WHEN WE LAST LEFT GREG AND TOMMY (and me) in a tractor-trailer with more than fifty dogs at the end of Chapter 5, we were in a water-logged parking lot east of Lafayette on I-10 on a Wednesday night. Earlier that morning we’d boarded Keri’s dogs in Alexandria, then driven to Baytown and back into Louisiana. Most were settled in for a short night’s sleep before we were to start boarding more dogs at Lafayette Animal Aid early the next morning. The stop at LAA will mark the beginning of the longest part of Greg’s journey, a drive that begins in Lafayette early on Thursday morning and ends early Friday evening in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
• • •
Thanks to Willis and T-Bone, whose barking has kept me up most of the night, I’ve managed to get nary an hour of sound sleep before six thirty, when Greg and Tommy are up and ready for the short drive to LAA. But I can’t feel that bad for myself. Other than sleep, Greg doesn’t get so much as five minutes off when he’s on the road. Even when Tommy’s driving, he’s taking calls, keeping an eye on the road (he and Tommy serve as one another’s second set of eyes while driving), and noodling over work-related problems, such as the need for a new trailer and how to arrange the dogs since we have a heavy load already and more to board.
Fifteen dogs are scheduled to join us at LAA. For the past few years Greg has transported between two hundred and three hundred dogs a year from LAA, all adopted out through Labs4rescue and Mutts4rescue.
Just as it did when we loaded our first dogs in Alexandria yesterday morning, it’s pouring as the dogs are brought to the truck. There’s Hammish, a four-year old Border collie with a leaky heart valve and advanced, inoperable heartworm disease. Though he’ll likely live only another year, a Connecticut family has agreed to provide a home for whatever days he has remaining. He’s a handsome dog, sweet and happy. A few of the LAA staff wipe away tears that have mingled with the raindrops on their faces as Greg picks up Hammish and lifts him into the trailer.
Following Hammish is Happy, an eight-month-old Australian shepherd mix found tied to the fence at LAA with his two brothers. Happy has really hit the lottery; he’s found a forever home on Martha’s Vineyard. Then Gladys and Abby, both young Lab mixes, a golden retriever named Lolly, a terrier-schnauzer mix named Maple, and last but not least, Bijou, the stray pulled from the Saint Martin Parish Animal Services shelter and bound for the Mooney family in South Walpole, Massachusetts.27
• • •
Now it’s time for the big thirty-six-hour push from Lafayette to Allentown. When we finish loading the dogs at LAA in the pouring rain, most of the dogs traveling with us this week are on board. We’ll pick up a few more in Hammond, Louisiana—including Sadie, the Lab with epilepsy—and Slidell, Louisiana, and, near midnight, two more in tiny Rising Fawn, Georgia, in the northwest corner of the state.
Thanks to people such as Keri Toth, Greta Jones, and Sara Kelly in Alexandria; Kathy Wetmore in Houston; Melinda Falgout, Carley Faughn, April Reeves and the staff of LAA; and dozens of fosters, veterinarians, volunteers, shelter directors, and shelter staff, nearly eighty hard-luck dogs—dogs abandoned, abused, neglected, unwanted, or just lost—are about to begin the final leg of their long and often torturous journeys to their forever homes.
There’s Bijou and Willis, and Tennessee, surrendered by the homeless man he’d been with for two years. There’s Salyna, Sully, and Seth, three of the ten puppies saved by CJ Nash, the compassionate and quick-thinking eighteen-year-old near Natchitoches, Louisiana; Jupee and Pam, two of the tub puppies; and Trudy and her companion, Popcorn. And sadly, there are those who didn’t make it or never will, nameless hundreds that looked at me through shelter cage doors, licked my fingers, and jumped manically hoping to get my attention. But for now the focus is on getting the lucky ones we have on board safely on their way to the families counting down the hours and minutes till Gotcha Day. Greg’s ready to roll, the dogs are ready, and so am I.
• • •
The virtually nonstop run from Lafayette to Allentown will take us across Louisiana, through Mississippi, Alabama, a tiny piece of Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, to Allentown, in Pennsylvania, where, if all goes according to schedule, we’ll arrive around six o’clock on Friday night. It’s 1,326 miles all told.
