Minneapolis/St. Paul Pride Festival, 2017 was my moment. My wife and I had just gotten married and were on to the next natural step – adding a dog to the family.
While at Pride, we spotted a local Great Dane rescue group and immediately became obsessed with the breed. Those large, gentle, goofy faces stole our hearts with one look. Three weeks later my wife and I were off to pick up our first fur baby – Brewer!
At that moment, he became our whole lives! We bought a house for this sweet face so he would have more room to run – we became those dog mom’s who schedule ourselves around our dogs. Spoiler, we still do today!
After adopting Brewer, we quickly became interested in the world of rescue and met our fearless leader Karla! She filled us with so much knowledge about the breed and kicked off our obsession with animal rescue.
Not too long after joining the GDROMN rescue, Karla posted a sweet face in search of a foster home. This sweet girl was not a fan of men, and was in the middle of recovering from heart worm. Cue the lesbian foster home!
We reached out and within two hours, Karla showed up to our home with a very anxious old girl with wide brown eye, searching for a quiet place to recover. Well, the moment she hopped out of the car we knew she was already home. Cue our sweet queen Callie Girl and foster fail number one!
GDROMN became a part of our family from that day forward and we haven’t looked back! In fact, my wife and I became those volunteers who looked forward to a 3 AM call from Karla, asking if we can drive somewhere in the Midwest to grab a Dane in a tough situation.
We have spent many miles in the car, round tripping on a mission to bring a Dane in distress to their forever home, and our cup has never been so full.
One cold winter morning around 4 AM my wife got a call from Karla, asking if we would roundtrip down to South Dakota to grab a Dane who has attempting to be sold via Craigslist. The individual running the sale refused the help of a rescue and would only surrender him to private buyers.
This was by far my favorite mission yet as it involved my wife and I posing as “buyers” to bring this six-month-old to safety. Five hours one way, and we drove down a long dirt driveway to find a worm ridden, underweight, dirty Brindle Great Dane shaking in a barn. Finally scooping him up and driving home, Callie and Brewer immediately went into care taker mode and cleaned him up and snuggled together in front of the fire place.
We were done, maybe this foster thing wasn’t for us – as on Christmas eve, we signed papers and officially welcomed our Griswald into our crazy family of five!
The Great Dane Rescue of Minnesota and Wisconsin + Sanctuary Program has brought so much love into our home. Not only with our fur babies, but with the friendships that have grown with other volunteers and board members.
Each participant in this crazy group is so passionate about the world of rescue and the breed of Danes. When faced with a mission, there is never a “we will see”, it is always a “we will make it work”.
I am so grateful to be serving on the board and to have the opportunity to provide for our rescue and Danes. It is truly a pleasure to work alongside such dedicated individuals in an effort to ensure every Dane has a home to call their own.
With warmth-
Katie Crowley