More than a dozen dogs and cats from Southern California are now resting in Sonoma County after rescuers traveled to the region this week.
Scenes of destruction after the Los Angeles area fires spurred local animal rescue organizations to make the trek down to Southern California this week to help ease the crowding in shelters and animal hospitals that are filling up with displaced pets.
Among them is Kaersten Cooper, a volunteer with Wiley’s Wish Animal Rescue, who returned to Santa Rosa from a two-day trip to Los Angeles Thursday at 2:30 a.m. with 13 shelter dogs as well as an 18-year-old quarter horse directly impacted by the fires.
Wiley’s Wish, based in Sonoma, Tuolumne and Santa Clara counties, partnered with Santa Rosa’s Dogwood Animal Rescue Project to house 10 of the dogs, who are now being checked by veterinarians and resting after the long journey. Cooper is caring for the other three dogs and the horse at Wiley’s Sonoma County base.
While in Los Angeles, Cooper visited four locations she knew through Wiley’s Wish’s statewide network of shelters; Carson Animal Shelter, South LA Shelter, West Valley Shelter and Lancaster Animal Care Center, in an effort to pull dogs in need of finding homes out of those shelters and allow space for animals who were displaced by the fires, she said.
Amid the disaster, Cooper said there was a sense of collaboration among the local residents to help those in need.
“You could see and still smell in the air the smoke,” Cooper said. “It was very palpable, though, the community coming together, the rescues and people coming to either foster or adopt at the shelters specifically.”
The dogs now residing in Sonoma County will go to local foster homes or be adopted to forever homes once they get a clean bill of health, according to Dogwood founder and President Shirley Zindler.
“It’s devastating what’s happening and we know what it’s like,” Zindler said.
During the 2017 North Bay fires, Dogwood housed some 40 animals displaced by fires, keeping them safe until owners could take them back or find new homes for them.
“It was a pretty tragic time but we were able to make that a little bit easier for the animals and people we helped,” she said “We’re looking forward to offering assistance (now).”
In addition to Dogwood and Wiley’s collaborative efforts, Goatlandia Farm Animal Sanctuary has opened its locations in Sebastopol and Santa Rosa to animals and people impacted by the Los Angeles fires, and founder Deborah Blum was in Southern California days after the fires began to help pull cats out of shelters.
“We’ve done a lot of (animal) rescue up here in Sonoma County over the fire years and I just felt like there was something we could do,” Blum said.
After getting a call for help from a contact with Southern California’s Viva Rescue, Blum and a volunteer with Goatlalndia took a van and a bunch of borrowed cat crates to Oaks Veterinary Urgent Care in Agoura Hills Sunday and left with 14 cats.
“We mostly work with large animals, but it seems like all the large animals have enough space down there, the biggest need is companion animals,” Blum said.
After the one-day round trip and checkups at a local vet, Blum said that 10 of the cats are currently relaxing at Goatlandia, while three of the cats went to Flat Broke Farm Animal Rescue in Petaluma and one is already staying with a foster family.
“We’ve got a whole group of fosters lined up ready to go and even some potential adopters,” Blum said.
Blum echoed Cooper’s remarks about the hopeful scenes of people working together to help that have sprung up in Los Angeles despite the overwhelming disaster there.
“My heart goes out to everybody down there, it’s a really horrible situation,” she said. “The silver lining in it, I feel, is that it’s an opportunity to see the beauty and humanity when people step up and band together to open their homes and open their hearts.”
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