Back on Interstate 10, heading east toward Baton Rouge, it seems as if the entire state of Louisiana is sinking into the swamps. For twenty miles, the highway is straight as an arrow and elevated just feet above the Henderson Swamp, a massive wetland in Saint Martin Parish. The rain subsides near Baton Rouge, and a short distance beyond, we stop in Hammond. This is where we pick up Sadie, who will ride in the cab with us. Sadie is a sweet girl, but also self-contained. She doesn’t display much emotion as we hoist her up into the cab. Rather, she sits calmly next to me on the mattress behind Greg and Tommy, tolerant of my petting her but not insistent for affection, as many dogs are, as we continue our journey east across Louisiana.
Just before noon, in a parking lot near a Cracker Barrel in Slidell, we meet volunteers from Labs4rescue and other rescue groups to load a few Labs, a basset hound, and several others.
Before we leave Slidell, Greg calls Debbie, his mother-in-law, to review the passenger list. As always, there have been some late cancellations and some substitutions. Greg wants to make sure he has an accurate list with each dog and where it’s meeting its forever family or foster. Debbie will also be the point person communicating with adopters and fosters meeting the transport up north in case we’re running behind schedule.
As we cross the border into Mississippi, the return of heavy rains is slowing our progress considerably and adds to the strain and fatigue we’re all experiencing now. Driving in this kind of weather requires greater than usual concentration. In good weather, we’ve been moving at sixty to sixty-five miles per hour; now our pace has slowed to forty-five or fifty at best.
When we reach Hattiesburg, we stop briefly to deliver a load of supplies donated to a local rescue shelter from people in New England. I’ve come to learn this is exactly the kind of extra mile Greg travels simply because he’s eager to help people—and dogs. He’s not charging for hauling the food, bowls, leashes, and other pet supplies he picked up two weeks ago on his last pass through New England. He’s just lending a hand to the rescue groups transporting dogs with him, and sometimes even those that aren’t.
By midafternoon, crossing Mississippi, the rain abates and the roads dry out. Seeing the weariness on Greg’s face on our fourth day on the road now, I ask him what keeps him going and how long he thinks he can keep doing work that is clearly exhausting, physically and mentally.
“I plan on doing this as long as I’m physically able,” he tells me. “And I do it because it helps the dogs. It helps the person getting the dog, but I also do it because it helps people like April [April Reeves, the adoption coordinator at LAA]. April is one of my heroes. I want to help her too. It’s why I drag my ass out of bed. As I learned with Poochie [the first stray dog he brought home as a kid], damn this feels good. And it still feels good.”
When we stopped in Slidell, an elderly gentleman named John Yonge met the transport. He’d been fostering two Labs, Bumble and Bee, and they were now headed to their forever homes. He cried quietly as he said good-bye, just as Tilani Pomirko had when she said good-bye to Willis in Baytown, and just as Greta Jones had when she said good-bye to Tippi in Alexandria. Fosters give so much of themselves to these dogs, knowing all along there’s a painful parting in the future—unless, of course, they become foster failures. Their role in the rescue process is indispensable. Without them, far fewer dogs would make it to forever homes.
“It takes a lot to scoop up a dog and give it so much of your heart knowing you’re going to give it up,” Greg explains. He’s right: The foster networks are another piece of the rescue puzzle mostly invisible to adopters. Though he’s a critical link in the rescue chain, the one knitting all the others together, you sense Greg is in this difficult, messy, smelly work for all the people who play their parts in getting the dogs on board his truck, including people like John and Tilani. “At the end of day,” he says, “everyone feels good about what they’ve done.”
• • •
On every trip, Greg stops for two to three hours outside of Birmingham, Alabama, where a group of about two-dozen volunteers meet the truck and help Greg and Tommy get every dog out for a good walk, play with them, rub their bellies, and give them water and snacks. These are the “Birmingham Angels,” as Greg calls them, started a few years ago by a woman named Lynda Ingle. In 2011, Lynda, who is involved in several local rescue organizations, had rescued a dog and found an adopter in Massachusetts. Someone recommended Rescue Road Trips for transport. She started following Greg on Facebook, saw he was looking for volunteers in the area, and offered to pull a group together.
“Greg puts his all, his whole being into transporting these dogs safely,” Lynda once told me. “These aren’t just dogs to him.”
