Geplaatst:17 mrt 2006 11:13 - Gewijzigd: 17 mrt 2006 11:13

Giving every dog its day

ST. LOUIS - It’s the thought of their fear that troubles him most. Homeless dogs are Randy Grim’s passion. Whether caged in shelters or running wild on the street, the dogs consume most of his waking hours. At night, he says, he often can’t sleep because „their faces haunt me.” They’re afraid almost all the time, Mr. Grim says.

Audiostream:

Mr. Grim, founder of Stray Rescue, based in St. Louis (Missouri, USA), is a most unlikely crusader. „I’d actually rather be a recluse”, he cracks. Grim is made anxious by new faces, public spaces, elevators, and driving. He worries about germs on doorknobs and is subject to panic attacks in crowded stores.

But when it comes to dogs, fear has no sway. Grim cruises regularly through the kind of urban blight armed police officers prefer to avoid. When necessary, he tosses harsh words at street toughs. And several times daily, he kneels among packs of stray street dogs - dogs with gunshot wounds, dogs missing limbs, dogs bleeding from open wounds. He offers them bits of hot dogs, cubes of cheese, and gentle caresses of love.

He has been bitten, but not often. It’s harder to get close to most of these frightened strays than to be bitten by them, he insists. And even the aggressive ones, he believes, are remarkably responsive to a kind and fearless approach.

Grim says he can’t pinpoint an exact moment when rescuing dogs became his life’s work. He began saving stray dogs and cats as a child and, in a way, it’s just always been with him. He worked for a time as a flight attendant, then quit to open his own dog grooming shop. But, distracted by the sight and thought of stray dogs, he couldn’t keep his mind on business. Soon, it became his cause. He discovered where they lived, and learned to watch them, woo them, and, when necessary, trap them.

By 1998, Grim was working full time for Stray Rescue, his own nonprofit organization and shelter. Insisting he has no organizational skills, Grim says. „I have no idea how I did it.” But despite his plea of incapacity he now heads up a network of two no kill shelters, 200 volunteers, and five employees. He appears on TV, has been the subject of a book -”The Man Who Talks to Dogs”, by Melinda Roth- and has written one of his own: ”Miracle Dog”.

Much of this has been excruciating, he says, for a man who detests hearing himself praised and who mostly yearns for a place to hide. But, he reminds himself, public exposure and the support it has brought have been key to his ability to rescue more than 5,000 stray dogs since 1991.

No topic inspires Grim’s passion more than strays that live on city streets, both former pets -who often eventually revert to a wild state- and dogs born on the street.Feral dogs in the US are so little studied that no reliable numbers exist. But Grim insists that every large and mid sized US city is plagued by the problem, one that he believes escalated in the 1980s with the rise of gangs and their penchant for using dogs for fighting, protection, and status - and then abandoning them.

Recently, there were at least 60 strays seen wandering the streets of impoverished St. Louis area neighborhoods. On a three hour tour of the junkyards, burned out buildings, and abandoned factories where these dogs tend to congregate, Grim fed, cajoled, observed, and pondered which ones absolutely had to be picked up. Along the way, he scooped up a chow mix with a broken leg that he named Big John, a pregnant beagle mix he dubbed Marjorie, and Cha Cha, a pup he just couldn’t leave behind.Then, just as he was about to head home, a ghostly creature emerged from the weeds - a starving female dog. Her bones poked through skin half bald with mange. Although Grim is fairly sure she’s entirely feral and probably terrified of humans, she doesn’t move when he kneels next to her. Too weak to resist, she allows him to lift her gently into his truck. At a nearby veterinary clinic, pet owners gasp as Grim carries in the emaciated animal. Workers here, accustomed to his rescues, are calm. „What do we call her?” asks one. „How about Mercy?” chimes in a watching pet owner. And, so, Mercy begins her new life.

Sometimes, Grim says, all he can offer a dog is a loving gesture - perhaps the only kindness it will ever know. This ability to even momentarily relieve suffering with love, says Grim, buoys him in ways he cannot explain. „I don’t want this to sound weird, because I’m not really a religious person”, he says, „but I pray a lot. And I just believe that this is my special job, the thing I was put here to do.” (The Christian Science Monitor)