Great Lakes Humane Society provides Leelanau’s only dog shelter
Photo: Great Lakes Humane Society founder Linda Gottwald with volunteers Sallie Donovan and Alison Collins and dogs Dollie and Taylor, both awaiting adoption.
By Sandra Serra Bradshaw
Sun contributor
The Great Lakes Humane Society (GLHS) was founded in the memory of an abandoned mother dog named “Frannie,” adopted by Linda Gottwald, the founder of GLHS. The doors opened in 2011 and to date they have been able to place more than 1400 once-homeless dogs. Gottwald has an especially deep passion for animals, and as such has spent her lifetime helping them. She was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Community Service Award for her volunteer work with the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society.
Gottwald is the author of Once Upon a Shelter, a book chronicling her work with abandoned animals. She has a doctorate degree in family medicine from Rush University and works in telemedicine. A strong animal advocate, she is a member of PETA and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Gottwald lives on a ten-acre farm in southern Leelanau County with her dogs Tootie and Panda, along with the various canines that come and go. It is here that the GLHS is located.
As for Frannie, Gottwald explained; “I first saw her many years ago one rainy gray afternoon when I was volunteering at an animal shelter in Oakland, California. She was being dragged into the shelter by an elderly gentleman who was straddling to keep a grip on her collar while he held a wooden chest drawer of puppies. ‘Some kids was chuckin’ rocks at her and her pups behind the coliseum,’ explained the exhausted man, as he wiped his brow. ‘I chased ‘em off and brought her to you.’”
“I thanked him for his kindness,” Gottwald continued. “I set the drawer on the counter and gently moved the pups into a box – five chubby, brown and black fur balls. The mother dog anxiously watched my every move. She was gaunt, terrified, soaking wet – but her eyes never left her puppies. ‘Don’t worry,’ Gottwald told the scared dog. ‘We’ll take good care of them.’” It was then she decided to name her Frannie in honor of St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals.
Over the weeks, the pups flourished and were quickly placed in new homes. But not so for Frannie. “When people passed her cage, she would cower in the corner trembling. I would bring her treats daily and eventually she began to wag her tail ever so slightly. I wondered if she missed her pups and thought of how lonely she must be night after night in her empty cage,” Gottwald said.
Oakland, just like animal shelters throughout the country, has a tremendous number of animals brought in every day and the sad truth is, they simply could not keep every animal indefinitely. “All too soon, Frannie’s time was up…but there was one last chance – the Pet Parade,” explained Gottwald. Every month volunteers would line up in front of a crowd of potential adopters and march dogs around the shelter grounds. “The parade had been the launch site for a lot of adoptions and I hoped that Frannie would be one of them,” she explained.
Gottwald sat on the grass with Frannie watching as each dog was led, accompanied by their new families, into the adoption area. “Frannie wasn’t one of them. I knew that meant she would be euthanized.,” she said. “As if she understood, Frannie turned to me and ever so gently lifted her paw to me to say good-bye, quietly, accepting, resigned to the sad little life fate had dealt her. That did it. An hour later she was mine.”
“Over the years, it turned out that actually, I was hers,” reminisced Gottwald. “I was captivated by her soft brown eyes, her endless devotion, her gentle offering of her paw, I came to love her in a hundred ways. She was terrified of strangers, ran from other dogs at the dog park, shook in fear at new situations. But Frannie was never more than a few feet from me and she shyly learned to play little games […]. It took so little to make her happy.”
“One cool autumn morning a friend stopped by to borrow a rake – he was going to clean up his summer cottage,” Gottwald related. “‘Would Frannie like to go?’ the friend asked. I looked at her sitting quietly watching me. ‘Sure, why not? It would be better than sitting in the house all day.’ I reached down and patted her head for what would be the last time.”
When Gottwald returned home from work, she was surprised not to see Frannie’s face in the window, watching like she always did. When it grew dark, surprise grew into worry. “I called my friend – no answer. Eight, nine, ten o’clock…Something was wrong. Finally the phone rang – it was the police. There had been a terrible car accident…my friend was in the hospital, injured but alive. “Had anyone seen the little brown dog in the car?” Gottwald asked. One police officer said he thought she probably had jumped out the window, frightened by the sirens of the ambulance.
