Is sanctuary a dead end for dogs? Duke doesn’t think so. Look at that happy boy! But it’s a question worth asking, particularly in an animal welfare world where success is so often measured by adoption numbers, length of stay, and how quickly an animal moves through the system. But what happens to the animals who don’t fit that model? The dogs with significant behavioral challenges, bite histories, the elderly, the medically complicated. The animals who, for one reason or another, are considered unadoptable. Does their inability to find a traditional forever home make their lives any less worth saving? At LHRR we believe the answer is unequivocally no. Over our five years in rescue, we have successfully adopted out a significant number of dogs. Perhaps not as many as some traditional adoption based rescues, but our mission has always been different. We are a sanctuary. Sanctuary does not mean adoption is off the table but it means we offer life long care when adoption isn’t an option. In fact, we have three upcoming adoptions that we are incredibly excited about! When one of our animals is ready for adoption and we find a home that can safely and appropriately meet their needs, we celebrate. But for the animals who may never have that opportunity, our commitment remains exactly the same. Because adoption is one measure of success in animal rescue. It is not the only measure of a life well lived. The majority of the animals who come into our care are not considered adoptable. Many have behavioral or medical needs that make placement in a traditional home difficult, and sometimes impossible. These are often the animals who have exhausted their options. And we believe they deserve more than simply being kept alive. They deserve to live. To feel the sunshine on their faces. To roll in the grass. To have favorite toys, comfortable beds, familiar routines, and people who know them as individuals. For us they are adopted, they have found their family, with us. They deserve affection, enrichment, companionship, and the opportunity to experience happiness. They deserve a home, even if that home happens to be a sanctuary. Our animals are not simply residents of a rescue facility. They are members of our family. We spend our days with them, learning their personalities, understanding their needs, building their trust, and giving them the stability that so many have never experienced. And we believe sanctuary comes with an extraordinary responsibility. It is not enough to provide food, water, shelter, and medical care. Those are necessities, not the entirety of a meaningful life. True sanctuary requires individualized care, enrichment, attention to physical and emotional well being, and an ongoing commitment to ensuring that the lives we are preserving are lives worth living. And that brings us to $5 Friday. If you believe that sanctuaries have an important place in animal welfare, that animals who cannot be adopted still deserve love, dignity, and a fulfilling life, and that sanctuary is not a dead end but a life line we hope you’ll consider supporting our work today. Your donation helps us provide lifelong care, veterinary treatment, enrichment, and the safe, comfortable homes our animals deserve. Whether you can give $5, less than $5, or more, every contribution matters. Because not every animal will find a traditional forever home. But every animal deserves the chance to have one. And sometimes, that forever home is a sanctuary. Please donate and help us continue being that home. GoFundMe: gofund.me/593d7e055 Donate: linktr.ee/laylasheartrandr #laylasheartranchandrescue #dogrescue #animalsanctuary #beingkindiscool #rescuedogs

And what happens tonight? Some of these dogs may die. Tomorrow morning, the world will wake up and continue as though nothing happened. Coffee will be made. Lunches will be packed. Traffic will be at a standstill. People will go to work. Dinner plans will be discussed. Life will go on. Except for theirs. Their lives will have ended, and for so many people, it will mean absolutely nothing. And even though I know these deaths are not my fault, I will carry them with me for the rest of my life. I will remember their names. Their faces. The desperate pleas for someone to save them. I will wonder what more I could have done. Who else I could have called. What I might have said differently that could have changed the outcome. Did I advocate enough? Did I send enough emails? I know, logically, that I cannot save them all. I know that their deaths are not mine to answer for. But knowing that does not make the grief any less real. Because tomorrow, the world will move on. And a part of me will remain with the ones who never got the chance to. And next month there will be more. And the month after that. And the month after that. And not just in Austin. Across this country, in communities where we have somehow learned to coexist with the routine destruction of lives we claim to value. But can we value them if this is how their lives end? I don’t know how to live comfortably in a world that accepts this. I don’t know how to make peace with a system that continually asks us to choose who gets another chance and who doesn’t. I don’t know how to explain this to my son. And I don’t know how much more my heart can take. We need change. Real, meaningful, immediate change. We need shelters willing to work with rescues, reasonable opportunities for intervention, proper medical and behavioral evaluations, and a collective commitment to finding alternatives to killing. But beyond policies and procedures, we need something that cannot be legislated. We need people to care. Not only when a photograph breaks their heart. Not only when a story goes viral. Not only when the animal is young, beautiful, healthy, friendly, or easy to save. We need people to care because a life is a life. Because the difficult ones matter. The frightened ones matter. The sick ones matter. The old ones matter. The ones nobody wants, the ones nobody understands, and the ones nobody is coming for matter. Every single one of them. Tonight, I wish I could save all five. I wish I could save them all. And while I know we cannot save every animal ourselves, I cannot accept that this means their deaths are inevitable or that we should stop demanding something better. Because there is a difference between acknowledging our limitations and accepting a system that continues to fail them. We should not have to decide which lives are worth saving. We should be building a world where that decision doesn’t have to be made. And until we do, how many more lives will be lost while the rest of the world looks away?

