This is a difficult review to post because I believe that Abby is really trying to save strays.
When you first arrive at the shelter it is far from what you would expect, such as Pet Rescue by Judy in Sanford which has a dedicated commercial facility to saving and helping animals. You'll not find that here. Instead they are make shift cages and short runs, covered with the shade of trees or shade cloth, scattered about the property. Is it ideal? No. Not even close. It would be nice if they had a benefactor to help out, but they aren't even close to that level.
The animals are cared for with as much attention and love as possible. The medicine and food is, I feel rationed, but they are not starving. However, they do have a hook worm problem that needs to be attended to and for the sake of the animals they need to make sure the hook worms stay gone from the soil. They need to sterilize the ground with sodium borate, treat the dogs that are infected and then pour concrete slabs to prevent the infections from happening again. If you are a concrete person and want to assist by donating your time and extra resources, please help out by offering it to Abby. Just pouring a simple 100x100 slab would do wonders for the health of the animals.
The other thing I will point out is that they need to train some of the animals, which would help them adjust to the adoption process. The dog we adopted jumps and this is a trained process. Some one taught the dog that it was OK to jump up and dance with a human. This is a no-no. Dogs should not jump on anyone and teaching them to sit, heal, stay would definitely help the dogs get adopted.
The animals need to be bathed on a regular basis, at least once a month since they are outdoors and in the humidity 24/7. The dog we adopted stunk to high heaven and even though I put sheets in the back of the vehicle the strands of hair left made the interior smell like rotting trash. It was ungodly disgusting. At the very least, wash the animal before pickup. It took a whole can of Febreeze just to enable me to drive to work with out gagging.
We had to take the animal to the vet because even though it had been tended to by a vet previously, we were concerned about many different items. One was there was no dog flu shot, which was needed for boarding. Of course, the hook worms, and then some skin issues. We also had the animal weaned off the Purina products and put on Call of the Wild. We had to mix the foods and slowly change her diet, which helped out greatly.
We felt that the dogs are under stress and the need to be walked more. They need exercise on a regular basis and that is wear a dog run would do well for daily health. A dog should be able to get more exercise and stretch their legs with a full stride. To what extent they get exercise is unknown but I didn't see a dedicated full dog run.
We feel that Abby needs a benefactor, someone to control and organize the facility, but this is a mom and pop operation. It is not state of the art and with a lot of money to back it for proper functions. Abby does care for the animals and is trying to do the best she can with what little she has, but I'm telling you all this because you shouldn't be put off by not seeing what you think you should see. I saw another post about a dog that they adopted died after they took it to the vet. Yes, that does happen and I'm not sure why their dog died, but that is why as a community a benefactor would bring this rescue center to the next level.
What ever animal you adopt from here, you will have to put in effort to rehabilitate it. You will need to take it to a vet to cover some of the problems and you will definitely have to put in work to train it properly. However if you do find a good dog here, adopting it would help the animal and your donation would help Abby. read more