- [Tracy] TracysDogs is a non-for-profit rehabilitation and rescue organization for
dogs. We take dogs that are right now housed in high-kill shelters and outside
of San Antonio, Texas, near the border. And we pull them, and we take them to our
facility in San Antonio. And we rehabilitate them, get them healthy,
get them ready to be adopted. And then we get them all pre-adopted,
and then we transport them up to northern cities, and all of the families that have
pre-adopted these dogs get to meet them for the first time today.
- [Woman 1] We've been on the search for a second dog, not finding any success,
and we came across TracysDogs on Petfinder. And we saw Benny, soon to be
Finn's, photo and fell in love immediately.
- [Woman 2] We are here to pick up a little puppy that we have adopted.
We ended up stumbling across TracysDogs, just fell in love with it.
The whole idea, it's just amazing what she does.
- [Man 1] We had adopted through TracysDogs before, and we had a great
experience with them. And we wanted to adopt again through them
so... there's so many dogs out there that need a home that we wanted to
help out, so...
- [Man 2] Pet Smart has been involved with TracysDogs pretty much in the South, in
the West, and just in the last couple of years, they've wanted to get a location a
little bit further east. So we got to be the lucky one,
and that's how we're involved with them.
- [Scott] Okay. Hey, I'm just going to go. If you're here to adopt one of the dogs,
we're just going to go through a couple of housecleaning items,
and then we're going to get your pups off the trailer.
Tracy, she's been an animal lover all her life, and then, at some point back in
2011, she was furloughed from her job for about six weeks. She started going down to
the local city shelter in San Antonio to video dogs that they were stationing at
another facility because they knew they wouldn't get adopted. And she started
posting those videos on YouTube, and we started getting recognition from people
all over the country wanting to adopt the dogs that she had videoed.
And from there, it just ballooned into this organization where we would go and
rescue the dogs ourselves, bring them into our facility,
and then re-home them ourselves.
- [Woman 3] Rescuing any animal is so important. You know, no dog or cat or any
animal really deserves to be mistreated or on the streets, so if people can find it
in their hearts to rescue and not purchase. We think our organization does
add a lot of value for families also, so we're really filling a niche.
And when people are adopting a dog from us, I want them to understand their
adopting that dog, but they're really saving three dogs' lives.
We have a very limited amount of space at our camp in Texas, so it only holds about
100 dogs. So when Scott pulls away with the trailer
with maybe 60 dogs, that opens up another 60 spots, and Tracy immediately goes to
shelters and gets 60 more. But then that also means those shelters can take in
another 60 dogs, so we're just... We do this every month. We cycle them in and out
We're up to 3,700 dogs we've adopted out in five years,
and we hope to keep growing.
- I'm so excited I could... I'm trying not to cry.
- We don't refuse to, in fact, we do some local adoptions. Stick
a dog on that trailer, we'll put him online, and we'll get anywhere from five,
six, seven applications. Some of the more popular dogs,
we'll get 20 or 30 applications when we go north.
- [Woman 4] Oh, my. - [Man 3] Wonderful.
- I don't have any more.
- I'm so excited.
- I'll put that same dog online, and they won't get a single application for six
months. And the other thing is, too, we want to move dogs that are in the
high-kill shelters out, so we see it as a way to help serve the community.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Woman 5] Oh, we're just happy. She just is cute as I thought she was going to be.
And they tell me she's very active, so she'll keep me young.
- It's really one of the best feelings in the world.
You might have a poker face, but it's all butterflies riding up here.