Paws for Life K9 Rescue helps dogs to find new families

By Marianne Love

After being in the pet industry for nearly a decade, Alex Tonner founded her own nonprofit in 2018, the Paws For Life K9 Rescue based in Mission Hill. So far this year, 720 dogs were  groomed and transported across the country where dog lovers are clamoring for a new pet.

“Each year we get more and more, but we grow more and more,” Tonner said.

Areas where Tonner transports dogs include Chicago, New York, Pennsylvania, Seattle and Idaho. Before they head to their new forever homes, the dogs spend days and sometime months in the backyard of Tonner’s shelter, feeding, playing and interacting with other dogs.

“Our shelter is completely different from any other shelter. Our dogs are not housed in kennels. You could hear a pin drop because they were enriched all day,” said Tonner.

During last year’s Altadena and Pacific Palisades fire, Paws partnered with Wings of Rescue by accepting about 830 dogs from city shelters. “We took 330 dogs impacted by the fires within a 20-day time span and so we were able to transport 272 of those dogs with Wings of Rescue,” Tonner said.

Paws only offer healthy dogs. “We transport the best of the best of what we’ve got because we don’t want them back,” she added. “They’ll get adopted straight away and we want them to keep taking our dogs.”

Wings of Rescue is a volunteer group of pilots that transport at-risk dogs and cats from high kill, overcrowded shelters.

Wings of Rescue CEO Ric Browde noted beginning with the COVID outbreak in early 2020 there was a shortage of anesthesia drugs. Pets were not being spayed and neutered.

“That resulted in a huge animal population,” Browde said.

In Hayden, Idaho Debbie Jeffrey, executive director of Companions Animal Center accepts dogs from Paws For Life K9 rescue in Mission Hills.

She agrees with Browde why some cities and states are willing to accept smaller dogs due to changes in living arrangements and the aftermath of the COVID epidemic.

“Since COVID, the whole animal world I think all over the world changed and it put spay and neuter, especially for dogs and cats, back probably 20 years,” Jeffrey said.

A prime example points to landlords altering rental agreements by setting a pet’s maximum weight and increasing monthly pet charges.

She said what abandonment issue her nonprofit has is with larger dogs. “Most of the landlords around here … are lowering the weight of a dog to 35 pounds,” Jeffrey said. “(Landlords) require a bigger pet deposit and some of them are even adding $50 for each animal onto your rent when it is already high. And then you take all these (factors) and the high pet deposit, most of the people … can’t afford it.”

For more information about adopting pets, go to LA Animal Services.