By late afternoon, we’re southeast of Birmingham on Interstate 20, on our way to meet the Angels, when we pass a white van traveling in the right lane. Greg realizes it’s Keri Toth and Greta Jones from Alexandria on their way to this Sunday’s adoption event in Rhode Island with forty dogs, mostly puppies. Greg expected they’d be much farther north by now, and he’s concerned as evening turns to night they’re going to be fatigued. He knows from experience it’s no easy feat to make a long-distance drive in a van with forty mostly very young and active puppies.
We wave as we pass, and Greg calls Keri on her cell phone. He tells her she and Greta should follow him into Birmingham, that the Angels will help them with the dogs they’re transporting too. Greg never expected to see Keri and Greta on the road. But this is the kind of improvisation that keeps the rescue movement moving. Knowing how difficult the trip is for Keri and Greta, Greg suggests, insists really, that we travel as a two-vehicle caravan all the way to Allentown. After all, we’re carrying two-dozen “Keri dogs” bound for the Rhode Island adoption event too. Greg’s going to do whatever he can to make sure all of them make it there safely and on time.
• • •
Right around 6:00 p.m., followed by Keri and Greta, we pull into the parking lot where the Angels are waiting. The skies are threatening yet again, and getting more than eighty dogs out for walks in the pouring rain would be a nightmare, not to mention the forty dogs in the van needing to get out and exercise and do their business, but we luck out and there’s little more than a light drizzle as the carefully orchestrated routine unfolds.
Volunteers line up at the trailer door as Lynn Watson, dressed in jeans, a Rescue Road Trips T-shirt, a baseball cap, and rain boots (“washable and pee proof”), hops into the trailer. Lynn is one of the Angels. As each dog is taken out of its crate for a walk, she’ll clean the kennel and lay down dry newspaper. Over the din of dozens of excited, barking dogs, Greg, Tommy, and Lynn hand off dogs to one another and then to the waiting volunteers.
“T-Bone!” shouts Tommy, handing T-Bone to Greg.
“T-Bone! Got him!” Greg shouts back as he slips a leash over T-Bone’s head and around his neck. Then he turns to the man next in line at the trailer door.
“T-Bone!” Greg shouts as he leads T-Bone down the steps and into the hands of the waiting volunteer.
“Paper change in forty-four!” Tommy yells to Lynn, referring to T-Bone’s crate number.
“Tennessee!” shouts Tommy. And the process is repeated, with Greg, Tommy, and Lynn handing dogs to volunteers until each dog has had his time in the fresh air.
As Greg and Tommy work to get the dogs out, Keri and Greta have been setting up portable play spaces for the dogs they’re driving to Rhode Island. Occasionally, a puppy slips out and a handful of volunteers chase it down. This isn’t a typical stop with the Birmingham Angels; not only is Greg carrying about two-dozen dogs more than usual, but there are also the forty unexpected guests with Keri and Greta. There’s more than a passing resemblance to a traveling circus. Seeing Keri and Greta have their hands full, Greg asks Lynn to lend them a hand.
“She’s willing to get knee deep in shit,” Greg says to me, paying her one of the highest compliments you can get from Greg Mahle.
Lynn is tall with dark, shoulder-length hair; she works in an administrative position for the University of Alabama-Birmingham Health System. There was little time to talk during our stop, so we spoke by phone a few weeks later. Greg had urged me to talk with her; she is one of his most highly prized volunteers and would be able to explain what drives the Angels to come out to meet the truck every two weeks, rain, snow, or shine.
“I always had dogs growing up,” Lynn tells me, “but my father wasn’t keen on it. When I was finally on my own at nineteen, my first rite of passage was to get a rescue dog. I was at an adoption event and saw this older wirehaired terrier–dachshund mix being overlooked by everyone. She wasn’t one of the cute puppies in a pen. She was my companion throughout my twenties and into my thirties. We were our own pack. We traveled together. I’ve been drawn to rescue ever since.” And to rescue dogs—she now has three.
“There’s a lot of compassion out there,” Lynn says, “and Facebook connected me with like-minded people helping animals one at a time.” Through Facebook, Lynn learned about Lynda Ingle’s group helping Greg with the dogs. When she came to meet the truck for the first time a few years ago, she was impressed.
“There wasn’t a lot of ‘Kumbaya,’” Lynn tells me. “Everyone was just there to help the dogs. I started helping Tommy in the truck and got hooked on the grunt work. I love being in the truck and being hands-on with all the dogs and handing them off for walks. You see the fearful ones, who are reassured when you put them into someone’s arms. They know they are on the road to safety and security.
