Give me shelter
Houston TV anchors show off the magic of rescue dogs
Lisa Hernandez’s pack is deep: four dogs, two kids and a husband. “I have a crazy job, and I go home to all this love. It’s my sanctuary, says the KPRC-TV (Channel 2) morning anchor. “My house is a mess, but it’s all love. It’s my therapy.”
There are people who love dogs, and then there is Hernandez, a diehard animal advocate who at one time had seven dogs — five adopted and two fosters. Her pack now includes Sophie, a 4-year-old boxer-pit mix; Boomer, 6, a golden retriever with a bad eye and alopecia; Jack, 6, a husky-shepherd mix; and Luna, 4, a feisty Chihuahua mix.
Hernandez, like many in the Houston media, believes happiness is a messy life that includes dogs.
With October as Adopt-A-ShelterDog month, it’s a reminder that there are many animals in Houston that need to be rescued, a number of which are still strays on city streets. It’s a problem easy to ignore when there are so many other pressing issues to deal with.
“I didn’t realize how bad Houston’s stray population is when I moved here,” says Hernandez, who relocated to Houston from Los Angeles in 2011. She learned about the plight of Houston animals as a volunteer for Huts 4 Mutts, in which she went door to door in 2018 to offer assistance to pet owners in Third Ward. Not only did the animals need help with food and necessities, so did their owners, she says. Hernandez also reported on, and volunteered with, organizations
such as Barrio Dogs on the city’s East End and K-9 Angels Rescue.
“It’s bananas here,” she says. “I love helping and love to advocate, but I know the focus also needs to be on spaying and neutering. Preventing litter after litter is key. So many animals are suffering in the street. It feels like we’re not moving the needle at all.”
She’s right. When the city closed down due to pandemic, so did many area animal shelters. That means animals that would have been scooped up off the streets or surrendered by their owners, potentially to be adopted, had nowhere to go.
“The animal control problem is as bad as ever. Or worse,” says Tama Lundquist, co-president of Houston PetSet, a nonprofit that provides grants and assistance to animal-rescue efforts. “BARC (the city’s animal shelter) took in 6,000 fewer dogs because of the pandemic. People ended up abandoning them, and the animals continue to procreate. It’s hard to catch up. Every rescue group is overwhelmed. We aren’t even a rescue group, and we get many calls each day to shelter dogs.”
Lundquist says her organization has been spending an exorbitant amount on boarding stray animals. “Nonprofits and the private sector can no longer handle this with out city and county help,” she says.
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, approximately 6.3 million animals enter U.S. animal shelters nationwide every year. Of those, approximately 3.1 million are dogs and 3.2 million are cats. Each year, approximately 920,000 shelter animals are euthanized (390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats).
There is speculation that Houston has 1 million stray animals. That number has been disputed over the years. But still, we have a problem.
Even on my block, when I called animal control about a colony of cats that had taken up residence, I was told I would have to capture them myself and bring them in to have them spayed. There were only a few cats in the beginning, then one had a litter underneath my house and another had a litter under a neighbor’s house. One sickly cat died in the middle of the street.
In a nation as prosperous as this, our animals deserve better.
There’s that saying that when you rescue an animal they in turn rescue you. I have had four rescue dogs in my adult life. Two were black cocker spaniels — one was rescued from a puppy mill in Missouri, the other I found on a Houston street; she had scarring on her back that appeared to be from grease burns.
Now I have two rescue boxers, Ava and Prince. Ava was the puppy in the Houston SPCA’s holiday window at Neiman Marcus and was surrendered because she was too energetic. Prince was found as a starving puppy and nursed back to health by Lone Star Boxer Rescue.
Rescue dogs have enriched my life in unbelievable ways. I’m convinced they have magical powers to heal and take away stress with a tail wag and a butt wiggle. I even wrote a children’s book about my dogs.
Hernandez and I aren’t the only ones who believe in the magic of rescue dogs. Take Rita Garcia, morning anchor for KTRK-TV (ABC 13). She adopted Rocky, a now 10-year-old terrierChihauhua mix, while working in Los Angeles in 2011.
“I was in a new city, a new environment and a new job. I wanted a dog to help me grow in the city,” Garcia says. “We could grow together. He made me more responsible and gave me something to look forward to.”
Garcia had an immediate connection when she met Rocky. She called him that name at the shelter and told him to sit, and he did.
“I thought Rocky and Rita had a nice ring,” she says. “He’s somewhat of a diva now, even though he came from humble beginnings.”
Rocky made a grand appearance in Garcia’s wedding photos earlier this year. He wore a petite gray tux with a pink bow and sat his little tail on the train of her dress.
Mayra Moreno, an anchor for KTRK-TV (ABC 13), is another rescue-dog champion, though she says she never thought she’d talk about a dog like parents talk about their children. Now, she and her husband both gush over their 4-year-old Siberian husky, Luna, adopted from a shelter in Sugar Land.
“She’s become our daughter,” Moreno says. “When I go to work, I leave the TV on for her, hoping she hears me on the news. She’s brought so much joy and, at the end of the day, it feels so good to come home to her.”
When I adopted my pups in 2014, KPRC-TV (Channel 2) anchor Owen Conflenti was my dog consultant. He had recently rescued two boxer-mixes, Deano and Millie, as puppies and schooled me on the best food to feed mine. He’s since married and now shares a house with his wife, their four children and the dogs.
“Deano and Millie have adjusted well to the addition of children in the house,” Conflenti says. “They’re spoiled with attention from our oldest daughter Mia. And genuinely seem to enjoy playing with the little babies outside. Millie still shakes when there’s thunder. Deano still barks at the sound of the garbage truck. The only difference is now they have more people making sure they’re OK. It’s amazing how everything just works out the way it’s supposed to.”
In the months after the pandemic started, when many of us were sanitizing everything, my dogs kept me sane. I don’t think they knew the world was a mess. They were happy to have me at home all of the time.
They settled at my feet when I moved to another room to work. I never needed a broom because they licked the crumbs right off the floor. When one of my children, or me for that matter, had a moment, their wet licks on our legs felt like a warm hug.
Rescue dogs, I believe, know they could have had a different fate, and they know when they have it good.