Group Rescues Dogs Much to the Hearts’ Content of Adopters

DEERFIELD, N.H. — A New Hampshire organization ranges far and wide to pluck dogs from Southern shelters, eventually placing them in homes where they become members of the family. 

Mary’s Dogs Rescue & Adoption, in Deerfield, N.H., has a strong reputation for saving dogs stranded in shelters, looking for the right match between dog and owner, and following up the placement with expert advice to new owners to ensure the match is a lasting one. But if a match is not a good one — and sometimes they’re not, said Mary Doane, owner of Mary’s Dogs — the search will start anew for the right match. 

As it turns out, almost 100 percent of the dogs Mary’s Dogs rescue eventually end up in the right house, and local adopters of three dogs the organization rescued are delighted with the dogs that landed in their homes. And so are the dogs with their families. 

Jewel

“It’s always a good guess,” Lyssa Bayne-Kim said, laughing, when asked what breed her dog, Jewel, is. “She looks like a skinny Alaskan malamute.” Bayne-Kim noted, however, that the best description of Jewel, weighing 80 pounds, is a “malamute mix.” 

Bayne-Kim lives with her husband and three children, boys ages 6, 4 and 2 years old, in Durham, N.H. The family had been looking for another malamute or a husky mix and when it found Jewel through Mary’s Dogs. 

“We lost our boy malamute in January of last year,” Bayne-Kim said recently in a telephone interview. “And I was continually looking online for dogs. I liked that Mary brought dogs up from the south that otherwise were not necessarily going to make it. A lot of these dogs are just not going to have homes in the South.” 

As soon as Bayne-Kim filled out an application late one night, Mary’s Dogs called her, “very excited, wanting to meet right away,” she said. Jewel, a stray originally fostered by a family in Arkansas, was being fostered in Boston and would be coming up to New Hampshire. Mary’s Dogs was looking for a home that had a stay-at-home family. 

“They could tell me that Jewel was good with kids,” Bayne-Kim said. “And I think Mary’s Dogs did a good job figuring out that Jewel, about 2 years old, needed a family that had a lot of energy, and that I was going to be at home with her. Jewel is an energetic dog. And Jewel wants to be with us a lot. She wants to be with my children all the time and help protect them.” 

Jewel will celebrate her one-year anniversary with the Bayne-Kim family in September. 

“There are so many dogs out there that don’t have homes,” Bayne-Kim said. “There’s no reason, in my mind, to pay for a dog that someone has bred just for the purpose of selling it.  Also, a lot of dogs that are adopted are mixed breeds, and I think that mixed-breed dogs are healthy. We don’t necessarily need a purebred dog. And the biggest asset of adopting a dog was the mercy part of it, to be able to help save a dog.” 

Bayne-Kim said Mary’s Dogs “does a tremendous amount of work bringing up a ton of dogs and getting them placed really fast, which amazes me. They spent a good amount of time talking with me on the phone. And they will take the dog back if you have problems. I didn’t need to call them, but I could have called them afterwards. All in all, they do a really good job of matching people with their dogs and finding homes.” 

In a recent conversation, Doane said Jewel’s first placement with a Massachusetts woman living in a smaller place proved not to be a good match. “The dog is not wrong; the owner is not wrong; it was nobody’s fault,” Doane said. But the Bayne-Kim family looked promising. “So we decided to give it a try. Clearly, Jewel chose this family and was waiting for them. And we just were waiting for this family. She fit in so quickly and so easily.” 

Ginger

Exeter resident Janis Sheldon had lost her dog and approached Doane wanting a “little fluffy dog, a Lhasa apso, which is hard to come by,” Doane said. 

“When I called Mary’s Dog, they said we have this `little plain, brown dog’ that nobody’s looking at,” Sheldon said recently. The Mary’s Dogs people asked Sheldon to foster the dog, named Ginger, to see if the match would work. “And I’ll tell you, I really connected with the little, plain brown dog. Honestly, I’ve had dogs my whole life, and this dog is the easiest, most adorable dog I ever met, so she was a wonderful find.” 

