STAMFORD – Lucky Dog Refuge opened in the town about two years ago, but a co-founder of the non-profit rescue says a fundraiser to be held at Mill River Park will serve as an “official start “to the community.
“Luckypawlooza” is scheduled to take place from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on October 15, with live music from the band Blame It On The Dog, food trucks, a beer garden and animals for adoption.
“It’s really about bringing the community together and (raising awareness) of the need to adopt, not buy,” said Kirstin Mende, co-founder of Lucky Dog and resident of Darien.
Mende said Lucky Dog is focused on providing a safe haven for dogs who need it most, including those with expensive health conditions to treat and those living in “shelters to kill.”
Since mid-2020, she said the nonprofit has adopted more than 650 dogs who have traveled to the rescue from across the country — from the northeast to the south — and even out of states. United States, including the Caribbean and Asia.
Mende and his mother, Maria, formed the relief organization in March 2020, just as the state entered lockdown due to COVID-19.
“There were challenges,” including a longer than usual wait time for permit applications to be processed, “but we worked around them,” Kirstin Mende said.
Lucky the dog in his home in Darien, Conn.
Lucky Dog’s Shelter
Lucky the dog after being treated for an injury that stretched from his chin to his stomach.
Lucky Dog’s ShelterA family matter
Mende, who grew up in Darien, took a winding path to full-time rescue work.
After earning a law degree in 2005, she worked for First Lady Laura Bush at the White House. She then worked for four years in communications at the National Hockey League before returning to school and earning a master’s degree in art business. From there she worked for an art insurance company for several years before it suffered a merger.
Back then, “I said, ‘I’ve done a lot of really great things and achieved a lot of the dreams that I had, but now I want to do something that’s less of a job and more of a passion. ,” Mende recalled.
Mende described Lucky Dog as a “family passion project”. She said her father, coal businessman Hans Mende, helped cover start-up costs.
“We have six dogs in our family,” said Kirstin Mende, who works in an unpaid role. “Every time we rescued one, we searched for the rescuers, who are really just good Samaritans.”
She said years ago she started working with a rescuer in Mississippi to help other dogs in need. She soon learned that many rescues depend on foster families, and if they don’t have enough people to take in dogs, their space fills up and they can’t accept any more.
So Mende and his mother sought to open their own establishment. Around the same time, Mende said he discovered a 10-week-old American Pit Bull Terrier-Labrador Retriever homeless dog in West Virginia “that was in the most horrible condition.” Believed to have been bitten by another dog, he had a gash extending from chin to stomach. A veterinarian recommended euthanasia.
“Through our network of lifeguards that we had kind of built up informally during this time, we said, ‘You know what, let’s see if anyone is willing to do this. Let’s just give it a chance,” Mende said.
A veterinarian from Lexington, Ky., was willing to try. After a few months of treatment – including the use of shirt buttons and string to slowly tighten his skin – the dog joined the Mende family in Connecticut. They decided to name him Lucky.
Today he is a happy and healthy goofball, Mende said.
Often, “people are concerned about rescues because they think dogs have lingering trauma, and dogs are so much more resilient than people,” she said. “All dogs need to be trained, no matter where they come from.”
Lucky Dog ‘summer camp’
Mende said she had learned “an incredible amount” over the past two years from Lucky Dog staff members who had previous experience handling dogs.
“When I started, I didn’t know much,” Mende said. “I just knew I wanted to save dogs.”
A rescue dog’s trip includes medical clearance for travel, transportation to Connecticut, and another health check after arrival. After some time in quarantine at Lucky Dog, they meet other dogs and learn to walk on a leash. Volunteers walk the dogs daily.
Following an adoption process, Lucky Dog provides support as dogs settle into their new homes. Mende said a few dogs have come back to the rescue for reasons like people finding having a puppy is more work than expected or parents learning their kids have allergies.
“And then there’s sometimes a dog that we get that we just don’t find safe to be adoptable,” she said. In these cases, the dogs went to live at a sanctuary near Albany, NY
She said they chose Stamford’s South End as the location for their facility because of its proximity to Interstate 95 and the Stamford Transportation Center. The building sits along the river at 36 Pulaski Street, and Mende said staff try to make the space feel like a “summer camp.”
“It’s a nice place to walk the dogs,” Mende said. “Dogs having access to water at both Lucky Dog and Harbor Point is very soothing to them. It brings them from a very rural feel to a big city but still gives them that fresh air, the birds, the animals, the water, to calm them down and not feel as boxed in or claustrophobic.
Halo is one of over 650 dogs that Lucky Dog Refuge in Stamford, Connecticut has adopted into a home.
Geoffrey Tischman / Tischman Pets Photography
Halo was adopted with Layne, a friend she made at Lucky Dog Refuge in Stamford, Connecticut.
Geoffrey Tischman / Tischman Pets PhotographyThe role of social media
In Mende’s experience, much of the dog rescue community communicates on Facebook. She said a rig failure, like the one that happened last year, can have a major effect on rescuers.
“All of our conversations are on Facebook Messenger – whether it’s booking transportation, (liaise) with other rescues, sending dogs in for verification,” she said. “The way to really network dogs across the United States is to post them on Facebook, and it goes viral from there.”
Mende said Lucky Dog also uses social media to showcase his dogs and their transformations, as well as raise money for emergency medical procedures. She said the organization tries to keep most of its posts “positive” because people “can burn out very easily” if they frequently see pictures or videos of suffering animals.
“It’s a balance of trying to get people to contribute to the cause without creating this atmosphere of compassion fatigue,” Mende said.
It means “choosing those special cases to…appear on someone’s timeline and say, ‘Hey, I know this is really hard to see or really hard to read, but we really need your help.’ , and the rest of the time, we’re going to show you all the really happy stories… so when you see the hard stuff, you know it’s going to end in a happy story,” she said.
Alongside Lucky, a dog named Halo – the subject of a video by The Dodo – is an example of a happy story. The roughly 10-year-old dog was found alone in the Mississippi woods – blind, malnourished and infected with parasites. She lived with a foster family for several months and developed a love for ice cream before coming to Stamford.
Halo has become an “unofficial mascot” for Lucky Dog Refuge, Mende said. She was adopted with a friend she made at the rescue, another dog from Mississippi named Layne. They visit Lucky Dog regularly.
‘Luckypawlooza’
Participants with one dog are each allowed to bring up to two dogs to the Oct. 15 event, which has a rain date of Oct. 22. Proceeds will also go towards efforts to improve the Mill River Park dog park. Tickets can be purchased online.
Lucky Dog Refuge was “founded basically at the start of the pandemic, but they have this amazing network of alumni and an insane number of dogs that they’ve been able to adopt,” said Nette Compton, president and CEO of Mill River Park Collaborative. “And it’s such a great opportunity to bring this network together and celebrate what they do while raising funds…to keep them doing such incredible work.”