Local Heroes Come to Animals’ Rescue

Two groups that that save animal lives

After losing the German Shepherd rescue dog she’d loved for a decade when he died suddenly, Debbie Robinson said she’d never another dog.

She decided that, when she was emotionally ready, she would instead foster homeless dogs at her Peachtree Corners home. She already had an organization in mind — Canine Pet Rescue (CPR), a Dacula-based nonprofit that rescues German Shepherds and other herding breeds from kill shelters in the South.

Robinson and many other local residents are saving animals’ lives through CPR and other groups such as Furkids, an Atlanta-based animal rescue and shelter nonprofit that operates a thrift store in Peachtree Corners.

About a dozen Peachtree Corners residents, including CPR’s adoption coordinator Therese Aleman and foster coordinator Lila Hunter, volunteer or foster with CPR. Some of these volunteers and other local residents have adopted dogs through the organization, which helped find permanent homes for 100 dogs last year, Aleman said.

Meeting Maui

Robinson visited CPR two days after Dante died in July 2017 to donate his unopened medicine. She let the group know she was interested in fostering but said she was not “100 percent ready.”

That resistance evaporated quickly. In September, she and her husband Barry accepted their first foster dog. In October, several foster dogs later, they took in the dog they could not part with — a thin, approximately 1-year-old German Shepherd they named Maui.

“For the first week, whenever she found a corner to hide in, that’s what she would do,” Robinson said.

The following week they got a call that someone was interested in adopting Maui. By that time, she had begun to allow the Robinsons to pet her and show her love.

“I just looked at Barry and said, ‘I can’t go through this again,“ Robinson said. Maui had found her new permanent home, and she’d brought with her a startling surprise.

Two weeks after arriving at the Robinsons’ home, Maui was at a vet’s office to be spayed when it was discovered that she was pregnant. She gave birth a week and a half later to 11 puppies. Eight males and one female, who was blind, survived.

CPR told the Robinsons they were willing to take the puppies off their hands, but the Robinsons chose to foster them all until they were old enough to be adopted out — a minimum of 10 weeks by CPR’s rules.

“We had a rip-roaring time,” Robinson said, of those days.

By last March, seven of the puppies had been adopted by families who regularly send the Robinsons pictures and news of them. The female dog was adopted by a service in Alabama that trained her to be a therapy dog.

The Robinsons kept one of the puppies and named him Hobie.
“I don’t think I would have made it through Dante’s passing if it hadn’t been for these dogs,” Robinson said. “I feel like Dante is back with me through Hobie.”

CPR always has about 20 to 24 dogs available for adoption, housing them in foster homes and in a kennel at the horse farm of Carla Brown, a Gwinnett County State Court judge who founded CPR 10 years ago, in April 2009.

Brown said the Robinsons are “amazing.”

“They really threw themselves into the organization in a way I know they didn’t intend to do, and they really went into it with their whole heart,” she said.

CPR is all-volunteer and privately funded through donations. It’s a tiny rescue that does huge things,” including taking on large cases that some national rescues have turned their backs on, Brown said.

She then shared one of her organization’s mantras. “Saving one dog will not change the world,” Brown said, “but for that dog, the world will change forever.”

Second-hand savior

Furkids serves thousands of animals each year in what they say is the largest cage-free, shelter in the Southeast for rescued cats and at Sadie’s Place, a no-kill shelter for dogs.

The group subsists on donations and with proceeds from its thrift stores, including a 9,000-square-foot store in Peachtree Corners that sells a wide variety of donated, gently used, merchandise.

Samantha Shelton, the group’s founder CEO and a Peachtree Corners resident, is grateful to her community for supporting the thrift store since 2007.

“It’s been a tremendous source of revenue to support our program and to help us save lives,” Shelton said. “Every time you donate an item from your home or come shopping with us, you’re truly saving an animal’s life.”

Furkids has rescued and altered more than 30,000 animals since its founding in 2002. About 1,000 animals are in the program today in Furkids shelters, PetSmart and Petco adoption centers and more than 400 foster homes.

Last year, Furkids bought nine acres in Cumming, at 5235 Union Hill Road, to consolidate its shelters onto one property. Also last year, the group launched its “” transport service, taking rescue animals from kill shelters across Georgia to no-kill shelters in Northern states, where there is high demand for adoptable animals. So far, 1,300 cats and dogs have been transported, Shelton said.

“We’ve done some amazing life-saving throughout metro Atlanta and all across Georgia and it’s really because of the community support that we’ve been able to save as many lives as we’ve been able to,” Shelton said. “We’re excited the future.”

Learn More Here

Canine Pet Rescue — P.O. Box 248, Lawrenceville, Ga. 30046, 1-855-435-7473, caninepetrescue.com.

Furkids Thrift Store — 4015 Holcomb Bridge Road, Suite 400, Peachtree Corners, Ga. 30092, 770-817-1405, furkids.org. Furkids’ cat shelter is just outside Peachtree Corners at 2650 Pleasantdale Road. Its dog shelter is in Alpharetta at 1520 Union Hill Road. Furkids also thrift stores in Marietta and Lawrenceville. ■