Working miracles on a shoestring

How one woman turned an underfunded, high-kill pound into a true dog shelter

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The Corning Animal Shelter still
looks like the holding pen it was
built to be. Above: A few of the
residents looking for a good home.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
--Mahatma Gandhi (message hanging on the wall of the Corning Animal Shelter)

When Debbie Eaglebarger first walked into the tiny cement dog shelter in her adopted hometown of Corning, California, she was just another nine-to-fiver with a fondness for dogs. What she saw shocked her to the core and, ultimately, changed almost every aspect of her life--her job, her marriage, and how she spent her days.

She saw a windowless room divided into 14 narrow stalls, each barely wide enough for a dog to turn around in. The big dogs had to stand on their hind legs to see over the solid steel doors; the small dogs didn't have a chance. The pens were filled with feces, the room reeked, and for most of the dogs there was no escape.

"They weren't allowed outside until their fifth day at the shelter, when they were killed," Eaglebarger explains. Built as a holding pen, the shelter was treated like one. Up to 86 percent of the dogs who entered the building left in plastic bags.

Five years later, Eaglebarger has almost single-handedly transformed the 'fill and kill' pound into a humanely run shelter. The building still resembles a dog jail, but Eaglebarger has added outdoor pens and a spacious play area. The dogs get daily attention and training and take turns accompanying Eaglebarger around town on her errands.

The increase in the adoption rate since she took over? A whopping 1,000 percent.

Choosing the dogs

Eaglebarger had little idea what she was getting into when she applied to become shelter caretaker four months after starting to volunteer there. She did know her new job came with no pay, no benefits, no support staff, and no vacation. The only perk was free use of the trailer that sat next to the shelter.

She also knew she'd have to fit running the city shelter around her full-time job in the county social services department, and for the next three years that's what she did.

When most of the town was still asleep, she was up walking and feeding the city's unwanted dogs. When they were fixing dinner, Eaglebarger was walking and feeding the dogs again. And when they were relaxing on weekends, she was cleaning pens, exercising and training the dogs, and finding creative ways to raise money and attract good adopters.

Eaglebarger, age 52, had already made peace with the idea that the dogs would take over her life. When her ex-husband laid down an ultimatum a few years ago, saying "it's me or the dogs," Eaglebarger, who has two adult sons now living on their own, chose the dogs.

Throw away pups

Here's what she hadn't bargained on: All the suffering she'd see, particularly startling in Corning, which is three hours northwest of the Bay Area, a dog-loving population flush with dog spas and upscale doggy daycares.

Eaglebarger saw brand new puppies who'd been tossed in the county dump. Dogs missing ears and tails after the owner used scissors to trim them. Dogs pitched out of moving cars, over the shelter fence, or tied up and abandoned outside vacated houses. Dogs who spent their entire lives tied up in backyards in every type of weather, ignored and alone.

The emotional demands of such a job are familiar to anyone who works in animal care, and friends say she periodically retreats, exhausted, to her trailer home for a few days at a time to just sleep. But for Eaglebarger, ignoring the suffering around her would be even  [Continued]

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