#Women’sMonth: Some angels bark

THE phrase every dog has its day, by implication, may refer to humans enjoying their period of influence, but at Bark Angel Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation, every dog has its day every day.

Founder of the dog rescue, Debbie Moss, has for the past seven years ensured that no matter the cost, the dogs always have their day. The mother of three children and 23 dogs said there is no separation between her work and home life and that her work is completely a calling.
“My family and animals tend to go without me because I’m always running after somebody else’s animals. It’s very hard to have a life, especially when you have 23 dogs,” she explained.

She said that while having the dogs homed was always the ideal situation, the ever-changing economy was making it almost impossible for more families to adopt dogs nowadays.

“We try to home them as they come in but it’s not so easy now with people having financial difficulties, it’s harder and harder to home dogs. We bring them in with the high hopes of being able to home them, and when they don’t get homed, we end up with another dog,” Debbie said.

Her right-hand woman, Dora, picks up where she leaves off in cases of emergency dog rescues. “She is amazing. She helps so much, is so good with the dogs. She’s fantastic with my animals because I am often not around during feed time. She feeds and cares for them, she’s got it down to an art.”

And what advice would she give the next person wanting to found their own dog rescue? “Run,” she said jokingly. “There’s no escape. Once you get into it and you love animals as I do, you can feel their sorrow and feel what they’ve been through. It’s very difficult to turn away an animal or to say that I cannot help. In fact, if somebody is desperate and really wants to get their animal inoculated or its got parvo, I tend to worry about paying the bill and having the dog seen to.”

“Paying the bill comes last and the dog comes first, it’s very difficult to stop that once you’re in. And I’ve been doing this for seven years, all year round with no days off,” she added.

It wasn’t until Debbie thought of reaching out for help that the idea of Bark Angel Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation came into fruition. “Since then, we’ve got a lot more support. The public is amazing, we have got a fantastic support base in our own Bark Angel family which consists of about 3500 people on our social media page. And they really are amazing. When we really get desperate we put out messages on Facebook, stating the assistance we need.”

Above her call of duty, Debbie also sees to feeding dogs in Clairwood. “We provide the woman who feeds the dogs with 100kg of dog food twice a month and we feed about 25 dogs that are our Clairwood dogs. When it gets up to the stage that we’ve got no food or money in the bank, then we put something on Facebook and the food just arrives, it’s amazing, people really are amazing. We also have some really good donors who donate every month, but there’s still never enough money because there’s just one dog after the other

While there are extremely funny and deeply sad stories about some of the dogs she’s rescued, Debbie said dogs are her first priority and everything else takes care of itself.

“I think what I do is a calling, I, therefore, have to believe and trust that the money and aides will come in.”

Some of the dogs Bark Angel Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation have nursed back to heath:

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