“There’s always at least one that shoots an arrow right through my heart,” she continues. “It’s a look in the eye. It’s very rewarding. Everyone can do something. Not everyone can give money or adopt or foster, but everyone can make a difference. You can’t solve the whole problem, but you can have an impact. Greg knew he could make a difference and people stepped up to help.”
Lynn rarely misses a Rescue Road Trip; she’s someone Greg can count on seeing every other Thursday night.
“When we were done the night you came through with the truck and all those puppies in the van, I smelled so bad.” She laughs. “But being with that little community for a couple of hours and helping—on the ride home, I have the best feeling ever. I’m doing my little part, but Greg is making a huge difference. I feel so content knowing Greg is back on the road; the dogs have all been walked, fed, and watered; and Greg and Tommy are okay. It’s great to know they are all safe and on their way.
“I want people to realize they don’t need a designer puppy from a pet shop or breeder,” Lynn adds. “There are so many dogs that just don’t get a chance. Caylie [her first rescue] was overlooked. She always looked like she was walking downhill because her front legs were shorter than her hind legs. But I gave her a chance and she changed my life.”
• • •
Just before nine, a little less than three hours after our arrival in Birmingham, we’re back on the interstate, but traffic is at a virtual standstill. Using my iPhone, I can see we have several miles like this ahead. I check the news and learn there’s been a fatal accident. Under the best of circumstances, Thursday night and into Friday is the most arduous part of the journey. To be stalled right out of the gate, moving a few feet at a time, is dispiriting. It’s also a reminder that this difficult job can also be dangerous. Keri and Greta manage to stay close, and for two hours, we creep along covering just three miles or so before we finally clear the accident scene and drive into the dark Alabama night, a two-vehicle caravan with five people and more than 120 dogs.
I ask Greg about the monotony of driving the same route over and over and over again. “It must seem like and endless loop,” I suggest, and he agrees. When I ask him what he thinks about as the endless miles roll by he responds, enigmatically, “Everything and nothing.”
I was curious what exactly this meant, so over the next twenty-four hours I would periodically and randomly ask him, “What are you thinking about right now?” The first time he was thinking about where to take Adella to celebrate their second anniversary in a few weeks, though he would be on the road on the actual date. Cincinnati was the leading contender at the moment. More often than not, he was thinking about work: from Rescue Road Trip web pages that needed updating to whether to turn the operation from a limited liability corporation to a nonprofit, to the Facebook posts he’ll write as Gotcha Day draws closer. One time when I popped the question, he immediately replied, “Elvis!”
“Really?” I asked.
“Noooo!” He laughed.
Greg and Keri stay in touch by phone and about 1:30 a.m., we all pull into a rest stop in northeastern Alabama. Keri and Greta are exhausted, and it’s agreed Tommy will drive the van and Keri will ride with us in the truck until we are near Knoxville. Greg’s goal is to get Keri and Greta as far along as possible tonight, so they won’t have such a long ride tomorrow.
With Greg behind the wheel and Keri in the passenger seat, I doze fitfully sitting on Tommy’s mattress with my back against the rear of the cab, one arm around Sadie who proves to be the mellowest and sweetest of companions. The lights of small towns, larger cities (Chattanooga), and gas stations and fast food joints just off the highway seem to flicker on and off like fireflies on a warm summer evening. But mostly, all I can see are the painted lines on the highway illuminated by our headlights and the endless ribbon of highway.
Just south of Knoxville, we all stop, Keri and Tommy trade places again, and Tommy drives us on while Greg dozes for another hour or so. Keri and Greta stay put for some rest. Because we had so many dogs to be cared for in Birmingham this trip, we left about an hour later than usual. Then there was the delay caused by the accident in Birmingham. Shepherding Keri and Greta and then driving through a thick fog for the past few hours have also taken their toll. Finally, Tommy’s too tired to drive any longer, and, at around 6:00 a.m., pulls into a rest area and the three of us sleep in the cab until 7:15, when Greg rouses, switches seats with Tommy, and we’re rolling again.
Now, Keri and Greta are on their own…sort of. The plan is now to stay in touch and rendezvous in Allentown this evening.
