In salty humidity thick as stew, Gloria Cabal and Hector Vega trudged through the mud and crawled on all fours through wet, mucky mangrove and cocoplum thickets in the dense Everglades. Were the fresh pawprints they found in the damp soil left by bobcats, panthers, coyotes — or the elusive animal they were tracking?
The volunteer dog rescuers hoped they were on the trail of an abandoned pit bull mother, which bikers had reported seeing with her two puppies in the Redlands area of the 1.5 million acre South Florida swamp. The rescuers had set up cameras in the area and, sure enough, saw the trio running around.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere," said Vega's wife, Paolo Jordan, a Redlands resident and third rescuer that TCPalm accompanied on the hunt that day in March. “You can dump someone here and no one would know.”
There is an "epidemic" of people dumping unwanted dogs and cats in the Everglades , Jordan said, estimating she gets about a dozen reports of strays a day . At the same time, there's a "crisis for capacity" at shelters, said Everglades Angels Dog Rescue Vice President Denise Guevara.
The Pompano Beach nonprofit, and others like it, need help from more people like Treasure Coast resident Tara Goins, who adopted a dog and donates money.
“I don’t even want to know what’s in the bank,” Guevara said. “If you're not adopting our dogs, there's just so many we can take in. Last year ... our hands were tied. There was very limited space and funds.”
Abandoned dogs of Everglades
Everglades Angels, one of at least seven such nonprofits, has saved 860 dogs and adopted 795 in 10 years.
Cabal and Jordan, who work with several different nonprofits, could only speculate on why people dump pets in the Everglades. Rent and other living expenses increase too much to afford a pet, people become homeless, so-called "bully breeds" become unmanageable, and people who got pets during COVID isolation no longer have time for them. Shelters are full and veterinarians won’t euthanize healthy dogs, so there are few good options.
“What are you supposed to do?” Jordan empathized.
“Not dump them,” Cabal said. At least let them loose in Miami, where they can be found more easily, she added. The problem with that is the Miami-Dade County Animal Services no-kill shelter is also overcrowded.
"We can comfortably house about 350 dogs, but today we are housing 650 dogs," Director Annette Jose said in March. "Dogs are staying in the shelter for too many days, weeks and months — some over a year. Their quality of life diminishes in the shelter. ... Please adopt from your local shelter instead of buying a dog from a breeder."She also recommends people tag, chip and spay/neuter their pets, and prevent them from getting loose.
Pit bull mother and puppies
Back on the hunt for the pit bull mother, the rescuers left food and water, then returned to grill pork and tripe, in hopes the smell would lure her out of hiding.
“We’re gonna be here all night,” Vega said. “That’s what we gotta do, baby,” Jordan replied.
The next day, they finally found her — scared, scraped and with a swollen face and jaws, but safe. They named the jungle survivor Jana, after the female version of Tarzan. They previously had found one of her pups and named her Jenny. Sadly, they had also found the other pup's dead body lying nearby, decaying and drawing flies.
They took Jana and Jenny to the hospital, then the Guardians of Florida Animal Rescue in Fort Myers to be adopted.
“As much as we try, there are endless stories,” Jordan said.
Rescuing dogs in the Everglades
Rescuers find sick, injured and starving dogs with oozing sores, broken bones and protruding ribs. They're plagued by fleas, mosquitos and diseases such as heartworms. Their lives are threatened by bobcats, panthers, coyotes, alligators, crocodiles and invasive Burmese pythons — not to mention vehicles.
Rescuers risk their own safety as well as their mental, emotional and financial well-being. Jordan said she spends hundreds of dollars a week on rescue efforts, and recently went to the emergency room three times in two weeks for a bug bite infection. Her mother asked if she’d die for the dogs.
"Yes," she replied. "I'll die doing what I like. We are the dogs' only chance."
Everglades Angels spends $2,777 on the monthly mortgage for its Oakland Park shelter. Donations, grants, fundraisers and sales from its Treasure 4 Tails thrift shop in Deerfield Beach help pay expenses, including food, medicine and veterinarians, President Beverley Smith said.
The rescuers get to know and love each dog: the ones that bark and bite; the crippled ones; the playful ones that chase kongs outside. In a decade, the no-kill shelter has euthanized fewer than five dogs with cancer, Guevara said. The overcrowded shelter had to turn dogs away last year as it faced a record-low adoption rate of only 20 dogs.
If Jordan can’t find an available hospital or shelter space, she takes dogs home, quarantining them in the garage she and her husband converted into an air-conditioned kennel.
“There are some days where I come home and break down and cry, but I have to wipe it off and keep saving dogs the next day,” Jordan said. “If we don’t do it, who will?”
Treasure Coast dog adoption
Tara Goins was 17 when she moved out of her parents' house in New Jersey and began fostering cats and later dogs. Now she's 42 and living in Port St. Lucie with her wife, Lauren; 5-year-old daughter, Callie; and their cat, Eli.
The family was searching for a dog to adopt, one of a certain size that would get along Eli. After finding Katy on the Everglades Angels website, they traveled to the Oakland Park shelter to meet the terrier.
“We squatted down on her level and she just came right up to us and seemed like she knew us for a long time,” Goins said. “We just knew that she was meant for us.”
Katy was skittish when she was found with a collar taut around her neck and scars on her neck and knees. For six months, Katy was terrified of the car, cowering and wobbling as Goins tried to put her in. Katy eventually acclimated to running errands around town with Goins.
Now Katy happily hangs her head out the window, ears flapping in the wind, and howling like her namesake, Katy Perry. She even guards Callie when strangers approach the family's front door.
“We couldn’t be more happy with her,” Goins said.
Animal rescue nonprofits
You can volunteer, make donations, and foster or adopt an animal through any of these nonprofits:
Katie Delk is an environmental reporter for TCPalm. Contact her at katherine.t.delk@gmail.com. Check for updates at @katie_delk .
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Epidemic of dogs dumped in Everglades hits home for Treasure Coast woman
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