to adults. When I am adopting out any Pit or Bully Breed that is an adult I am usually having to train out the bad things that happened prior to coming into my hands. The interested parties are usually not the homes I would trust to have a dog who has been rehabilitated. They do not have the experience so I do not place alot of large adult pitties in my care, but when I do it is magic all the way and true success stories. But those adopters are few and far between. When I adopt our bully puppies, I make sure the families or individuals are educated about how to be successful. If I feel these are not things that the individuals are willing to step up to and follow through, they will not be adopting from Lovejoy. I am responsible for the perception of the breed with my potential adopters. We sometimes are able to settle people down about what’s been played out in the media and sometimes we are not. I think mass education about the breed to young people would have an impact but we are all trying to make more awareness about rescue over breeding and that is a huge hurdle in itself. I am so very careful placing my pits because I know if it is not the right fit that dog will be returned with behavioral issues because that party ruined the dog due to lack of education about how to be a good bully breed owner. I place many many pitty pups, I screen and educate to the hilt and I am in close contact with each and everyone of the adopters to ensure they are socializing with humans big and small, training with boundaries and lots of socialization with other dogs big and small from once fully vaccinated as a puppy to adulthood and beyond. But this is not just the bully breeds there are many other breeds that need exactly the same type of foundation laid to be successful. It is just bully’s that seem to end up with a “bad rap” over and over again. And it usually goes bad due to inexperienced and uneducated owners. One of the biggest mistakes dog owners make is never taking the dog away from the home, never walking, never meeting strangers or other dogs on a walk or going to a group class with other dogs and especially not properly exercising their dogs. These are all key components in raising successful dogs. LM: What can we do to help? LF: I think more people who make the effort to educate the public on a large platform about the bully breeds would help continue the movement already put in place but not yet wide spread. If you are asking about how to help us, then I would say just a huge thank you for even thinking to feature us in your
Lick mag. Thank you for this by the way. But on a bigger scope, we do not have big funding behind us, we are a large organization in the accomplishments arena through the dogs and puppies saved and the things we have brought to the communities and families we have helped. But since we are not a rescue that gets on social media platforms asking for help when we have parvo or a broken leg or needing an acl surgery we do not pull on the heart strings of the community. I was just raised that is in bad taste. But I know I have shot myself in the foot because I have not reached out to people, the public. Our followers think we are doing just fine and are staying afloat. We need more support financially. I need more people to know what we are doing and to know we need help. We rely on adoptions alone to support the organization. This is a hard way to survive. But we always do. LM: Would you like to add Anything that you deem important to mention in this dialogue. LF: Two years ago we moved into our facility we call The Clubhouse. This was the goal I was creating at the beginning. It is not a sanctuary but it is a place where we are able to do what I set out to do and that is to have every rescue in our care to have the best quality of life with us for however long that may be. We are about “that” and are not a walk through shelter. We show our dogs outside our facility on the weekends Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 5pm, rain or shine. We offer boarding, grooming, day care and dog swim to our Lovejoy adopters to help support them and us. We were so blessed to find this property and to be able to take The Lovejoy Foundation in a whole new direction. We want to do shot and micro chip clinics once a week at the Clubhouse open to the public. We want to offer one sponsorship a week to a family in need for their dog: shots, deworming, micro chip, spay or neuter. Right now we can only support this idea once a month.
We have so much more to do and so many more dogs to save and so many more to help. We are just held back by lack of financial support. You can contact the LovejoyFoundation at: www.Lovejoyfoundation.org
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