Normally on this drive through the night, Greg sleeps as Tommy drives and vice versa. But because he was worried about Keri and Greta, both Greg and Tommy spent several hours when both were driving. They’ve dealt with worse, but lots of little things have conspired to make this an especially wearying trip: the larger-than-normal load, the rain, the fog, and the accident in Birmingham. Carrying precious cargo such as rescue dogs is more stressful than transporting ordinary goods, like beer and soda. For Greg, losing valuable sleep along the way is like adding another hundred-pound weight to his shoulders.
• • •
After a fitful sleep myself, I watch the morning sun fight its way through thick fog as we cross into Virginia, Greg behind the wheel. It’s around eight on Friday morning. Normally, Greg and Tommy would get each dog out for a morning walk, but the previous evening’s events have put us three hours behind schedule so Greg will stop, assess each dog, and see which ones really need a walk and those that will be content to remain in their kennels. On a grassy expanse at the edge of a rest stop, Greg and I walk about three-dozen dogs as Tommy tends to the kennels.
“People think this is a glamorous job,” he says to me, referring to a number of offers he’s had since the Parade article to do a reality TV show and the minor celebrities who have asked to do a ride along. “But it’s a shitty, smelly, grueling job. Who else would want to do this?” He grins. The answer is obvious: very few people, which is why my admiration for Greg grows by the mile.
• • •
A little after noon, south of Staunton, Virginia, comes a stop I’ve been looking forward to for four days. This is the truck stop where we’ll each get a shower. For Greg, it will be the first break of any kind he’s had in our five days on the road. As I saw, when he’s not driving, he’s taking calls, trying to sleep, thinking about the dogs, worrying about staying on schedule, cleaning kennels, or reassuring nervous dogs. Seeing him head off to the shower, change of clothes in hand, I realize this may be the only fifteen-minute break he’s allowed himself since we pulled out of Zanesville.
The shower is positively rejuvenating. The exhaustion of having only six hours of sleep over three days and two nights seems to wash down the drain. All three of us are in better spirits as we prepare to continue north through Virginia.
It’s a good time for Greg to pull out his iPhone and painstakingly type out a new Facebook post for all those waiting down the road. Tomorrow is Gotcha Day and a steady stream of Facebook messages is part of his plan to make Gotcha Day as exciting and as memorable as it can be for everyone greeting a new dog. But this Facebook post also sums up his dedication to his work, the reason why he puts himself through these exhausting trips, driving long hours on the road through torrential rains and other bad weather, wading through and cleaning up dog poop and muck, and weathering the occasional bite or scratch to give these dogs and their soon-to-be forever families a future together.
“At this point,” he writes, “the dogs and I have become a pack. We are all starting to form bonds and I have learned the personality of each of them. I am thankful for getting to share part of my life with each of them. I am happy I have such a great group of dogs to go through this experience with me. I love them all.”
• • •
The ride through Virginia is the longest of any state on the route. Greg and Tommy occasionally fall into stream-of-consciousness conversation, often started by something they hear on Radio America, the conservative talk radio station Tommy listens to and that Greg largely tunes out. Maybe it’s the unusually exhausting trip we’ve had, or the fact that they spend an inordinate amount of time in a small space together with nothing else to do, but over the course of one ten-minute period in Virginia, a conversation which begins with Tommy describing a huge moth he saw at the truck stop where we showered ricochets rapidly to the existence of bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster to “trunk monkeys” (a reference to a series of car commercials) to aliens performing colonoscopies. They egg each other on, each trying to top the other by raising the conversation to a higher level of absurdity. The banter has a wonderful Robin Williams–esque randomness to it. It’s all the more comical because of Tommy’s passing resemblance to the actor John Goodman and Greg’s marvelous way of laughing and talking at the same time that seems only to urge Tommy to ever higher flights of fancy.
Despite the banter, it would be a stretch to describe Greg and Tommy as friends, despite, or perhaps because of, the amount of time they spend together. Greg is indisputably in charge, and Tommy generally refers to him as “Boss.” They don’t see one another between trips. What Greg values is that Tommy shows up on time and does the work Greg needs him to do; it’s not easy finding someone willing to do a job as demanding and dirty as this one, especially for a wage Greg can afford to pay. In truth, their relationship is as Greg needs it to be. He doesn’t need a friend on the road; he needs a stalwart employee, and Tommy has never let him down in the four years or so he’s been working for Greg.
