Pet Rescues

A look at five organizations in Memphis dedicated to providing second chances for our furry friends.

You can tell a lot about humans by how we treat animals: Rescue stories often involve both the very worst of humanity (abuse, neglect) and our very best (empathy, altruism). The South is home to far too many abandoned animals, but so too is it home to individuals and groups seeking to address the problem. And as the world evolves, the ways we rescue pets do, too: We’ve spotlighted folks whose rescue operations involve airplanes, TikTok, and even a novel use for local print media (!). Four paws up to these big-hearted individuals — and the pets they save.

The Savior Foundation

Before there was a local animal-rescue nonprofit called the Savior Foundation, there was Savior the dog. In December 2009, Mario Chiozza was driving on I-40 when he saw an object thrown from a pickup truck ahead of him. That “object” was a severely sick and injured pit bull terrier.

Chiozza stopped his car and managed to direct the interstate traffic around the wounded dog long enough to carefully pick her up, place her in his car, and drive to a vet. The first recommended euthanasia, but Chiozza was determined and found the necessary care to keep the horribly neglected dog alive. That dog would be named Savior, and she lived 11 happy, healthy years under Chiozza’s care.

The trauma of that event 14 years ago inspired Chiozza to found the Savior Foundation. Alongside since the beginning has been Elise Salvia, president of the organization for four years now (since Chiozza retired from the Memphis Fire Department). With the help of three trusted volunteers, Salvia coordinates fund-raising, outreach, veterinary care, and placement for dogs and cats that desperately need a second chance.

“We’re a small organization,” emphasizes Salvia. “A lot of rescue organizations can raise $30,000 at one event. We just don’t have that presence or following. We don’t take in animals. But we partner with other small rescue teams and individuals to cover medical costs. These partners have good foster homes and good adoption programs. They just don’t have funding.”

Salvia estimates an average cost between $1,500 and $2,000 for a single dog rescue. Treatment for heartworms, alone, can mean a four-figure hit, beyond the reach of many otherwise capable dog owners.

“So many dogs are being left at Memphis Animal Services, severely abused and injured,” says Salvia. “They don’t have much time [before they’re euthanized].” The Savior Foundation serves as a bridge — for crucial medical care — between a rescue organization (that identifies a dog for foster placement after a background check) and a foster family that will nurture the recovering animal.

The Savior Foundation hosts two annual fund-raising events at Neil’s Music Room (5725 Quince). The School of Rock will perform on June 11th and a Halloween theme becomes part of the fun on October 22nd. “All donations go directly to the animals,” notes Salvia, who covers the cost of operational supplies herself. The aim is to help — save is the better word, really — between 15 and 20 dogs a year. “We have to turn people away,” acknowledges Salvia. “We can’t afford to take it all on.”

Salvia’s heart has long been tugged in the right direction, and she’s grateful to be at a place in life where she can provide time and resources for a cause with profound impact. “Animals don’t have a voice,” she notes. “And I don’t have children, so this is my extended family.”

The Savior Foundation has a presence on Facebook and donations are welcome on its website. Salvia relishes every hour spent as a rescue worker, especially during quiet times with her own two dogs, Nika and Brownie. Her family also includes a cat, it should be noted, with the most appropriate of names: Lucky. — Frank Murtaugh

For more information: thesaviorfoundation.org

Marcy Merritt

Last June, while on her way to a job interview, Marcy Merritt stopped at Starbucks. She didn’t realize that, in addition to her order, she’d be picking up her next foster dog, who was wandering around in the parking lot’s summer heat. “I couldn’t leave her,” she says. And so, she opened her car door and Cindy, as the dog is now named, hopped into the car and headed to the interview with her.

Cindy’s not the first foster Merritt has picked up on the street, and she certainly won’t be the last. In the five years she has lived in Memphis, Merritt has fostered around 30 dogs and nearly 60 puppies, finding them as strays or pulling them from various local rescues. At any given time, in addition to caring for her two personal dogs, Hallow and Margo, plus two rescue cats, Merritt usually fosters at least one healthy adult and a hospice case; in the summer, she’ll also take on a litter or two of puppies.

To draw attention to her cause, Merritt, who works full-time at a dental clinic and hopes to attend dentistry school in the fall, also runs a TikTok account (with over 200,000 followers and 7 million likes on her videos) all about her fosters — the good, the bad, and the ugly. “The way we kind of pick out the dogs is that first you have to accept that you’re not going to help them all,” she says. “There’s too many; it’s absolutely not going to happen.”

And so, she takes on some of the most heartbreaking cases who otherwise would not be given the chance, from an aggressive pitbull with an amputated leg who has since been adopted, to her current hospice case, Ruebin, a “spiteful” teenage chihuahua who came to her as a hospice case with his teeth rotted out, severely underweight, and unable to walk. Now, though, after surgery for herniated discs in his neck, Merritt says, “[Ruebin]’s going to outlive everyone.”

No matter the case, Merritt says, “The ones we pick, we do to the fullest of our ability. … We just make sure that whoever comes in, they get the full nine yards.” Thanks to donations raised from her TikTok audience and from fellow Memphians, that level of care, including the expensive surgeries, is possible, with donations covering around 80 percent of the finances. “Over the past couple years, TikTok brought in close to $20,000,” she says. “It’s an insane amount of donations. … Whenever we do puppies, we have a couple people on TikTok who always provide their collars, their vaccines, their food, their puppy pads, so it’s much easier to take care of them.”

Even after they are adopted, Merritt keeps up with the dogs’ well-being, with their adopters often sending updates and pictures. It makes all the heartbreak worthwhile, knowing that she had them in their worst days and that they now have their best days ahead.

