Rolling Stone Staff Help Hearts and Bones Find Forever Homes for Pets in Need
0On a Thursday in mid-November, Kelli Eaves and Whitney Fang loaded up their van and set out across the country. Driving through the night, they left Dallas, Texas, for Brooklyn, New York. This wasn’t an average road trip, and that’s not just because we’re in the midst of a pandemic. The duo was transporting 27 rescue dogs who all had foster homes waiting for them in the borough. Two of the dogs — affectionately named Miley Cyrus and Post Malone — would end up in the care of Rolling Stone staff as part of PMC’S 2% Foundation initiative to support employee charitable giving, just in time for Thanksgiving (and Giving Tuesday). Eaves and Fang have made this trip before, as part of the organization Hearts and Bones, where Eaves serves as the Director of Lifesaving and Whitney is a founder. Hearts and Bones is a foster-based dog rescue located in Dallas, Texas, and New York City. It was founded in 2017 in order to save dogs from some of the nation’s most overcrowded and underserved shelters. While there is no mistaking that there are animals in need all over the country, Texas finds itself in a uniquely dire situation, with too many strays and not enough forever homes willing to take them in. In 2019, almost 700,000 animals entered Texas shelters. However, Texas has one of the highest euthanasia rates for shelter animals in the country, and almost 100,000 of those same shelter dogs did not live to find homes outside of the shelters. Van Morrison, Eric Clapton Announce Anti-Lockdown Song 'Stand and Deliver' Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to Go Virtual During Pandemic The Best Audiophile Turntables for Your Home Audio System Chadwick Boseman: Long Live the King It’s not that shelters are being needlessly cruel; They too are in crisis. On a given day, the shelters surrounding Hearts and Bones’ Dallas base reportedly take in 100 new animals. After witnessing how the system was ceaselessly overwhelmed during their own volunteer work, founders Whitney Fang and Anna Blumberg found a way to redistribute the burden. Just because there wasn’t room in Texas for the animals didn’t mean there weren’t other areas in the country where people could house them. Miley, a four-month-old mixed-breed puppy, and Post, a three-year-old mixed-breed dog, originally came to Texas from Louisiana. The SPCA of Texas found the dogs in the aftermath of a hurricane in an effort to aid in the disaster relief. Miley and Post, plus 25 other dogs who went through the same situation, spent a month in the SPCA of Texas before Hearts and Bones selected them as good candidates for making the trek to New York. For Blumberg, there’s no feeling quite like welcoming the dogs into the city on what those art Hearts and Bones call “transport days.” Fully equipped in masks and standing six feet apart, the volunteers who meet the van are always prepared to accept the dogs – no matter the state they’re in. “Some of them are scared and they need some reassurance, and some of them co