A Message From Penelope Hort In Support Of Louie’s Legacy

Please help us help them!

We volunteer for Louie’s Legacy, a not-for-profit animal rescue based out of New York and Ohio. What makes Louie’s truly great is that they rescue animals from high kill shelters and rehome them with loving fosters until forever homes are found. Sometimes that takes days, and other times… But we’ve never kept a foster more than a month.

Animals are often transported on trucks that leave the shelters late Friday night and arrive early Saturday morning. The volunteers who transport these animals are hardcore heroes braving all-nighters filled with barks, meows, and all kinds of odors. One of the best sounds you’ll ever hear is when you’re waiting for your foster and the truck packed with animals nears. The barking can be heard from blocks away. We have seen every kind of cat and dog taken off the truck, from palm-sized kittens to creamy lab puppies to noble pure bred German shepherds weighing in at 100 pounds.

The first time I walked home with an enormous shepherd, Andy just looked at me and shook his head no. All the dogs are given names before they arrive, and this girl’s name was Miracle. I told Andy that everybody in life is always hoping for a miracle, and here was his. The only thing he could do was laugh. This response was better than the one I got when I tied a big red bow around the neck of a 20 pound snaggle toothed girl and gifted her to him on his birthday telling him I’d gotten him a life as a gift.

Miracle, or Mira as we called her, was clearly once somebody’s beloved dog. She was loving, obedient, and knew the couch was a comfy place to snuggle. She was left pregnant in a southern kill shelter and all her beautiful puppies found homes but many people are scared of taking a shepherd from a shelter. I know I was but, as a mama, I wasn’t leaving the mama behind. Like every dog we have ever fostered, we considered keeping Mira, she was perfection, but we knew she could do better than to live in an apartment in the heart of NYC.

And she did. At her first adoption event, she found a home with a shepherd loving family with a yard where she could chase squirrels and birds all day. The hardest thing about fostering is not cleaning up after puppies or seeing your sofa clawed by a kitten, it’s giving your foster to its new family. I always hear people say that they could never foster. It would be too painful.  But the alternative is far worse.

I have cried countless tears over my fosters. I have sobbed so shamelessly that adopters have asked if I were sure I wanted to give the animal away but, and I know I sound like a total freak, fostering is the mission. Louie’s is giving these animals a second chance, a chance they deserve, and it is seriously an honor to be a small part of that process. Not only is Louie’s saving lives, they are giving homes to animals who would otherwise be euthanized or live out their lives in shelters. If you are interested in adopting a pet please contact us. It will bring love into your home.