Follow Marcy Merritt on TikTok @marcymeowww

Finding Their Forever Homes

The sole passenger on Jim Carney’s private plane that August day in 2019 had no name. At the time he was going by Bruce Wayne. Letting such formalities pass, the pilot noted that Mr. Wayne would not be napping during the flight — he was too full of good-natured enthusiasm. And once buckled snugly in his seat, Bruce Wayne panted contentedly throughout the journey, his attention fixed squarely on any squirrel-shaped clouds floating past the window. Upon his arrival, Bruce’s greeters with the Pilots N Paws animal rescue and transport program commended him on being a very good boy.

This isn’t typical of every rescue dog’s experience, of course, and most foster dogs being relocated are carried by car or van. Yet to Kristyn Adair, who’s been fostering dogs for the past 15 years, Bruce Wayne’s trip captured something she often feels when her fosters find their forever homes.

“People get really worried about how hard it will be to let them go,” she reflects on the typical fostering experience. “But generally they go to homes that are better than mine! Homes where they’re the center of the world. I love that. I mean, there are some homes that I wish would adopt me, too. I love seeing the dogs go from rags to riches, from broken to whole.”

Adair knows something about the latter, having a tendency to take in dogs with special needs. “I focus on the harder-to-place animals. The senior ones, the ones with medical conditions, the ones with behavioral baggage.” Noting the importance of working with rescue groups who will pay for food, medical attention, and transportation, she adds that the hard-to-place dogs can also bring the greatest joy — as when she recently took in a golden retriever named Journey.

“He’s a young dog,” says Adair, “found on the side of the road with both of his back legs broken. He’d been hit by a car.” Amanda Harris, president of Friends of the Tipton County Animal Shelter and active in local rescue groups, reached out to Adair. “She knew I had a ramp.” Adair adds. “They figured he would probably be an amputee, and I had experience with that. So he came here, and they were actually able to save his legs, which could not have been done without a rescue group, because it was ridiculously expensive.”

Adair says the dog is doing great. “I catch him digging holes in the yard all the time, and I can’t get mad! I’m like, ‘Holy crap, you have the use of both back legs now!’ He’s tearing stuff up and just so excited to be here.” — Alex Greene

Blues City Animal Rescue

Beth Aversa was born and raised in Memphis, but she and her husband, Patrick, moved to Chicago in 2002 and spent 10 years there, before moving back to her hometown in 2012. That was when Beth began volunteering at Memphis Animal Services and came to realize the full extent of the problem of unwanted dogs in Memphis.

“I’d just moved back from Chicago,” Aversa recalls, “and I saw that the euthanasia list at MAS was out of control. I wanted to try and save them all, of course, and at one point I had 14 dogs at my home. I had to find an outlet to figure out what to do with all these dogs.”

It was then that Aversa was inspired to found Blues City Animal Rescue.

“We started by posting dogs on two websites, Adopt-A-Pet and Pet Finder,” she says. “We initially adopted out a lot of dogs to Chicago. Now we have expanded to the northeastern United States, and here in Memphis, as well, of course.”

Blues City depends on a loyal and hard-working cadre of around 25 volunteers who foster dogs, transport them for vet visits, and take food and other supplies to foster homes if needed.

“We couldn’t do any of this without them,” says Aversa. “In order to continue pulling dogs from overcrowded shelters and rescuing abandoned and neglected dogs off of the streets, we rely solely on fosters volunteering their loving homes and time.”

Aversa says the number of volunteers fluctuates. “We recognize that everyone needs a break now and then, so sometimes we have more people than we need, and sometimes not enough.”

Blues City doesn’t pull animals from MAS anymore, but the flow of dogs is constant. “We get them mostly from people dumping them,” says Aversa. “People find dogs abandoned on the street, living under houses — often, moms and litters. We also pull dogs from the Forrest City Area Humane Society and Tipton County Shelter.”

Aversa says Blues City finds homes for 250 to 350 dogs each year. “We’re a nonprofit, and we’re funded by adoption fees and donations that cover the costs of heart-worm treatment, spays and neuters, community outreach programs, and medical care for those who can’t afford it. We know that saving them all is an impossible task,” says Aversa, “and knowing that, we invest our hearts and souls into saving as many dogs as we can.” — Bruce VanWyngarden

For more information: bluescityanimalrescue.org

Kitten Rescue

When Alix Harte sees a kitten in need, she always wants to help. And Memphis Animal Services’ found foster program has made it easy for her to help stray cats find a home. “I’ve been doing found foster programs with MAS for a while now, and we were just able to rehome our latest foster cat,” she says. “I don’t do as much with MAS now that I have kids, but I still like to help with their quarterly big adoption events, or donate to their Amazon wish list for supplies.”

Harte’s husband, Ryan, found a cat in a box in a parking lot during 2022’s Christmas Eve big freeze, and they were able to procure the necessary supplies from MAS: food, litter, and a neuter appointment. “They also provided us with a kennel,” says Harte, “so that it would have a place to rest while we gauged its temperament.”

Harte initially connected with MAS thanks to her involvement with Pet Compassion Centers, a regional organization that works with local and rural municipal shelters to provide programmatic support. She quickly realized that MAS had a very specific need: newspapers. “They line the kennels with old newspapers between each dog and cat,” says Harte. “It’s an effective and low-cost way to keep them sanitary and cut down on the spread of communicable diseases.”

Harte reached out to Memphis Magazine’s sister publication, the Memphis Flyer, to see if there were any old newspapers that she could donate to MAS. “I talked to leadership and they immediately said they would donate old copies of the Flyer that were pulled out of circulation. So about once a month, early on a Wednesday morning, I drive out to their warehouse and pick up several stacks of old papers, then drop them off at MAS at noon. I just load up my car, and we keep them pretty well stocked. It’s only a small thing, but it’s another great way to help fill a need.” – Samuel X. Cicci