants to make, must be made.
In order to prevent such consequences from occurring, Helen Woodward Animal Center reached out to various rescue groups in Los Angeles and its surrounding counties. One group, SPCALA in Long Beach, eagerly accepted our offer. The independent animal nonprofit had recently taken in an Australian Cattle Dog who just gave birth to 11 puppies.
Contrary to popular belief, puppies are among the most at risk orphan pets in animal shelters. While they’re adorable and tend to get adopted quicker than older dogs, they also require far more resources — especially newborns. Each new life needs to be fully vaccinated against diseases like Canine Distemper, Parvovirus, and rabies. Newborn puppies need round-the-clock care to make sure that they’re feeding, warm enough — neonatal puppies can’t generate their own heat — and clean. All of these responsibilities can quickly overburden a shelter, and thus puppies are often euthanized so those resources can go to taking care of more animals.
While SPCALA would never put down a family of perfectly healthy puppies, they would allow us to take them of their hands so they could better focus on giving top of the line care to displaced pets from the fires and reuniting them with their families.
Thus the canine clan made the 90 minute journey down to Helen Woodward Animal Center.
The Center named the mama Riley RUFFaree, and named her babies after various NFL teams. Every one of them was thoroughly checked out by our medical team before being sent to foster care.
In foster care, Riley RUFFaree could recover from giving birth and nursing almost a dozen little mouths. Likewise, her puppies could get the round-the-clock care from the Center’s dedicated foster volunteers and spend their neonatal days in a low stress, comfortable environment.
Several weeks went by and Riley’s little athletes grew into champions. Just under a month after they first came to Helen Woodward Animal Center, they were made available for adoption.
The puppies found their forever families fast. One of them — Charger — went home with a very special family.
Chris Sebourn serves as the Chief of Los Angeles City Fire Station 9. He and his team were on the front lines fighting the Palisades fire in January. When he saw the Cattle Dog pups would be available, he knew he wanted to take one home.
“People often forget about the animals,” Sebourn said while holding his newest family member in his arms. “When I saw [the Cattle Dogs] on the news, I told my wife I’d really like to get one of these, or two and help out and give them a special home.”
Sebourn and his family drove down to Helen Woodward Animal Center on Valentine’s Day to adopt Charger. A month later, they saw her sister Chief was still available and asked if they could add her to the family as well.
Now, Chief and Charger are living their best lives with one of the people who’s very much responsible for their survival of tragedy. Their siblings all found their permanent people almost immediately, and Mama Riley found happiness only a couple days after her babies found theirs.
