Indiana agencies offer help for pets in homeless community

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Home is where the heart is, and when your heart belongs to a four-legged friend, home is with them - even if there is no physical shelter to go with it.

That's the idea behind My Dog is My Home, a national organization dedicated to keeping people in the homeless community together with their pets. The organization held a service fair at Bloomington's Shalom Center on Sunday, providing free veterinary care and grooming services to the community's animal companions and raising awareness that the bond between a human and their pet is not just a luxury: It's a legitimate need.

Director Christine Kim founded My Dog Is My Home after discovering that many shelters did not allow people to bring their pets with them.

Rather than abandon their animals, many would choose to sleep outside and prioritize their animals' needs over their own. They didn't keep their animals - usually dogs - for protection, as conventional wisdom would suggest. Kim said that the animals filled a different need: to love and care for a constant complanion who can love you back.

"Oftentimes people will say that being homeless is a socially isolating situation," Kim said. "They feel outcast from society. Social interaction is really limited, and a dog really provides that constant companionship, consistency and affection that human beings really need, and they get that from their animals more than they get it from anyone else. There's a sort of mutualism to their relationship."

And when you're out on the streets, any relationship becomes vitally important, said Shalom executive director Forrest Gilmore.

"When you have nothing else, the company of a creature that loves you, cares for you and stands by you is sometimes the only way (you) survive," he said.

In a room off the Shalom Center's main entrance area, volunteers from the Monroe County Humane Association administered routine vet care, including de-worming pills and vaccinations such as rabies shots.

Mia Partlow, the board chairwoman of Pets Alive, offered a limited number of free spay and neuter vouchers. To keep pets from having unwanted litters and overpopulating the animal shelter, her organization provides low-cost sterilization surgery. It doesn't normally offer the spay-and-neuter services for free, but Sunday was a special occasion, and Partlow picked up the bill herself.

Outside, Lindsay Love parked her Road Dog van to trim dogs' nails and clean their ears, topping it all off with a bath and a blow-dry - and a colorful free bandana.

Brandy and Josh Wright brought their collie mix, Callie, to get treatment for an ear infection and a skin infection. They have to be out of their current lodgings - where they have no electricity - by Dec. 2, and aren't sure where they'll be going next. But one thing is certain: If Callie can't go, they won't go.

"If nobody lets her in, I won't stay there either," Brandy said. "I'd rather be with her, I'd rather be homeless than be somewhere I can't have her. She's my everything."

She hasn't found any shelters that will allow pets to stay overnight except for A Friend's Place, Shalom's overnight center. That's where Wayne and Jayne Estepp are staying right now with their Jack Russell terrier, Daisy. They brought Daisy in for a kennel cough antibiotic, pills for fleas and to get her stitches from her recent spaying surgery checked. The vet said she was healing nicely.

Coming out of the service fair, Daisy was sporting a new pink and gray fleece vest that the Estepps had picked up at the free supply table. As a short-haired dog, Daisy gets cold in the wintertime and needed a little extra help, Wayne said. The couple has several grown children between them, but right now, Daisy is their "baby," and they too have occasionally chosen to sleep outside rather than go somewhere Daisy isn't allowed to stay.

"There's been a couple times where things have gotten real rough, and we've thought about taking her to the pound," Wayne said. But they always come to the same conclusion: "We can't take her to the pound. She's our dog."

"She'd cry," Jane said. "She'd probably grieve without us."

Jane said that in December, Daisy will become a registered service dog after demonstrating how she helps Jane, who is blind in her left eye and deaf in her left ear, stay aware of her surroundings. Some shelters, including Shalom's day shelter, only allow registered companion or service animals into their facilities for health code reasons. The certification means that Daisy can accompany Wayne and Jane to more shelters, if they need them - and means fewer nights out in the cold for their little family.

Charlie Cundiff, who playfully answers to "One-Legged Charlie," says his three-legged poodle, Tripod, is already a certified service animal. Without any training, Tripod can predict Cundiff's seizures. Perhaps it's because Cundiff hand-raised Tripod, whose mother rejected him because of his short leg, since the 4-year-old poodle was born.

Or perhaps it's because they share a special connection: Tripod was born on the anniversary of the day Cundiff lost his own leg just below the hip.

Either way, Cundiff said, their bond goes deeper than the commonality of missing limbs, and he repeated what the other dog owners had said: "If he can't go somewhere, I don't go."

Volunteer Ashley Barrett said about 20 volunteers lent their services to the event, and about 10 people, 12 dogs and two cats came through the center to take advantage of the service fair. In her work with the homeless community, Barrett has seen firsthand the priority people put on their pets, and knows people who have missed job interviews because no one could watch their companion while they were gone. A pet-friendly shelter, with specific services to accommodate companion animals, would certainly help the situation. She hopes, one day, to start such a facility herself.

"Imagine trying to choose between taking care of your child and not having child care and going to a job interview," she said. "It's the same with homeless individuals and their animals. Their animals are their children. They're family. And family is forever, so you do what you can to take care of them."

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Source: The (Bloomington) Herald-Times, http://bit.ly/2gdUZCd

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Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com