Filling a need
Program helps provide necessities for homeless people and their pets
Animal-lovers are often eager to help the cause of homeless pets, but not so much when it comes to helping homeless people with their pets. For this cause, programs are scant and donations few.
Still, the animals deserve our help, says Cpl. Kathryn
Waite, an animal control officer who started noticing the city’s growing number of homeless people living with pets. Five years ago she began offering them help with dog food, blankets and other supplies while she was in the field.
Her program, known as Operation Street Dogs, is operated by the Albuquerque Animal Welfare Department out of the Eastside animal shelter.
Waite estimates that 2 percent to 10 percent of homeless people in Albuquerque keep animals, in line with nationwide estimates by the National Coalition on Homelessness.
For many of them, the companionship of an animal is a life-saver, Waite says, because “that’s all they have — their companion.” A dog or cat (one man she knew even kept chickens on a leash) often serves as the only constant source of comfort, love and warmth. Many of the men and women she helps would rather sleep outside with their dog, or in a vehicle, than go to a shelter — few of which accept animals.
“Even if they do take dogs, the homeless don’t like to go to shelters because they’re extremely dangerous and violent,” Waite says, which also puts their pets at risk.
Now that the nights are bitterly cold, the program is asking the public for help with donations of dog sweaters, dog beds, comforters, as well as leashes and harnesses.
The city does not provide any of these items, Waite says, although she does get plenty of donated dog food and can give out vouchers for free spay/neuter, microchip, rabies vaccination and city licensing. Monetary donations are also needed for veterinary care.
On Christmas Eve, she received a desperate call from Andrew Johnson, a longtime client whose dog Ginger had been stabbed during a fight with another man’s dog. Waite dipped into a discretionary fund to save the dog, who spent three days in the veterinary hospital and needed 25 stitches.
“If I’d lost her, I’d be a stupid one” with grief, Johnson says of the dog he rescued about four years ago after she was thrown off the back of a truck. “That’s my baby.”
Johnson relies on Operation Street Dogs to keep Ginger healthy. “Without the program, a lot of these guys, their dogs would have been frozen or abandoned,” he says of the other homeless who gather at Los Altos Park on the east side.
Through word of mouth, Waite says she is able to reach most of the city’s pet-owning homeless population, which she estimates at around 200 people, including those who have found housing but still need her services.
“When she shows up, everyone shows up,” Johnson says. They also know how to contact her if their animals need help: call her cellphone at 505-301-8141, or go to the Eastside shelter.
Most homeless people are grateful for the help, Waite says, and try to care for their pets as well as they can, often better than they care for themselves. “They’ll feed their dog first.”
That’s certainly true of Ginger, says Johnson, because she’s always up to date on her shots and tags. “My dogs are more legal than I am.”