What Are The Hours For Safe Haven Animal Shelter 8n Scottsboro Al

A Scottsboro beast shelter does good works

She may not have known it at the time, but even as a young child growing up in Scottsboro, Melissa Utech had 1 calling in life – to save lives.

Utech recalls she had a "normal" upbringing, and after graduating from Scottsboro Loftier Schoolhouse, she went on to work in retail, for a local banking concern and in various other "normal" jobs. At i point, she landed a position as a commuter for a local limousine visitor, a function that lasted viii years.

"I loved that job, and I was living a skillful life at the fourth dimension," Utech says. "But and so the company moved to Nashville, and I was left wondering what I was going to do adjacent. That wasn't a skilful feeling."

One key slice of career communication came from Utech's father while he reminded her of her addiction as a young kid of "dragging upward" devious animals of every kind to the house. Unbeknownst to the rest of her family, she would fifty-fifty sneak them into her sleeping room to take intendance of them.

"Dad recommended I endeavour and do something about my passion for animals and see what happens," Utech says. "Then I started pet sitting for people, and adjacent thing y'all knew, I'k pet sitting for the owners of High Country Toyota, who had six rescue dogs. I did that for ii years, and they recognized my passion and told me I should start my ain rescue operation."

Challenging mission

2 appreciative rescues greet Melissa Utech with a kiss.

And, as they say, the rest is history. Since 2006, when Utech started Safe Oasis No Impale Animal Shelter, she's found homes for thousands of pets, non just in North Alabama only also throughout the land and even in Canada. Only the road certainly has had its ups and downs.

For starters, deciding exactly where she would run her operation was a challenge. Ultimately, however, Utech and her husband of viii years institute the nearly suitable site for the shelter – for the time being, at least – to exist at their Scottsboro home. It's not the preferred scenario, but finding homes for unwanted pets has been her life'south mission from mean solar day 1, even if that ways sacrificing personal infinite.

"Safe Haven essentially is our home, literally 24/7," Utech says. "A lot of it is in our garage. We've had it heated and cooled. And at that place have been some crazy times when nosotros've had crates in our kitchen, our living room and all over the within of our house. Sometimes it would be ho-hum, when nosotros'd be downwardly to maybe 5 dogs, and so all of a sudden the phone would ring off the hook and we'd have 40 or l or more than. Yous never know, but we only do whatever information technology takes."

Originally, Utech would keep in close contact with fauna shelters throughout N Alabama — the Scottsboro Jackson County Fauna Shelter, the Humane Club locations in Jackson County and Marshall County, and many others throughout the area – and be at the prepare to rescue animals that were scheduled for euthanasia.

Information technology was often a daunting job, to say the least, but a small-scale network of local foster homes ofttimes helped ease the need to temporarily house all of those animals herself.

Supportive network

Today, amid a groundswell of new no-kill operations like hers that have stepped upwards inside her network to share the responsibleness of finding homes for unwanted animals — Sandy Paws in Oxford, Alabama, and Frosty Fosters in Wisconsin, amongst many others — Utech has been able to turn her focus more toward pets that demand to exist relocated from existing homes. And at that place are plenty of those to keep her busy.

Utech remains thankful to bear on her rescue operation backed by her about loyal supporters who take been with her from Safe Haven'south earliest days. The ownership at High Country Toyota continues to provide financial support. And a Hollywood television producer named Cheryl Bauman, who adopted a border collie-Great Pyrenees mix puppy from the shelter back in 2007, takes every opportunity to spread the word near Utech'due south rescue efforts.

I of Bauman'due south efforts to publicize Safe Haven involved a proposed reality bear witness in 2010 called "Rescue Chicks," featuring Utech and herself traveling the land saving unwanted pets. Bauman was never able to find the funding or back up to bring that proposal to reality.

"She's been one of my best friends equally a outcome of this," Utech says. "We talk just well-nigh every day, and we've done a lot through the years."

Later, Utech wrote a children's volume called "California Girl" that features the puppy Bauman originally adopted and the unlikely "perfect life" the puppy was able to go on to experience thanks to the adoption.

"It's a rags-to-riches story about a farm dog that becomes a Hollywood wildflower," Utech says. "It was heavy on my heart at the time and was more than something I envisioned we could become into the hands of children who live in foster homes to assistance them notice the promise that there's a better life out there for them.

"I haven't been able to find somebody to publish the book, simply that's another affair that sort of speaks to who I am and what we're trying to do for not only the animals we rescue, but for all people who are looking for forever homes," she says. "That'southward but my calling, whether information technology's animals or people, no thing how you look at it."

Source: https://www.naecoop.com/a-safe-haven/

Posted by: hinesthestrand.blogspot.com

Share this post