ANIMAL HOUSES : Rescuers Devote Their Lives to Finding Homes for Abandoned Pets

Former actor Leo Grillo is building a Disneyland for stray pets in Acton, complete with a miniature Golden Gate Bridge, a replica of the ghost town of Calico, a “card room” for dogs, and fluffy futons for felines.

He has saved hundreds of dogs and cats abandoned in forests, beaches and deserts and puts them up near his home in three large sanctuaries that include a 23-acre “Supershelter” with what he calls “the best little cathouse in Acton.” Dogs live on large runs with exercise yards, wading pools and large wooden “clubhouses.”

“Dogs need a place to get together and play cards,” he jokes.

The Supershelter will eventually include a veterinary hospital and a huge outdoor enclosure with ponds where dogs can run freely.

“Animal shelters don’t need to look like Folsom. What if East Valley were to do something like this?” he said, referring to a shelter in North Hollywood. “People would flock there and adopt animals because they wouldn’t come in and feel depressed.”

Grillo is one of a die-hard breed of animal lovers who devote their lives--and in some cases, their life savings--to rescuing and finding homes for abandoned dogs and cats.

These pet rescuers trek to far-flung animal shelters to bail out forlorn, furry captives. They accept animals from owners who give up their pets. They venture into traffic or hike into the wilderness to catch a frightened animal that is running loose.

Before they know it, dozens--sometimes hundreds--of animals are in their care.

Millions of unwanted and homeless animals are born every year. According to the Humane Society of the United States, 15 million animals annually are taken by shelters; of those, 11 million are destroyed or sent to research laboratories.

The local situation is equally grim. In the last fiscal year, more than 73,000 dogs and cats were brought to city of Los Angeles animal shelters. Of those, almost 50,000 were destroyed, and most of the rest adopted. Of the 19,000 pets brought to East Valley last year, more than 12,000 were destroyed. At the West Valley shelter in Chatsworth, 8,000 out of 14,000 dogs and cats were destroyed.

Not every abandoned animal ends up at a shelter. Some, like the skeletal dogs Grillo found in 1979 wandering the Angeles National Forest, are left to fend for themselves in the wilderness. Grillo drove back to the mountains twice a day to feed them until he was able to capture and care for them.

Since then, other animals he has rescued include 80 sick and starving cats dumped on Ventura beaches, a dog and cat roaming the Painted Desert in Arizona, a newborn kitten locked in a junked car and pups trapped in a storm drain.

A few weeks ago, he came across a boxful of kittens in the Angeles National Forest. If he hadn’t found them, they wouldn’t have survived the night.

“People get the idea that they can take cats and throw them anywhere,” he said. “Or they go to a picnic area and let their dog run around--and then they take off.”

Now his nonprofit organization, Dedication & Everlasting Love for Animals (DELTA), has grown to become the largest animal rescue group in the country, with about 550 dogs, 250 cats, a 24-person staff and a $750,000 annual budget completely supported by donations.

Grillo, an aggressive, effective fund-raiser, regularly mails solicitations for money to animal lovers throughout the nation.

Most of his dogs and cats will spend their lives at the Acton sanctuaries. Grillo places very few animals for adoption, preferring instead to refer prospective owners to a pound where they can save a pet from being destroyed.

Unlike Grillo, most pet rescuers obtain their charges from city or county shelters or from owners who give up their animals.

Animal lover and Reseda grandmother Nina Culver has rescued hundreds of Doberman pinschers since 1968 and has 80 now. “I’m like the old woman who lived in a shoe,” she said. She has so many dogs, she doesn’t know what to do.

Culver, a former owner of a dog-grooming service, spends $7,000 a month on food, supplies, medicines and veterinarian bills for her dogs. Some are brought to her sick or injured, and she pays for their care. She has every animal spayed or neutered. The Doberman pinschers eat their way through 160 pounds of dry food every day. Rent at her Sun Valley kennel costs $1,200, plus utilities. To help pay the mounting bills, Culver charges a small fee for adoptions, has tapped into her life savings and has been forced to mortgage her home.

“I don’t know how I keep going,” said Culver, who occasionally grooms and trains animals to pick up extra cash. “I’m always running out of money, but then some little shot in the arm comes around. I just go day by day.

“It costs everything I have earned in my life, and it is a never-ending job. I work seven days a week, trying to keep my place clean, buying dogs from the pounds, dropping them off at the vet--it’s so much upkeep, you just can’t realize,” she said.

“But I will not turn down a dog. I don’t want it to wind up destroyed in a shelter or taken out to the hills or the desert where it will starve to death. It’s tragic what animals have to suffer.”

