The Doggie Underground Railroad

This is Clint. Don't ask me what he is, he's just a dog. A dog in trouble who found himself in a kill shelter in southwest Virginia, unclaimed, unwanted, and out of time. He's on his way to an undisclosed location in New York. It's not really a secret, I just don't happen to know where he's going. All I know is that an email landed in my mailbox about trying to move this dog and all they were lacking was an overnight location in or around Charlottesville.

My own part in this rescue effort is minimal. There is a woman and her husband who pull dogs from a particular shelter in SW VA every week and drive at least as far as Charlottesville to place them with a rescue group or to move them along their way further north. This couple has singled handedly saved hundreds, maybe a thousand or more dogs since they started this endeavor. Thanks to the internet, they hooked up with a rescue group in New York that was willing to take the dog. Someone from that group is driving down from New Jersey tomorrow to pick up Clint and then pass him off to someone else who will be fostering the dog in New York.

My only part in this is picking up the dog today in Charlottesville, keeping him overnight, and then meeting the New Jersey woman tomorrow out on I-81. Being "at liberty" as they say, I have time to make this run and meeting her on I-81 will save her some miles and time.

Many dogs make this journey on the modern underground railroad every day. The flow is generally out of the rural, southern, bible belt regions to "bluer" parts of the state and country. I'll spare you my usual tirade about gun-toting, bible-thumping, red state, white trash rednecks who don't control their dogs' sexual activities anymore than they do their own. (Preaching/teaching "abstinence only" to dogs works about as well as it does with teenagers.) You can draw your own conclusions.

I'll edit this post tomorrow to show some more pictures of the handoff, assuming I remember to take my camera.