“The driving can be so boring and so monotonous,” Greg says to me when the latest explosion of random humor abates, apparently trying to explain the giddiness I’ve just witnessed. It also seems to relieve some stress. “Adhering to a schedule is my least favorite part of the job,” he adds. “It would be nice to be free from that and be able to spend more time with the dogs outside. But we always have people waiting on us.” He doesn’t mean this as a complaint—he values every adopter for giving a dog a second chance. But when the demands of the schedule are bearing down on him, as they are today, he wishes he could give the dogs a little more of his attention.
• • •
Just before 3:00 p.m., we’re a few miles from the West Virginia border and we make a quick stop to check on the dogs. Sadie is still my seatmate on the mattress. We’ve been together like this for more than a thousand miles and she’s a complete love: quiet, gentle, uncomplaining. I share my snacks with her; she rests her head in my lap.
“Adella’s worried about you,” Greg says to me at one point after getting off the phone with his wife. Adella knows how tough it is on the road, and she knows Greg can be sarcastic and quick-tempered, especially when he’s stressed. “I told her you were fine.” And, indeed, though extremely tired, I am fine, even content. It has been a long trip, and we have many miles still to travel, but the excitement of nearing the finish line and witnessing Gotcha Day is beginning to build.
Soon the South is behind us. After twenty-five miles in West Virginia and twelve in Maryland, we’re in Pennsylvania, a definitively northern state.
The Maryland-Pennsylvania border is also the Mason–Dixon Line. Though it has, over time, come to unofficially demarcate the North from the South, and separated the free states from the slave states during the Civil War, the Mason–Dixon Line has its origins in a land dispute between two families, the Penns and the Calverts, dating to before the American Revolution. Charles Mason, a British astronomer, and Jeremiah Dixon, a distinguished British surveyor, completed the survey between 1763 and 1767. For Greg, the line has come to represent the moment when the dogs have safely left behind lives of neglect, abuse, and pain, and are within reach of new lives in their forever homes. On every Rescue Road Trip, he writes a Facebook post from just beyond the Mason–Dixon Line to tell people we’re getting close. It’s not just a historically symbolic crossing; it’s a symbolic crossing for Greg, the dogs, and their forever families eagerly awaiting us.
“With yelps, howls, and wagging tails, we crossed the Mason–Dixon,” he writes. “All bad memories of being homeless, starved, abused, abandoned, unwanted, and unloved were left behind us. Our thoughts are on forever families and forever love. Gotcha Day is almost here. Are you excited? Is your welcome sign ready? Get ready, we are almost there!”
• • •
A little more than two hours later, we pull into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn near Allentown, where about two-dozen Allentown Angels are waiting, another of the volunteer groups that have sprung up along Greg’s route. The group formed in mid-2009 and is organized by Keith and Diane Remaly, who learned about Rescue Road Trips, as my wife and I did, when they adopted their first dog, Dallas, through Labs4rescue. The Remalys have four rescue dogs. (Dallas died shortly after this trip in June 2014, leaving the Remalys profoundly bereaved.) He’s a production planner for a hydraulic equipment manufacturer; she’s an engineer with Verizon.
“When my eyes got opened about what goes on down south, and how many dogs are put down, I wanted to do what I could to help,” Keith told me when I was writing the Parade magazine piece. “It makes you want to do more for them.” Through social media and word of mouth, Keith grew the Allentown Angels. Volunteers range in age from eighteen to nearly eighty. The Allentown Angels meet Greg every other Friday night, come rain or snow. One snowy winter night a volunteer plowed a large area for the dogs to walk and relieve themselves.
One dog of the thousands Keith has seen stays in his memory. “There was an American Eskimo dog I was walking, and whenever I turned to head back toward the trailer, he pulled in the other direction,” Keith told me. “I knelt down and he put his paws on my legs and I talked to him. I swear as I said to him ‘You’re going to your new home tomorrow,’ he went right back to the trailer as if he understood me.”
What draws Keith and the other Angels to this parking lot every other week, even on a New Year’s Eve, isn’t just the dogs. It’s Greg. “He’s a super guy,” says Keith. “His heart is as big as a Volkswagen.” The Remalys even traveled to Ohio for Greg and Adella’s wedding in 2012.
All along the route, I notice the intricate connections that have been made to create a network that supports and sustains all sorts of rescue efforts. When Keri has a dog she thinks needs special attention, she not only tells Greg, but she calls Keith too, so he can check on the dog when it reaches Allentown. This Friday night, she can talk to Keith in person. Even though we haven’t been caravanning today, Keri and Greta pull in shortly after we do. Keith has already told his volunteers that in addition to helping Greg with the dogs in the truck, there are forty more arriving with Keri and Greta.