Before you begin reading, I should warn you that this is long. As a writer, I’ve always had a tendency to be wordy (and moody). In fact, I can practically see the red pens of my former professors and everyone who helped shape my writing hovering over these paragraphs, eliminating unnecessary words, condensing thoughts, and reminding me that sometimes less is more. And perhaps they’re right. But today, I hope they’ll and you’ll forgive me. Because I’ve spent all day trying to find the words to express something that feels impossible to articulate, and even now, I don’t believe I’ve said enough or expressed my thoughts in enough detail. So today, the red pens can stay in their drawers. These lives deserve every single word. And I hope you’ll give them a few minutes of your time to read them. There are five dogs in Austin who could lose their lives tonight. Arlo, Furby, Sweet Pea, Simpson, and Truffle. Five lives. Five individuals. Five beings who have absolutely no understanding that somewhere, someone has decided their time on this earth may be over. As far as I know, Simpson, Arlo, and Furby have no rescue coming for them, the others have possibilities, though not set it stone. At Layla’s Heart Ranch and Rescue, we are desperately working to save Truffle. Not because his life matters more. Not because he is more deserving. But because his circumstances require a very particular kind of placement, and we are one of the very few rescues, if not the only one, capable of providing what he needs. And I cannot stop thinking about the others. How do we choose? How do we look into the eyes of one dog and say, “You deserve to live,” and look into the eyes of another and accept that they will die? How did we ever arrive at a place where this is a question we have to ask? I wish I knew how to make people care. Not the people who are already fighting alongside us. Not the rescuers, advocates, volunteers, and donors who are giving everything they have and more. I mean the people who look away. The people who scroll past. The people who have become so accustomed to animals dying in shelters that it no longer disturbs them. How do you make someone understand the value of a life when they have already decided it isn’t worth their attention? These are living, breathing, feeling beings. These are LIVES. They experience fear. They seek comfort. They form bonds. They trust. They love. They want to live. And their lives are being taken from them. Stolen. We have created language that makes this reality easier to accept. We call it humane euthanasia. We call it a necessary decision. We call it an unfortunate consequence of overcrowding. But when an animal who could have a future is killed because there wasn’t enough time, enough space, enough cooperation, or enough willingness to find another solution, I cannot call that mercy. This isn’t mercy. This isn’t humane. This is killing. And I am tired of being expected to make that truth sound less uncomfortable. We do what we can. We do more than we realistically can. We give pieces of ourselves that we don’t have left to give, because somewhere there is another animal whose life depends on someone refusing to give up. And still, it isn’t enough. It’s never enough. There is always another deadline. Another desperate plea. Another animal whose future depends on whether someone can accomplish the nearly impossible in mere hours. I cannot adequately describe the emotional warfare of being told that a life will end unless you can find the money, the space, the people, and the resources to save it before a deadline expires. Shelters call us rescue partners. Then let us actually be partners. Let us work together to find solutions where dogs get to live, rather than placing impossible deadlines and the weight of life and death decisions on rescues already stretched beyond their limits. We cannot call one another partners while operating as adversaries.

