Norris Blue

Norris (named b/c he stares you down Chuck N. style) aka Blue was rescued by an EAV resident, and is known for being an escape artist whose skills rival those of Houdini. We are doing everything we can to make sure he doesn’t escape while we try and locate the owner or find him a home. We are esimating he is a 1 year-old and 70+lbs Blue Pit/Great Dane mix. He scaled our 6 foot fence, and obviously decided he likes it here since he just walked around to the front door and started banging on it. We are hoping getting him fixed will make him not want to escape anymore, but until we figure that out for ourselves we won’t be adopting him out to anyone unless they have a fence resembling the Federal Penitentiary near our house 🙂

About Eric + Whitney, our dogs, and our blog

This is the first entry in our ongoing public journal we’ll be keeping to document our dog rescue efforts. We live in a neighborhood in Atlanta where there are many stray + homeless dogs, as many pet owners don’t fix their animals and let them come and go as they please. There is also a huge problem with dog fighting in places like Atlanta, so we’ve rescued our fair share of pit bulls who have come from horrific situations. We’ll be sharing stories as they happen, as well as recalling some past stories that we think might be beneficial for other pet owners to read.

Dooley

Here is a little background info about us…

Whitney worked for Humane Society as a vet tech for 10 years before getting a degree in Psychology from UGA. She had a pit bull which she rescued from a fight farm named Lady, a Chihuahua-Westie mix named Dooley, and two cats, Fate + Leo, when she met her future husband. Eric had owned dogs his whole life except for the 5 years he spent traveling the world as a missionary in the late 90’s. At the time he had an 8 year old Husky named Binkers, and two of her half-boxer sons (which he had delivered himself before he wised up about the importance of getting pets fixed) named Brewski + Pedro.

Front to back: Lady, Tank aka Pooh, Skeeter aka Muffins

We met at MJQ/Drunken Unicorn, one of the most infamous club compounds in Atlanta. Eric had rode there with his landlord at the time, who was/is one of the most in-demand dj/producers in the world.. Whitney was just getting into electronic music and had no idea what dj’s were really doing back there, whereas Eric had been djing for the better part of a decade. The only reason he managed to get Whitney’s number was because she thought he was better friends than he really was with one of her pals. She usually didn’t give her number out to guys who didn’t come with references from people she trusted, so I’m sure you can imagine the amusing conversation that took place when she realized that he didn’t really know the guy’s name who introduced them.

Left to right: Dooley, Binkers, Winston, Eric

We moved in together relatively quickly due to Whitney getting done very wrong by several roommates in a row when her name was the only one on the lease. It didn’t take long after we moved in together to figure out that Lady was not going to get the best of friends with Binkers, Bruster, and Pedro. Although Eric’s basement apartment was small, they figured out a way of keeping them in seperate rooms and rotating their turns in the yard. Of course there were plenty of times when they ended up in the same room anyways, but fortunately they never managed to do any real damage to each other.

Tank and Bigfoot

During this time, two girls tried to break into our house while Eric was at work and Whitney was at home. The other dogs (minus Lady) were outside, and they obviously weren’t scared of them because they walked right past them. They told Whitney they knew Eric wasn’t going to be home until midnight somehow, and didn’t see how she was going to stop them from coming in and taking what they wanted. Whitney told them that Lady was in the living room and would tear them to shreds, and they didn’t believe her until she cracked the door enough to see Binkers and Bru so she would start going nuts. They ran as fast as they could as soon as she started screaming for the neighbors/landlords, and we never heard from them again. We did however decide to be a good bit more careful about who we tell our schedules to (and the importance of not letting your friends bring their friends to your house parties) after that, but never forgot that our pit bull may have saved Whitney’s life that day.

After a few months, the landlords mentioned something about wanting to move to NYC. Eric and Whitney knew they needed more space, so then moved upstairs into their place with their friends Ryan, Matt, and Dan while their friend Ricky moved into the basement with his pit bull, Partner. Eric, Whitney, and Ryan started one of the most successful weekly dj nights at a club in East Atlanta Village, which ran strong for a year until the venue went downhill. They did their best to pick up the pieces and move it somewhere else, but it became obvious that the economy was making it very difficult to make a living off of club nights. They began to focus on private events and weddings, and considering expanding their animal rescue efforts.

Soon they realized that they only had to drive ten minutes away to the southeast side of Atlanta to find a neighborhood with the most out-of-control stray dog problem they had ever seen. Many were pit bulls running for their lives from fight farms or other abusive situations, but there were just as many other random mixes, and they were obviously multiplying like crazy. We took two of our pit bulls for a walk in a park there to get a feel for the neighborhood, and got attacked by a lab/chow mix within ten minutes. Eric got knocked on the ground, and if it weren’t for Whitney managing to scare him away by charging at him with the cat stroller (yes the cats were in it + very traumatized after, but never tried to sneak out of the house after that), there’s no telling what might have happened. We decided after that that we wanted to get serious about helping some of the more salvageable pups trying to survive in the hood to find some decent people to hang out with.

We got married on September 5, 2009, and got officially involved with the Atlanta Underdog Initiative instead of starting our own shelter. They are definitely the best out of all the shelters we’ve seen, and we would not be pouring ourselves into this project if we didn’t know they were in it for the right reasons. And it helps that they are experienced enough to really know what they’re talking about, especially when it comes to our favorite animals (which might be the most misunderstood creatures in the world), the bully breeds 🙂