Gottwald drove into the frigid night and started looking near the scene of the accident. “Miles away from home, terrified, – where would she have gone? I drove through alleys, parked the car and walked the streets, calling her name,” said Gottwald. “When the light of dawn came, I prayed someone would call, but no one did. Freeways, intersections frozen ground, cars whizzing by… how terrified she must be, trying to find me. I stapled posters, asked people but no one had seen her.”
“Someone once told me nothing good ever happens after 2 a.m.,” Gottwald stated. “Sure enough, about 2:30 the following night, the phone rang. Frannie was dead, hit by a car. Her body was lying in the causeway, about 12 miles from home. A passerby had stopped and taken the time to call the number on the collar. I drove to the scene and there she was, lying on her side, still warm. There was not a mark on her,” she said. “I cradled her in my arms, looked up to the frozen stars and pledged that she would not have died in vain, that some day, I would make an animal shelter for all the beautiful little spirits like she had been. Those that are lost or frightened, confused and alone.”
That heart-wrenching experience was how GLHS was established. “Over the years, we have seen hundreds of animals come through our doors, all with their own sad stories. But there will never be another dog like Frannie. She is with me always, reminding me of how great the spirit of a little stray dog can be,” Gottwald said.
“There is such a need – we have to turn away dogs every day,” Gottwald said. “On average we can keep six to eight dogs at a time. We have a real high turnover rate. I have never seen it as bad as it is right now.” Then she related a harsh reality: “A family came by crying when they dropped their dog off. They drove away and never called back. That black Lab mix would run out to the corner of the play yard – she could not be budged as she wanted her family to come back to get her. I called her “Sarah, the Good Bye Girl.” It was so sad to see her out in the snow, so cold, just waiting for her ‘family’ to return. We had to physically pick her up to take her back inside.”
The Doris Day Animal Foundation (DDAF) has given the GLHS $5,000 – on two separate occasions – to help keep this well-deserved Leelanau County dog protection agency going in its day-to-day expenses. The Doris Day Animal Foundation (DDAF) is a national, nonprofit 501(c) (3) Public Charity founded in 1978 by the legendary performer, Doris Day. She was affectionately known to many as “The Dog Catcher of Beverly Hills.”
“I was watching an old Doris Day movie,” explained Gottwald. “I liked it so much I wrote her a letter telling her how much I appreciated her work with animals and that I was trying to start a small shelter here in northern Michigan.” Doris Day personally wrote back to Gottwald and took a special interest in her fledgling organization. Another famous actress who took interest was Brigitte Bardot. As a long-time dog-lover, Bardot sent Gottwald and GLHS several thank you cards in her recognition of their work.
Besides donations, what makes the GLHS keep on ticking are the many volunteers that donate their time, whether it be once-in-awhile or more frequently such as volunteer and self-described dog lover, Tom Wilcox of Traverse City. “Four years ago, I had a black Lab names Jobi. We had a special connection that doesn’t always happen with every pet. I lost Jobi when he was very young,” he said. “That made me decide I wanted to spend more time helping dogs.”
Wilcox spends Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays helping out at GLHS, and “If need be, I’ll come on Thursdays and Fridays,” he added. “To make these stray dogs adoptable, as in most cases they do not know how to walk on a leash. The biggest thing, beyond that, is to establish trust as “the majority of these dogs have no trust in humans,” he explained. There is a certain order he found that works as well: “Feed – Water – Walk. That gets their respect in time,” said Tom. “Trust. Respect. Then after that is realized, follows Love: Trust. Respect. Love,” he firmly reiterated. “Sadly,” Tom added, “many of these dogs are so out-of-touch with reality they do not even know what a toy is. For a lot of them, being here at the shelter is the best they have ever had.”
“I am so thankful for our volunteers,” said Gottwald. “I often look out my kitchen window and there they are out there walking a dog – all bundled up – sometimes with an umbrella, and trudge through rain, snow and mud on our trail,” she said with appreciation that she hopes is sincerely conveyed to them all. “I personally wish to thank each of them!”
To volunteer or donate, please contact: Great Lakes Humane Society, 7246 E. Harrys Rd, Traverse City, MI 49684 Adoptions by appointment only: Great Lakes Humane Society. Animal Shelter. 7246 E. Harry’s Rd.,Traverse City, MI 49684 231-846-8293 greatlakeshumane@gmail.com. Visit the Humane Society on the web here.