From Ashville, N.C., Ginger is a beagle dachshund, weighing about 20 pounds. She was about 1 year old when Sheldon adopted her. “She’s a small, plain, brown dog,” Janis said with a friendly laugh. “She’s very cute.” 

It turns out the beagle- dachshund mix has a name: “Doxle,” Sheldon said. “So when we looked at online images of this dog, we saw that there are many dogs that look like this.”   

Sheldon found working with Mary’s Dogs a positive experience. 

“Mary’s Dogs supplies the most incredible support for getting a dog,” Sheldon said. “When Ginger arrived at our home, she had had quite a journey. She had already been spayed and vaccinated and de-wormed. From Mary’s Dogs I just got lots of phone calls, lots of support, anything that I could possibly need and answers to my questions. It really felt like a team that supports you. They were very thorough in providing health care and supportive on an emotional level for the transitioning of a new pet. I didn’t feel like I was on my own at all.” 

As for Ginger, “she was just such an incredibly easy, easy dog, and she continues to be. We adopted her in three days. We decided we could not let her go. She was great.” 

As Doane tells the story, “Janis wasn’t necessarily looking for Ginger. But she was open to who needed her. To me, that’s the sign of a good rescue when we can work with the adopter and truly rescue a dog, allowing us to do our job.” 

She added: “Some dogs take a while to settle in with a new family. This is a process. This isn’t buying a book at a bookstore. And Janis was very willing to adopt this dog, and that’s how this love affair happened, and that’s why I suggested Ginger to her.” 

Jovie

Like Janis Sheldon with Ginger, Brynn Phillion, a Woburn, Mass., resident, was first looking online for a different dog than she eventually adopted. When Mary’s Dogs told Phillion that 55-pound Jovie, probably a chow-cattle dog mix, from Aiken, S.C., was coming up to New Hampshire with just a foster placement, Phillion asked to take her.  

“It was something unexpected,” Phillion said recently. “We had looked at her information and we thought, ‘Why not?’ The only reason she wasn’t suggested to us originally was because she was a little older than we expected, 6 months old rather than 3 months.” But a dog 6 months old is still a puppy, Doane had told Phillion.  

And then Jovie developed kennel cough. 

“Mary’s Dogs was on the phone with us for the whole entire thing, making sure that every step of the way that I knew how to take care of Jovie and I knew what to do in any kind of situation,” Phillion said. “So their phone calls were awesome. I’ve never experienced people like this. They’re very quick to respond.” 

And Jovie has recovered, not only from kennel cough, but also from her past. 

“Jovie has come so, so far since Dec. 1, unbelievably,” said Phillion. “She was so scared and extremely timid. Mary told us you have to have patience with a rescue dog. And Jovie’s made a huge turnaround since after a month of us having her. She didn’t used to wag her tail or play with toys. And now we go home and her little butt is going so fast, she’s so excited. And she plays with every toy she has. She has them all out everywhere. So it’s been a huge change, a drastic one with Jovie. It actually has worked out great.” 

Doane said that Phillion, agreeing to foster-to-adopt Jovie, provided “a soft place for the dog to land when she needed a soft place to go. And they fell in love with her, as I knew they would. They really went to the essence to what a rescue is: They welcomed a dog who really needed help.” 

Doane said her organization’s expertise is ever-evolving. 

“We learn from every dog, and we learn from every adopter. Many situations work out that we thought would not, and the opposite is true: Situations where we were unsure a situation would work out often succeed.” 

As for the placements of Jewel, Ginger and Jovie, Doane concluded: “All three are a success, a wonderful success.” 

Phillion is a consumer member of the Green Alliance, a union of local sustainable businesses promoting environmentally sound business practices and a green co-op offering discounted green products and services to its members. By paying a $35 annual fee, Phillion gets discounts at 115 Green Alliance business partners, Mary’s Dogs being one of them. By adopting from Mary’s Dogs, Green Alliance members receive a free gift basket, complete with informational books; organic shampoo, wipes and other accessories; or they can enjoy a dollar discount of $50. 

For more information about Mary’s Dogs, visit www.marysdogs.com.