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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

NOVEMBER 2005

Fate of rescued animals goes to court

Pasado’s Safe Haven, of Sultan, Washington, directing one of the major ad hoc rescue centers near New Orleans, suffered a major embarrassment after sending 61 pit bull terriers to Every Dog Needs A Home, also known as the EDNAH Animal Rescue & Sanctuary, in Gamaliel, Arkansas.


Another 18 pit bulls were sent to EDNAH by the Humane Society of Louisiana, which since losing its own facilities to Katrina has operated from a corner of the St. Francis Animal Sanctuary in Tylertown, Mississippi.
An October 21 visit to EDNAH by Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery found more than 400 dogs packed into a two-acre lot, as many as 75 of them running loose. One dog was found dead.

A happy reunion for Dusti the cat and Aretha Parker (Kate Howard)

Founders William Hanson, 41, and his wife Tammy Hanson, 38, were charged with cruelty and released on $1,000 bond each.


“It's definitely not the type of facility that we thought it was,” Pasado’s representative Diane Goodrich told Jane Stewart of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.


“Goodrich said the Pasado dogs arrived at Hanson's shelter on October 17, delivered in individual cages that were lined up on a gravel road inside the shelter entrance. Apparently the animals and the cages had not been moved since their arrival,” Stewart wrote.

 

Pasado’s cofounders Mark Steinway and Susan Michaels said they found Hanson “through qualified independent word-of-mouth resources,” citing two veterinarians, among others.

However, three rescuers told ANIMAL PEOPLE before the arrests that they had developed misgivings about EDNAH.


Where Angels Run found-er Desiree Bender of Little Rock, Arkansas, beginning on October 12 tried to alert Steinway and others to the developing problems at EDNAH. “Desiree,” responded Steinway on October 16, “you need to cease and desist with this character defamation or you will soon be facing legal action the likes of which you never dreamed of.”


But a quick search of <www.NewsLibrary.com> archives soon discovered indicative history. In 2003 the Hansons escaped charges in Cass County, Missouri, after 132 dogs were found at their former home near Belton, Missouri.
Tammy Hanson, then known as Tammy Doneski, was in 1994 convicted in Chicago of felony impersonation of a medical doctor.


Steinway eventually led a team from Pasado’s who joined other volunteers in looking after the dogs at EDNAH pending court determination of their disposition.


Rescuer “theft”


“The threat of legal action against Walt and Faye Peters of Contented Critters in Makinen appears to have stalled,” Jana Goerdt of the Duluth News-Tribune reported on November 8, “because no one has come forward to claim the twelve dogs and one kitten they brought back from Louisiana.”


Many rescuers removed animals from Louisiana before the mandatory holding time for identification expired, but Walt and Faye Peters were apparently the only rescuers from whom animals were seized. Duluth police took the animals on September 21.


In a second case involving the right of possession of rescued animals, whose former caretakers have not been identified, former Colorado Animal Rescue board member Sue Schmidt of Silt, Colorado, on November 7 sought a court order to prevent CARE from transferring, relocating, assessing or euthanizing six dogs she brought back from Louisiana in October.


Schmidt resigned from the CARE board, Aspen Daily News staff writer Andre Salvail, wrote, after other board members determined that one of the dogs, a German shepherd mix, may be dangerous. The dog bit CARE executive director Leslie Rockey during an attempted examination.