HELENA-WEST HELENA -- The cacophony is brutal. Nearly 200 anxious dogs bark and jockey for attention, two each to a chain-link pen. The no-kill, donor-supported Humane Society of the Delta is out of space. Inside one pen, set away from the others, a sturdy black dog lunges and snarls. Leslie Galloway, 44, squats in front of the cage and speaks softly.
Outside, the sound is muffled. Galloway finds the volunteer on duty.
"That dog on the end, what's his story?" she asks.
"Kratos?" the man says.
"Oh, Kratos." Galloway sighs. "That was right when I first got sick. I forgot about Kratos."
Two years ago, Kratos was dropped off by a soldier deployed to Iraq. When he arrived, the dog was more baby than bully, crying for his soldier for weeks.
"He'd probably be OK outside the shelter. He needs some social rehab," Galloway says. Later that day she posts about him on Facebook, trying to find Kratos a home.
In June 2008, after the former mayor of Helena-West Helena closed the animal shelter and freed 10 or so dogs in the St. Francis National Forest, Galloway noticed an increase in strays on city streets. Statistics provided by PETA say that in six years, one dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 puppies. Galloway began driving around daily, setting out food for hungry strays.
By early 2011, Meals on Wheels for Helena West-Helena Dogs was an official nonprofit and, in addition to feeding dogs, Galloway was plucking them off the street. She has rescued more than 200 dogs, sterilizing them and treating their parasites and trauma. Nearly all of her rescued dogs have skin problems and heartworms and injuries often sustained through abuse.
Her vet bill averages $2,500 a month, most of it paid by donors outside of Arkansas. Most of the dogs have been placed in homes.
She rescued dogs even while undergoing treatment for the aggressive breast cancer doctors discovered in June last year. As of January, she is cancer-free.
"It was June 9, 2011," Galloway says. "I got a call from [Department of Human Services], and [the woman] was screaming at the top of her lungs, 'get over here now.'"
Galloway knew the house. She'd been there in her day job as a social worker. A teenager had doused a puppy in gasoline, lit her up and biked away. By the time Galloway got there, the puppy was dead and the caller was sobbing about how "that puppy screamed its last breath."
Galloway found a second puppy under the house and another under a couch, tied in a T-shirt. She fumbled to untangle the shirt, the white pup gazing up at her with one blue eye and one brown eye.
That puppy, Summer, became one of Galloway's eight personal dogs.
Galloway has rescued other dogs from the same family, including Hazel, a pit bull terrier who was padlocked and starving in an empty lot. Galloway cut Hazel loose during an icy November downpour, and now she serves as a therapy dog to a sick child.
Sky, one of Galloway's recent rescues, was freed by police after a neighbor reported a starving dog in a backyard. Then called Keno, the dog was dangling off a porch from an extension cord, her neck swollen and bloody. The former owner admitted that she hadn't fed the dog in three weeks because she didn't want to walk through tall grass.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
In her SUV stocked with dog food, Galloway turns down Holly Street. This is where she picked up Buddy, her first rescue. She points out houses, some of which are burned or boarded. "I rescued a dog from there," she says again and again.
Helena-West Helena has a leash law, but it's loosely enforced. If a dog has a collar and appears healthy, Galloway assumes it's a roamer. She knows most of the dogs in town by sight if not name.
"They got a new puppy here too," she says, pointing at a cluster of young men on a porch. A tiny pit bull rolls at their feet. "I have to watch people like that because they fight dogs [against each other]."
Galloway is working with the Humane Society to petition the current mayor, Jay Hollowell, to collect an additional $1 from residents via their water bills to fund the society.
"Local government uses them as animal control, but they don't give them any money," she says. "This mayor said he would give them money, but he hasn't yet."
She turns on another street and cranes to peer into a backyard where she has been monitoring a chained dog. She passes the tree where she cut Hazel loose and pulls to the curb in front of a house.
Rolling down her window, Galloway calls to a woman on the porch, "How are the dogs doing? How's the blonde dog?"
Galloway helped this woman sterilize her dogs, as she does for many low-income pet owners, and she provides the woman with flea and tick prevention.
A few streets over, Galloway hops out to feed a tan pit mix. He has a collar but his hips and ribs jut sharply, as if they might slice through his skin.
"Hey bud, skinny thing," she says, kneeling to pour food. She wants to rescue this dog, but she'll come back. She's not sure about the people on the nearby porches.
This is gritty, dangerous, discouraging work, but Galloway says her reward is that moment when her dogs visibly relax -- when their eyes soften and she knows they know they're saved.
To learn more about Meals on Wheels for Helena-West Helena Dogs, go to www.facebook.com/MealsOnWheelsForHelenaWestHelenaDogs.
High Profile on 06/12/2016