It’s a mild, beautiful evening made even more festive by an added feature to the usual scene of dogs and people gamboling on the grass expanses adjacent to the parking lot: a potluck dinner laid out on a long table filled with salads, casseroles, and desserts. Someone even brought a gas grill and is cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. In the middle of the table is a large sheet cake with “Thank you, Rescue Road Trips” inscribed on it.
As dogs romp and play with strangers they will only know for an hour or so, one very happy couple and one very happy little dog are getting to know each another. For Willis, Gotcha Day is today: his new family, Mary Ellen and Phil Gambutti, are from nearby Easton and were waiting with their welcome sign and hearts surrendered weeks ago to a photograph of Willis they saw online. Now that he’s finally in their arms, they are overcome with joy and little Willis…well, as always, he’s just a happy little camper.
• • •
As in Birmingham, the whole scene has a carnival air, with Greg’s truck the equivalent of the big top in a traveling circus. The extra attraction tonight is Keri and Greta’s menagerie. Inside the trailer, two volunteers, Anita Patterson and Maureen Keenan, both wearing knee pads, jeans, gloves, and headlamps, do the job Lynn Watson does in Birmingham: they help Tommy and Greg hand off dogs and clean the kennels. They work like a well-oiled machine; they’ve done this task so many times, it’s become a polished routine. Outside, passersby stop and watch the puppies and wonder aloud about the unusual scene they’ve stumbled upon.
Then, just as quickly as it began, the evening winds down. Every dog has been petted, fed, watered, and walked. As dusk turns to darkness, the food is packed away, the buffet table and grill are loaded into pickup trucks, and volunteers say their good-byes and drive away in their cars. It’s suddenly and eerily quiet and empty, as if the midway at a small-town circus has been rolled up and stowed for the trip to the next town.
But just when you think this forty-hour day, a day that started yesterday morning near Lafayette, Louisiana, is over, there’s yet another in a series of endless tasks to be attended to. Gotcha Day drop-offs start around nine thirty tomorrow morning in New Jersey, and to ensure everything goes smoothly, Greg alphabetizes the envelopes with each dog’s medical records and writes down the number of the kennel each dog is in. It may seem like a small thing, just another hour’s work, but it’s another in the countless tasks that never seem to end when you’re on transport. And even when that’s done, Greg is taking pictures of the dogs with his iPhone, pictures he can use for tomorrow’s Facebook posts. At 11:00 p.m., Greg calls it a day. A very long day.
Keri and Greta are staying in the Comfort Inn parking lot for the night; we drive five minutes up the road to the parking lot of another motel where, at 5:00 a.m., Greg will meet up with P.E.T.S. (Peterson Express Transport Service), another operation, like Greg’s, bringing dogs up north from southern states. Dogs bound for farther north than Connecticut will be transferred to P.E.T.S., as our Albie was, for the final leg of their journey home.
As Greg climbs into his bunk in the trailer, I settle into my sleeping bag wedged between the rows of kennels for what I hope will finally be a restful night—at least, as restful as a five-and-a-half-hour night can be. Greg ends the day as he always does, with a text to Adella, telling her he loves her. And, as he always does, he falls asleep immediately.
For the next hour or so, all is quiet, but I’m having trouble shutting my brain down. I pull out my notebook and record some of the thoughts the day’s events have sparked. Yet even when exhaustion overcomes me and I tuck the notebook away in my backpack, sleep still eludes me. Then, I hear it: a dog toward the back of the trailer whimpering and starting to cry. I know it’s not Willis as it was a couple of nights ago, since he’s with his new forever family. I get up as quietly as I can, so as not to set off a ruckus, and discover it’s Salyna, the white and yellow Lab mix with the distinctive blue tongue and dark eyes I took a fancy to when we first met in Alexandria. It was less than three days ago, but it seems like forever. After a couple of attempts to calm her, I take her from her kennel, and for the next three hours, I sit inside by the trailer door with Salyna in my arms, where she falls asleep.
Within the quiet of the trailer, I can discern the first sounds of morning, just before five, in the form of birdcalls. When I crack the trailer door to peek outside, it’s still dark. I’ve yet to close my eyes.
27.Saint Martin Parish is a neighboring parish to the east of Lafayette Parish.