Los Angeles Woman Helps Homeless People, Homeless Dogs

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Photo courtesy of Lori Weise click image to enlarge

By Diane Herbst

Sixteen years ago near her office in Los Angeles, right near the city's skid row, Lori Weise noticed an abundance of homeless people with an abundance of dogs. "I looked around and wondered 'Who's helping all these people who have dogs?'" says Weise, the general manager of Modernica, a furniture maker. "People had dogs who had more dogs."

Starting out those years ago by helping one man with his one dog — "I didn't even know what dog rescue was," she says, laughing — Weise's passion blossomed into a non-profit called Downtown Dog Rescue that has since paid for thousands of spays and neuters, provided training classes, and found homes for or fostered thousands of dogs.

And in the last six years, Downtown Dog Rescue has organized and paid for a monthly spay and neuter clinic held in a south Los Angeles Park, with between $90,000 to $100,000 in annual funding. In 2011, the clinic spayed and neutered close to 800 dogs, with the euthanasia rate at one county shelter dropping 30 percent, says Weise. "And," she says, "we're still going strong."

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Photo courtesy of Lori Weise click image to enlarge

At Modernica's downtown location, Weise built kennels that house up to 20 homeless dogs. Many of the dogs are pitbull-type dogs that were labeled as human or dog aggressive by a shelter before coming under Weise's care. As a Downtown Dog Rescue resident, trainers work with the dogs to socialize them. "There are so many misdiagnosed dogs," Weise says, "when all their problem was being behind bars in a shelter and being terrified."

In 2011, Modernica moved its production plant to a bigger building 10 minutes away. The company has given Weise an acre where she can build a new shelter; Downtown Dog Rescue is working to raise funds for its construction. "We believe dogs need to play, need to be out," she says. "That's what our program is about."

Some of Weise's own nine dogs were once owned by the homeless men she's helped over the years, men who have died or ended up in prison. Clancy, 15, was found five years ago wandering the streets, a former fighting dog with broken teeth and scars all over his body. With a hefty dose of training, the once aggressive Clancy passed his canine good citizenship test, and is now a therapy dog. "He really taught me that you can't rush to judge," Weise says. "If you give a dog a chance, he can be the dog he should have always been."