Lisa LaVerdiere is clearly tired of being asked the question: “How do you remember all their names?”
“I tell people, ‘Didn’t you go to high school? Don’t you know two hundred people?’” she asks incredulously.
The 225 or so animals that reside at Home for Life in Star Prairie, Wisconsin, may look interchangeable to most people, but as LaVerdiere, who founded the sanctuary, points out, “They’re all individuals to us.” And, unlike high school students, most of the animals have only one name to remember. Good, solid names like Max, Sailor, Kobi, and Sherlock.
Once you hear their stories it will be hard to forget their names, either. They are the unadoptable, the throwaway pets no one wanted. Some are aging companions whose owners passed on first. Some were abused, such as Nike, an Alaskan husky who was born lame, which may have been the only thing that kept him from suffering the fate of his mother and littermates—being used as a bait dog for pit bull fights. Others were merely mishandled by busy people wanting an accessory, not a responsibility.
Those animals that survived to call this forty-acre sanctuary on the banks of the Apple River home live better than some of the so-called pampered pets of the suburbs. The dogs reside in air-conditioned miniature townhomes bordered by flowerbeds. They are exercised and cared for by a staff of twenty full- and part-time people, and visits by the public are limited to prearranged times: “This is their home, not a zoo,” says LaVerdiere.
Dogs romp in a fenced field, where a large tortoise named Goliath occasionally joins them after being outfitted with a homing device—a flag stuck in a funnel that’s been strapped on to his back with an ace bandage. Cats, many infected with feline HIV or leukemia, lounge on beds in large, sunny rooms, along with their roommates, rabbits (called honorary cats) and caged birds.
The sanctuary was created to reflect the animals’ perspective. And, unlike shelters, which LaVerdiere refers to as the canine equivalent of “mixers in high school where you’re on display [while] waiting for someone to ask you to dance,” Home for Life allows the animals to live with dignity. The home’s residents come from all over the country, and LaVerdiere does her best to accommodate all the requests she receives.
Adoption can be a happy ending or an odyssey of being shuffled from home to home. About one-fourth of the adopted pets are returned, she says, adding angrily, “Recycling is great for bottles and cans, but not animals.”
LaVerdiere looks like a lawyer in jeans and a T-shirt—confident, in charge, but not opposed to getting her hands dirty. The petite forty-six-year-old followed her father into law and “I turned out to be good at it,” she says, “which was a drag.” She now divides her time between her law practice and managing Home for Life, which requires constant fund raising to meet its fifty to sixty thousand dollars a month in operating expenses. She’s aided by sponsors from all over the U.S. and Canada, as well as the well-heeled local crowd of those who attend glitzy fund raisers and bid on art donated by the likes of pop artist Peter Max and Blue Dog painter, George Rodrigue.
The idea of a sanctuary for pets who, in another time and place, would have been euthanized was controversial when LaVerdiere founded it in 1997. “The thought was that they were companion animals, and if they couldn’t live in a home they should be put down,” she says.
Try suggesting that after watching Nike, with the aid of a canine wheelchair, chase his four-legged buddy in the upper field. Or Max, who is living out the second or third of his nine lives in comfort after someone cut off his ears, tail, and all four paws.
The animals are respected not only in life, but also in death. This September, a Native American spiritual advisor and Episcopal priest will bless a new memorial garden where river rocks with the names of the animals on them will mark their cremated remains. The ceremony is long overdue, LaVerdiere admits, sheepishly. She’s been storing boxes of ashes in her library at home, which her husband calls “creepy.”
Like any cause, the largest stumbling block is the finite pot of money and resources that has to be split among all the groups doing good work. There’s not one solution that fits all situations—nor all animals. And, LaVerdiere points out, even good decisions, such as spaying and neutering pets, can lead to problems down the road, such as a dearth of puppies that leads to unscrupulous puppy mills springing up.
LaVerdiere has a dream of expanding her network of sanctuaries to other communities. She’d also like to expand the existing location by buying the property next door. It all takes money, which means more fund raising and more oversight of facilities.
“You need heart and head in animal work,” LaVerdiere says, sighing. “You can’t have one without the other when animals are depending on you for their lives and people for their paychecks.”
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