Categories: LIFESTYLE

Smiling Dog Farms – Wharton, TX

In Wharton, TX a sanctuary serves as a haven for canines who don’t get adopted and/or are close to being put to sleep due to lack of a home. (Source: Anna Horton).

Many of their dogs have problems that no one else could deal with,” says a Fort Worth animal advocate. These are the guys who I called about a dog named Mimi who I nicknamed ‘the man-hater.’

Like everything else, Smiling Dog Farms’ operation takes money, so if you’ve got an extra couple of bucks, this advocate says think about them and their dogs.

Their two greatest needs are housing, which costs $576 per play yard for materials including fence posts, panels, lumber for the cottage, hardware, and even more than that they are trying to find Smiling Dog Partners – people who will make regular monthly contributions of $10, $20, $50 per month.

It is what their future depends on, according to a recent email from them. Dogs come from shelters and rescues all over the country.

Their website reads: “We started small. We are Jay Hellerich and Richard Clements, partners who started rescuing dogs in 1994. We evolved into a sanctuary. Our family of animals continued to grow.”

The couple began taking in female dogs with puppies to protect them until the babies were able to be placed with families because at that time Albuquerque, NM, where Hellerich and Clements lived had a policy that mother dogs with litters could only be held in shelters for so long before the puppies where killed.

In Dec. 2007 an online benefit was conducted and organized from Los Angeles, CA through Best Friends Network to raise money for Smiling Dog. The 12-hour Internet concert was presented by Second Life, a group of musicians donating their time to benefit the creatures.

The dogs are on a rotating schedule to spend a day in the house as a pet, to go for car rides on trips to town, and to spend the night cuddling in their masters’ bed, according to an article in a Texas newspaper last year.

The 37-acre sanctuary surrounded by more than 1,000 acres of farmland has featured such dogs as Mercy, a Pit Bull who was suspected to have been used in a dog fighting ring. (Source: Wapakoneta Daily News). Another dog, Forgiveness, was moved along with Mercy from a shelter to Smiling Dog, sparing them the horror of being euthanized.

For more information, see smilingdogfarms.org online or email adoptions@smilingdogfarms.org.

Send donations to Smiling Dog Farms, Inc., Box 743, Wharton, TX 77488.