Growing up, and to this day, I feel as though I connect better with animals than I do people. At first, my love for animals was limited to dogs (and monkeys). I grew up alongside my best doggy pal Buddy, and when I stayed local for college at UMD, I was never more than 30 minutes away from him.

You can always find hope in a dog's eyes. I--no we--found that hope one March day in 2013, when we met Ally the Great Dane, 2 weeks after our first meeting she'd become part of our family, and have a beagle brother, and change our lives forever. I say "we" because my journey into rescue includes my then boyfriend and now husband. It's become a passion and core part of who we are as a couple, and now, family as we've been joined by our daughter. We are a proud rescue family.

I first got involved in rescue right after college when I adopted my puppy Scooby, a chow chow/collie mix, from the SPCA in Roxbury, MA and then started volunteering there. One soon became two when Angus (the cocker) joined our little pack. Angus was severely abused and not on the adoption floor. It was either come home with me or be euthanized due to overcrowding...so we know what happened. I wasn't able to touch Angus for the first 2 months I had him and I relied heavily on his brother to help me show him that not all humans are horrible.

Growing up in Northern VA, my family always had a dog. But to be honest, animal rescue was never foremost in my mind. My parents taught me to love, respect and care for animals - to treat them like family - but the discussion of rescue was not one that was prevalent in our house. I fell into my passion for rescue quite by accident during college at James Madison University. JMU is in quite a rural area and I would see puppies in boxes and dog chained outside of homes and I just couldn’t understand how people could treat their pets like this.