I’m trying to condense my writing because I know people are more likely to read a shorter post. But how do you condense something when every part of it matters? Five dogs at Austin Animal Services are scheduled to be killed tomorrow if rescue is not found. Truffle, Sweet Pea, Arlo, Furby, and Simpson. Their lives will be over. Permanently. How do I leave out Sweet Pea, a senior dog who was considered adoptable just a couple of weeks ago? A dog described as a staff and volunteer favorite, with ZERO reported behavioral issues and ZERO bite history. She simply needs to be the only dog in her home. Yet now she is scheduled to die, even though the shelter isn’t full or over capacity. How does a dog go from being considered adoptable, loved by the staff and volunteers who know her, to being placed on a euthanasia list in a matter of weeks? What changed? Why is her life suddenly considered expendable? If you have no other pets and would be willing to foster Sweet Pea, PLEASE reach out to us. You could be the reason she gets to live. How do I leave out Arlo, a German Shepherd who bit his owner after years in the same home, whose request for a comprehensive medical evaluation was reportedly refused? Or Jagger, whom we recently rescued after advocating for proper medical care, only to discover he did, in fact, have medical problems? How do I leave out Furby, Simpson, or Truffle, whose lives matter every bit as much? How do I explain that shelters with multimillion dollar budgets are giving small rescues 48 hours to accomplish what those institutions will not, while we’re trying to do it with resources on a shoestring? How do I explain the emotional warfare of watching these lists appear again and again, knowing that next month there will be another list, and another after that? I keep thinking about an Etch A Sketch. Write the dogs’ names across the screen, give them 48 hours, and when the deadline passes, shake it. The names disappear, the screen is blank, and another list takes their place. The dogs who died are quickly forgotten while everyone scrambles to save the next group. But these were lives. Not names to be erased. So how do I make this short when none of it is small? We saved Jagger. Now we’re desperately trying to save Truffle, and we need to raise $20,000 for two sanctuary houses, each with its own private yard. These houses will continue providing refuge for other dogs for years to come, long after Jagger and Truffle no longer need them. Please donate whatever you can and share our GoFundMe. If you can foster Sweet Pea, contact us. If you know someone who might be able to help any of these five dogs, please reach out. Help us help them. We cannot do this alone. GoFundMe: gofund.me/593d7e055 Donate: linktr.ee/laylasheartrandr #laylasheartranchandrescue #dogrescue #animalsanctuary #beingkindiscool #charity

It is $10 Saturday and we need your help to get Jagger set up and save another life set to be taken, Truffle! Jagger and Truffle need us. And right now, we need you. We received Jagger’s veterinary results. Thankfully, his bloodwork showed nothing particularly concerning, but he does have a urinary tract infection. Another reminder of why we fight so hard for proper medical evaluations before a dog’s life is deemed disposable. To reiterate Jagger has an ear infection, nose/nostril infection, and a UTI. He was taken directly from the shelter to the vet and has been living with these illnesses for we have no idea how long. And now, Truffle. We received a 48-hour euthanasia notice for Truffle and four other dogs. We were specifically asked to help him, and we are doing everything we can to make sure his story doesn’t end in a shelter. We are raising funds to build sanctuary houses for BOTH boys. Individual homes with private yards where they can feel safe, receive the care they deserve, and finally know some peace. But here’s what makes these houses so important. If Jagger or Truffle is adopted, his house becomes a home for another dog who needs saving. When a sanctuary resident eventually crosses the Rainbow Bridge, another life will find refuge there. These aren’t just houses for two dogs. They’re houses that can save lives for years to come. Today is $10 Saturday. Give $10 if you can. Give less if that’s what you have. Give more if you’re able. Every dollar matters, and every share matters. We cannot save every animal. But we refuse to let that become an excuse to stop trying. Jagger and Truffle are alive today. Help us make sure they have a tomorrow. GoFundMe: gofund.me/593d7e055 Donate: linktr.ee/laylasheartrandr #laylasheartranchandrescue #dogrescue #animalsanctuary #adoptdontshop #beingkindiscool

Could this handsome cowboy be any happier?! Our any cuter for that matter?! Our handsome Stetson, one of the pups from our Western litter and brother to Rodeo and Walker, is out here living his absolute BEST life! There is something so special about watching the puppies we rescue grow up, develop their own personalities, and discover just how wonderful life can be. Stetson? Well, he seems to think life is pretty darn fantastic! But there’s one thing this handsome cowboy is still missing… a forever family of his very own. While his brothers Rodeo and Walker have already found their happily ever after together, Stetson is still waiting for his. In the meantime, he’s busy soaking up all the love, enjoying his adventures, and reminding us that sometimes happiness looks like four paws, a giant smile, and a tongue that simply won’t stay in your mouth! He LOVES LOVES LOVES my son Jackson. He is great with the kiddos. Stetson is available for adoption through Layla’s Heart Ranch and Rescue! Could you be the one to give this sweet cowboy his happily ever after? Please share Stetson’s beautiful smile! Somewhere out there, his forever family is waiting to find him. #laylasheartranchandrescue #dogrescue #animalsanctuary #adoptdontshop #beingkindiscool