When Hurricane Harvey displaced pets across the city and left others injured, Rhonda Barron answered the call. With grant money from Houston PetSet, the longtime animal advocate helps find and secure adoptive homes for dogs in need.
Already dangerously crowded, Barron said Houston's pet shelters and facilities saw an influx of animals after their owners were displaced from damaged homes. Other pets had been wounded in the floodwaters and needed care.
Barron has long helped pair pets with permanent homes. In 2010, she began working with BARC, the city's animal shelter, first as a volunteer dog walker and later spearheading a weekly adoption initiative at a local PetSmart store. Last year, her PetSmart program led to 276 animal adoptions.
These days she's a board member of Friends of BARC. She also operates the nonprofit organization Freedom Street Rescue, which is using the new Harvey grant money to increase the number of animals it can rescue. A typical year sees 100 adoptions; the group has already exceeded that number in 2017.
A native Houstonian who works for Shell, Barron has been an animal lover her entire life. She has three dogs - Daisy (a Chihuahua mix), Shakespeare (a lab mix) and Stella (a pit/boxer mix) - in addition to a constantly rotating roster of foster dogs. Currently, that means eight pets at home.
"I just love dogs - I don't have any children, so they're my children," Barron says. "My husband feels the same way."
In addition to hauling food and other pet supplies, Barron uses her SUV to shuttle the dogs under the care of Freedom Street Rescue to veterinarians for checkups; to transport kennels to adoption events; to take dogs to meet prospective adoptive families; and even to drive animals as far as Colorado to be permanently placed with an adoptive family.
"I feel like I have a good connection with animals," she says of her love for volunteering. "There are always so many animals in need. Even with all the rescues, fosters and adoptions, our city can never adopt its way out of the homeless-pet population."
Freedom Street rescues dogs from kill facilities and places them with foster families while vetting permanent adoptive homes on the animals' behalf. While the dogs are in foster care, Freedom Street financially covers the animals' health and certification needs. Some of the animals are rescued from county facilities throughout the metroplex that do not allow adoptions to the public.
Though some of the dogs are healthy, others have been hit by a car, need orthopedic surgery, are heartworm positive or are pregnant.
After nursing the animals back to health, Freedom Street places almost all of them out of state. Barron coordinates with transportation companies to deliver pets to their new homes. She once worked with an airline to fly a dog who was "shy" and would not have fared well on a long road trip with other animals.
Though Houston's pet shelters are severely overburdened - she says BARC can take in up to 150 animals a day - there is a high demand for pet adoption in places including Connecticut, Vermont, Canada and Washington where, because of breeding restrictions, there are not as many unwanted pets.
Barron says the adoption process is much more successful when a dog is in a foster home during the weeks or months after rescue because the foster parents can learn the animal's temperament and needs. Barron says those who are looking to volunteer can get involved with BARC to help staff off-site adoption events or volunteer with rescue organizations to foster animals.
"We need people to welcome the dogs into the family and who are willing to treat the animals as if they were their own," she says.
A rescue organization such as Freedom Street typically places a pet within four to six weeks. But sometimes the process takes much longer, which is when Barron personally steps in. She has fostered some animals for more than a year. The longer they stay, the harder it is to say goodbye, she says: "You reach a point where you can't keep them all. You don't want to let go, but you have to in order to help more animals."
Barron says the greatest reward for her efforts comes in the form of updates she receives from adoptive families who send her emails and other progress reports. Correspondence she particularly looks forward to relates to Max, a pitbull she fostered for several months before finding a home for him in Vermont. Max's new owner has children and grandchildren who have lovingly embraced him.
"He is treated like a king," Barron says.
