California Dog Rescue

Accountant follows her passion for animals

Like many people who love animals, Sue James' childhood dream was to become a veterinarian.

"I looked into going to vet school but my parents, they wanted me to pursue a more traditional career," said James, a Danville resident who grew up in a house in New York state where the family pets included dogs, rabbits -- even a monkey.

After a long stint in the corporate world at accounting giant Ernst & Young, working with some of Silicon Valley's leading high-tech companies, James found an outlet for her lifelong love of animals at Tri-Valley Animal Rescue, an all-volunteer group founded in 1992 whose mission is to prevent the unnecessary euthanasia of shelter animals.

The group finds foster homes for adoptable dogs and cats at the East County Animal Shelter in Dublin and other area shelters until permanent homes can be found at adoption events. Last year, the group found homes for 980 cats and dogs through its foster programs.

Besides her love for animals, James found she had a penchant for numbers. After teaching math and science in New York, she decided to make a career change and moved to California in 1969.

"Accounting is a natural adjunct to math, so I went back to school and got my degree in accounting, and then I went into public accounting," she said.

She started volunteering in 2005 as she was winding down a long and successful career as a partner at Ernst & Young.

Working at the firm, she learned the importance of teamwork to meet the needs of clients. That focus also carries over to her volunteer work. "It's about the cats and dogs," she said. "But also, for me, it's how can we work effectively as a team."

Tony Owens, animal control supervisor at the East County shelter, which is run by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, praised James. "She's here all the time, almost every day, doing anything from helping to facilitate adoptions to coordinating fostering. She's definitely an instrumental volunteer and a great coordinator between us and Tri-Valley Animal Rescue.

Why We Rescue Small Breed California Dogs | A Better Life Dog Rescue

We get a lot of criticism for rescuing California dogs from people saying we should only be rescuing Canadian dogs. But this criticism does not take into account several very important factors.

For the first three years we have been rescuing homeless dogs, the vast majority of rescued dogs we got in were medium or large breed dogs. Very few small dogs come into rescue in Canada. They are rarely surrendered and even more rarely abandoned. At the same time we were getting lots of foster and adoption applications from people who could only foster or adopt small dogs. As we rarely had any, the small dog foster homes mostly remained unused.  And small dog adopters would end up going to a breeder to find a small dog. So when we started to hear about the hundreds of small dogs being euthanized every week in California shelters, we saw a way to not only save dogs lives but at the same time to fill a need for families wanting a small dog who might otherwise go to a breeder to get one.

So we began to rescue small California shelter dogs scheduled to be euthanized and transporting them to Canada for adoption. This program has been extremely successful and we have now saved the lives of over 300 California dogs. And not one of those dogs has taken away a spot in a foster or adoptive home from a Canadian dog.

Interestingly, we also get criticized for not rescuing large dogs from California. (It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do in rescue, there is always someone happy to criticize us). And while we have from time to time brought up the occasional medium or large dog from California, our large dog foster homes are typically full with homeless Canadian dogs. So we rescue who and how many we can depending on the type and number of foster homes we have available. The more foster homes we have, the more dogs lives we can save.

Here is a link to a U Tube video

about the attempts of just one organization START, which A Better Life is proud to be a part of,  to save the lives of as many California shelter dogs as possible. It is a very moving video. Don’t worry, there are no scenes of suffering dogs and lots of scenes of the joy on the face of a shelter dog when they realize they are being rescued. Please watch this video. Then pass along to your friends and family. Pass it along to every dog lover you know. And then ask yourself  if you can find it in your heart to apply to be a foster home for us and help us save one more life.  One more life saved among the thousands killed may not seem like much, but it will be everything to that dog. It is only with your help that we can save the next 300, and then the next. Their lives are in all our hands.

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