California Dogs Arrive but not without Controversy

First of all I want to thank all our wonderful volunteers who stepped up to help with greeting the Animal Rescue Corps team and the new doggie arrivals. We are thrilled to be a part of such a great organization. We jumped at the chance to help ARC and bring the doggies to Nova Scotia. The paperwork part for the pups under 8 months proved to have many challenges but it was all worth the effort to save so many dogs. In the aftermath of the excitement of yesterday's arrivals,sitting here recovering from surgery, there is a sense of contentment knowing that these dogs have finally had the opportunity to cuddle and feel love from their foster families. These dogs, some from a hoarding home need a safe place to come out of their "shut down" state of mind. The others from the Palm Springs shelter were living in small crates in a facility over capacity by 100 dogs...Thats just one shelter. From my experience over the years of working with the Southern Shelters,the amount of dogs in shelters is totally overwhelming. There are no places for the dogs to go except in the dumpstar or ground. The ones that are no kill are living in cramped quarters indefinitely and the others get 72 hrs to be adopted and they are killed. As I sit here feeling content that we did something good for this world watching the news coverage; over and over why are we bringing more dogs to Nova Scotia? Why not help our own? ECGSR help local dogs all the time.Our rescue takes dogs from the pound who fail their temperment test, if they get full, we help and obviously not with just German Shepherds. Yes we extend ourselves all the time to help. We have helped Southern dogs over the years taking what we can but always leaving room for local dogs as well. But every now and then when a call for help exceeds the usual numbers of dogs we can help...its a call to extend ourselves to go above and beyond. Thats what we and the other rescues involved decided to do. We are not bringing in dogs with no place for them to go. Most of these dogs are chihuahua mixes and terrier mixes in high demand for adoption. Ask the pound and the SPCA how many approved applications they have waiting for a small dog to adopt. There are many waiting. So the question is why wouldn't we help dogs in need regardless where they came from. The other larger dogs are special needs and they cant be in a shelter setting. They lived in a hoarding situation. They need to experience love/calmness. We had people offer to help. These dogs dont add to our unwanted dogs. One more point that is not being mentioned in the media that is very important as well, Animal Rescue Corps was asked to help with Canadian dogs on a couple occasions helping over 200 dogs and they didnt say "oh, we cant help, they are Canadian dogs" ECGSR has worked with ARC as placement partners on two occasions in 2011 and 2012 and we respect their organization; a pleasure to work with. They even brought some of our "Canadian" dogs into U.S. rescues that extended themselves to go above and beyond. A dog in need is a dog in need.Spin the story however you like but you can not take away my feel good mood today. We worked too hard to achieve this accomplishment and we are very proud.