Get to Know ... President of the Westport Animal Shelter Advocates

WESTPORT — As a kid growing up in Dayton, Ohio, Julie Loparo belonged to a family that took in rescue dogs. In adulthood, Loparo’s made protecting vulnerable dogs her mission.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. My parents were big animal advocates. We were one of the few in our neighborhood that had our dog vaccinated and spayed and kept inside when so many of our neighbors had their dogs roaming free or kept in the garage,” Loparo said.

The family’s first rescue, a cocker spaniel, came from a family that drove out to the country and dropped its dog’s puppies on the side of the road.

“It was really sad and I remember my mom being so upset. She was an abused dog and not perfect, but as a family we worked with her and she became a very beloved pet,” Loparo, 55, said.

Over the years, Loparo never lost her desire to care for abandoned dogs. She attended The Ohio State University, where she met her husband. After school the couple moved to Cleveland, and during the day, Loparo worked in fund development for a nonprofit hearing and speech center. In her spare time, Loparo visited overcrowded animal control facilities to pick out dogs for her friends who wanted to adopt but were afraid of the pounds.

When Loparo’s husband was relocated to Manhattan, N.Y., for work in 1991, the couple packed up and moved to the Upper East Side, with two dogs in tow. A few years later, Loparo gave birth to a daughter bought a house in Westport.

Loparo and her husband initially thought they’d move to Greenwich, but a Westport real estate agent sold them on the town.

“I remember one of the first things he showed us was Winslow Park, and it was full of dogs and I said, ‘Wow, this is really beautiful,’ ” Loparo said.

Soon after the family settled in, Loparo began volunteering at an animal shelter in town, but parted ways with the organization a few years later because it was not a no-kill shelter and Loparo said it was upsetting to get attached to dogs then come in one day and have them be gone.

At the time Loparo left the other shelter, Westport’s animal control was in a bad-state, with infested rats and a broken heating and cooling system, Loparo said.

“The town was talking about different options for what to do with the facility and a group of us decided that our animal control needed a voice. We wanted to stay independent, we wanted to stay no-kill, so we formed Westport Animal Shelter Advocates as an advocacy group for the shelter itself,” Loparo said.

WASA became an official organization in 2007 and immediately went to work raising funds to renovate the animal control facility, which houses animals abandoned in town and animals of Westporters no longer able to care for their pets.

In addition, WASA raised funds to supplement the town’s contribution for any veterinary care animals in the shelter may need and to date, the organization has funded over several hundred thousand dollars of vet care for dogs at Westport Animal Control, Loparo said.

The funding helps maintain the animal control’s 100 percent adoption rate and ensures any adopters can focus on loving the dog and not have to fork over a bunch of cash from the get go to get the dog proper veterinary care, Loparo said.

Seeing the need for more dog foster care, WASA started a small fostering system of its own in which volunteers like Loparo, who is currently WASA’s president, take in dogs from owners across the state who can no longer care for their pet. In WASA’s earlier days, the foster volunteers took dogs out of crowded animal controls in cities like Bridgeport and Hartford, but now the fosters mainly come from owners across the state who need to surrender their dogs.

“A lot of times it’s just picking up the phone and having somebody on the other end that needs help,” Loparo said, noting WASA gets about 20 to 25 calls a week for help with a pet and places about 50 to 60 dogs a year, often through people who see postings of dogs on WASA’s active Facebook Page.

WASA chooses its adopters carefully. “Sometimes we can tell right away. Sometimes we can’t. We don’t want to rush through anything, so we do a series of meet and greets and then the next step is a home visit, and even that can include multiple visits,” Loparo said.

While Loparo does the best she can to take care of dogs in WASA’s care and at Westport’s animal control, she said her dream is for better standards at the state level for dogs and laws that mandate dogs in animal controls be walked three times a day, fed twice a day, and have a clean kennel.

WASA, of course, already follows these protocols. “We do it because it is the right thing to do,” Loparo said.