What started as “helping an abandoned dog and her puppies” changed everything.

What started as “helping an abandoned dog and her puppies” turned into something much bigger.

Ava was dumped pregnant in the California desert, trying to survive while carrying puppies. She eventually found her way to an organic waste management facility and gave birth under a heavy metal trash bin. We tried to find a rescue willing to bring the family in, but everyone was full.

So, Steve and I stepped in.

We converted our garage into a whelping suite and brought the family home.

What followed was over a year of extreme challenge. This one rescue effort tested me in ways I’d never been tested before.

A year of sunup-to-sundown care, teaching, training, sharing, fundraising, screening, placements, heartbreak, hard lessons, fraudulent rescues, emotionally-driven decision-making, bleeding hearts in the rescue world with zero behavioral fluency, navigating the emotional complexities and whiplash of placements and public perception, people promising lifelong updates and communication only to become distant or defensive when you simply checked in to see how the dog was adjusting, learning when to hold on and when to let go, and a very raw look into the realities of the rescue world behind the scenes.

And honestly? It changed me completely.

This experience exposed an incredible number of systemic gaps:

• emotionally-driven placements
• bleeding hearts with good intentions but zero structure, strategy, or behavioral fluency
• people working in the dog world with little real understanding of canine behavior, fulfillment, compatibility, or nervous system health
• poor vetting and screening practices
• fraudulent rescues and misleading narratives
• urgency-driven placements without alignment
• rescue burnout and compassion fatigue
• preventable failures repeating themselves over and over again
• dogs being failed by humans who genuinely meant well

A rescue effort doesn’t end when a dog is pulled out of a shelter, taken in from a horrible situation, or brought in off the streets.

No. That’s just the beginning.

The real work is:

• rehabilitation and decompression
• nervous system regulation and stabilization
• getting to know the individual dog
• behavioral assessment and reconditioning
• understanding both human and canine psychology
• fulfillment
• proper health and medical care
• fundraising
• visibility and advocacy for the individual dog
• finding people who genuinely want to learn about the dog in front of them — how to raise them, teach them, understand them, and thoughtfully integrate them into their lives
• careful vetting and screening
• honest assessment
• compatibility
• education
• accountability
• and making decisions based on what is actually best for the individual dog — not what simply feels good emotionally in the moment

Because behavior doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s information.
A response to environment, relationships, stress, fulfillment, energy, and experience.

And that’s just as true for humans as it is for dogs.

Structure creates safety. And love alone isn’t enough.

Without structure, understanding, and accountability, even love can create chaos.

And it does. Every single day.

This is exactly why behavioral understanding, accountability, and compatibility-based placements matter so deeply.

Without systems like the platform I’m building (“You Had Me At Woof — Smarter matches. Better lives.”), Ava easily could’ve ended up in a home that simply thought she was beautiful and wanted to give her endless affection, cuddles, and love.

For a soft, easygoing “marshmallow” dog, that may have been perfectly fine.

But not for a dog like Ava.

Dogs are individuals. They each have their own:

• drives
• temperaments
• sensitivities
• nervous systems
• personalities
• energy
• perceptions
• associations
• fulfillment needs
• genetic tendencies
• life experiences

And those things matter more than most people realize.
In the wrong hands, a dog like Ava — especially in overly passive, permissive, soft, emotionally-heightened and unstable hands — can easily become unstable, misunderstood, confused, or a liability.

She has strong energy, high prey drive, high defense drive, and a nervous system shaped by survival.

Yet, she’s also one of the most affectionate dogs I’ve ever known — the kind of dog who could literally crawl inside of you and still not feel close enough.

In the right hands, she is remarkable — extraordinary, even — and has been an exceptional teacher.

But she needs someone willing to learn what she’s here to teach — and not many people truly are.

Most people want easy, predictable, and effortless.

But dogs like Ava ask us to grow.

And growth is often unpredictable, messy, uncomfortable, and requires presence, patience, and attention (...which is why so many avoid and resist it).

Ava needs someone who will truly understand her, advocate for her, provide clear leadership, create healthy outlets for her instincts, drives, and gifts, and help her find her place in this world.

“Rescue” isn’t simply helping dogs survive.

It’s helping them:

• regulate
• heal
• develop
• thrive
• become all they’re capable of becoming

— and helping humans become capable of doing so.

Ava and her puppies ultimately became the catalysts for so much of the work I’m building now — including a behaviorally-informed matching platform designed to help create more aligned, educated, compatibility-based placements and better outcomes for dogs and humans alike.

They also became the catalyst for so much more:

• the writing
• the education
• the wellness work
• the behavioral advocacy
• and the larger conversations around responsible rescue, nervous system health, fulfillment, compatibility, and prevention

This rescue journey is also the subject of my next book:
“The Long Way Home: The True Story of an Abandoned Dog and Her Babies, a Broken System, and the Search for Belonging.”

Dogs don’t fail us. Humans and systems fail them.

And they're failing them every single day. Still.

I’ve never witnessed that more clearly than I have since moving to California. It’s soul-crushing.

We don’t just have a dog crisis. We have a human crisis.

And dogs are the ones paying the price for it.

.... but I also believe we can do better. Much better.

And I’m still trying to do my part. ❤️