In the U.S. alone, over four million dogs and cats are put down each year in shelters. That’s over 60,000 a week. A pregnant dog like Lucy and her pups would likely have been candidates for euthanasia if left on their own. Most shelters are not equipped with space or financially able to house and care for a mother and her pups. Left to fend for themselves on the street, they would surely suffer and most would likely not survive.

The goal of the Lucy Pet Foundation is to have spay/neuter and adoption mobile clinics in every major city in the country. If you do the analysis in just one major city, the numbers are staggering. With one mobile clinic, we can spay and neuter over 120 dogs and cats per week. Doing this 48 weeks of the year means 6,000 animals will be spayed and neutered. This will prevent those animals from adding a minimum of 15,000 new potentially homeless animals to pet overpopulation. By year three it is estimated that we can prevent over 500,000 animals from suffering in that same community with just one mobile clinic.

With our goal to have at least 40 spay/neuter and adoption mobile clinics, we can really make a significant dent in pet overpopulation. When the mobile clinics are not performing surgeries, we will work with local animal shelters to save dogs and cats whose time is up. We will feature the animals in our mobile adoption portion of the truck at pet retail stores and events. Our goal is to find forever homes for as many homeless pets as possible.

Five years ago my son Dylan looked out his bedroom window and saw what he thought was a baby coyote in the hills across the street. He called for my wife Lynnda who said: “that’s not a coyote, that’s a dog”! They decided to try and catch it. Soon they realized it was a female Chihuahua mix that looked like she had been out on her own for a long time. She was completely covered with dirt, toenails curling under and tire marks on her back.

Shortly thereafter, I came home and we took the dog to the vet. The vet said even with the tire marks, she seemed to be fine, no broken bones, just a little malnourished. The vet mentioned that she should be spayed. I said, “Absolutely, we need to”, so we made an appointment for two weeks later. This would give us time to look for her parents and also let her recover from being on her own. We got home and my daughter Bailey gave her a bath and then we looked on the Internet to see if anyone was searching for her. We also put signs up and asked around the neighborhood, but we had no calls, so we named her “Lucy” and made her a part of our family.

We noticed Lucy was gaining weight and when we took her back to the vet to get her spayed, to our surprise the vet said Lucy was pregnant. Lucy had been pregnant when we found her! At home, we set up a whelping box for her, but Lucy decided at 3 am the best place to have her puppies was next to my son Dylan, right on his bed! The first puppy born was Theo. We moved Lucy and her new son to the whelping box where she gave birth to three more healthy puppies. But there was a problem. Lucy was so exhausted that she had no energy to break the sac for the fifth and last puppy.

I noticed the last little pup stopped moving and seemed to be not breathing. So I broke the sac and started massaging the tiny puppy’s body and thankfully he started breathing…his name is “Stanley”.

Today “Lucy”, “Theo”, “Snickers”, Emily”, “Coco” and “Stanley”, are all enjoying great pampered lives with loving forever families, and get together for family reunions from time to time. Unfortunately, for millions of other dogs and cats, there is no happy ending.

 -Joey Herrick