“There are all these people who buy a little puppy, and by the time it is 6 months old, they are tired of it,” said Caroline Rose, 71, who has rescued toy and miniature dogs for 59 years in Woodland Hills. “The kids don’t play with the animal, or the dog isn’t housebroken, so out it goes.

“People set a horrible example for their kids by getting pets and throwing them away. The pet is not out of Toys R Us; it is a living thing.”

Animals are especially likely to be discarded during the summer, according to Diane Monahan, whose Friends for Pets Foundation in Sun Valley houses 60 golden retrievers and Weimaraners. “Everyone is thinking of divorcing, moving or vacationing,” she said. “I call summertime ‘give up’ season.”

So many dogs have been tied to a post and abandoned in front of the Pet Adoption Fund in Canoga Park that volunteers have a name for the animals who come in that way: “tie-ups.” Some owners don’t even bother to say goodby to their four-legged companions. They simply push their animals out of a car in front of a pet rescuer’s home or kennel.

“One man drove up, dashed out of his car, dumped a boxful of black kittens in front of us and sped away. It was like a bank robbery,” said Wendy Witter, a Pet Adoption volunteer. “The next day he came back and threw out the mother cat.”

Pet rescuers see all sorts of horrors. They’ve rescued animals that have been beaten so brutally their jaws are broken or their heads are cocked. Sometimes chains are deeply embedded in the animal’s necks or twisted around their legs. Dogs often suffer from rickets or are so riddled with mange and scabs that no hair is left on their bodies.

Grace Konosky, 54, who has rescued German shepherds for the past 10 years, remembers the time two little boys spotted what looked like a plastic bag on a railroad track. The sack was wiggling.

Someone had tied a German shepherd pup in the bag and placed it on the track.

Konosky walks along the cages of her Burbank shelter while 31 German shepherds bark wildly for attention, begging to be petted and playfully sticking tan and black paws out from under their cages.

Konosky introduces the dogs, one by one. “This is Valor,” she says. “His owner brought him to the pound. When I got him, his fur was matted, his eyes were covered with mucus and his ears were a bloody mess.”

Then there is Major, who cowers pitifully in a corner of his cage. “He had been beaten by his owner,” Konosky says.

And there is Sampson, gorgeous, huge and fluffy. His owner bought him for $1,000, then moved to a small condominium--too small for a German shepherd.

“Every one of these dogs is not wanted,” Konosky said.

“Many of these dogs will never find homes,” Konosky said.

She worries about her shepherds; she worries about money. A $270,000 balloon payment on her mortgage for the kennel is due in three years. The donations she receives don’t even cover food, veterinary care and supplies. She doesn’t know what will become of the dogs if she loses the kennel.

Most pet rescuers share her dilemma.

“This is a good way to starve to death,” said Carol Winner, who spends as much as $1,800 a month to care for more than 200 abandoned cats and kittens. “I didn’t mean to grow like this. But people tell me they will bring the cat to the shelter if I don’t take it, and I don’t want them killed.”

Winner frets because Frank Parsons, the 81-year-old owner of the Shoestring Kennel in Chatsworth where she boards her feline brood, is talking about closing or selling the facility. “What will happen to these sweet babies?” she wonders.

Triumphs for pet rescuers come when they find a loving home for one of their animals. “When a dog gets adopted, my goodness, it’s a high like nothing else,” Doberman rescuer Culver said.

At Pet Adoption Fund, a large facility housing 200 dogs and 100 cats, up to 25 animals find new homes every week. “We put so much into each one, a piece of our heart goes out with every one of them,” said Kay Duffy, one of the organization’s founders. “When they go, we stand here and we wave and we cry.”

What You Can Do

* Spay or neuter your pet: In six years, an unaltered female dog and her offspring could generate 67,000 puppies, according to the Humane Society of the United States; an unaltered female cat’s cumulative offspring over 10 years could total more than 80 million. Most of those kittens and puppies--about eight out of 10--will never find homes, and will either be put to death at a shelter or be doomed to starving on the streets. To help stem the tide, have pets spayed or neutered.

* Find a loving home: Leo Grillo, founder of Dedication & Everlasting Love for Animals, has prepared a VHS video titled “Safe House” for owners who can no longer keep their pets and want to find a good home. To borrow a free copy of “Safe House,” write to DELTA at P.O. Box 9, Glendale, CA 91209, or call (818) 241-6282.

* Help homeless pets: Pet rescue organizations gratefully accept donations of food, supplies, blankets, towels--and cash. Volunteers and foster homes for pets are also needed.