My Rescue Dogs – Upkeep & Training

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I'm Leorah, a Professional Makeup Artist and Stylist, Registered Nurse and mother of seven children. My family and I live in Jerusalem, Israel, with our four dogs, one cat, one rabbit and two parakeets. In April 2022 we made a family decision to add a dog to our life and bought our German Shepherd Rex from a breeder. I personally grew up having dogs, riding horses, being outside most of the time. But this step, to buy a dog was HUGE, especially for my husband and my kids, as they had never experienced life with a dog before.

As the months went by I started to get more and more informed about and interested in rescue dogs in Israel. My heart just opened up and I begged my family to agree to take in a rescue dog in addition to Rex. I found a post about Raven, our Black German Shepherd, on Facebook in July 2022. She was 13 weeks old and in a very bad condition, having inner and outer parasites, being completely under weight, not having been given solid food yet, while the milk of her mother was drying up. My husband and I drove through half of the country to rescue her from a village close to Haifa. She was so weak and after being introduced to solid dog food she started to bleed from her intestines and suffered from diarrhea for about a month till finally she started to get better and gain weight.

In December 2022 my husband and I took Raven to our local SPCA Clinic for a routine examination and used the opportunity to take a tour of the SPCA kennels. My husband had seen the tips of two dog ears over the fence of the kennel and he said to me he needs to find out if these ears belong to a Belgian Shepherd (a breed he loves). This is how we found Dakota, a 10 month old Belgian Malinois who was dumped as a puppy by the breeder at the door step of the SPCA because she had gotten sick with Parvo. Dakota survived but had never been in a home. People are hesitant to adopt large breed, high energy dogs. Four days after seeing Dakota we adopted her and brought her to her forever home.

In February 2023, I was already known as the "Mother Of Shepherds", I received a message from Daniel, one of the workers at the SPCA (who by now was my friend) about a puppy they had just received a few minutes prior. A four months old Dutch Shepherd had been claimed from a young man, who had gotten himself a puppy from a very cool looking "in" breed, had brought it home, put him on a chain outside without shelter, without attention, without any regular water and food supply. The puppy was starving and crying so much that the neighbors of the young man finally called the SPCA to rescue the dog. The mother of the young man signed the dog over. Two days later I went to see him in the shelter and fell in love with the little guy and his huge eyes. I pestered my family for about a week to give this little guy a home. We went to the shelter with all our children and the other dogs and made the introduction. It was a huge success and a week after I had seen him for the first time, we adopted Dante.

My heart beats for rescue dogs (our cat and our rabbit are rescued too, by the way). But even with my preexisting experience as a dog owner, owning and managing a whole pack is a completely different story. I needed help to train the dogs which we found in Lior, the kennel manager of the SPCA, who is also a Professional Dog Trainer for 17 years. He came to our house and helped me to work with my dogs and while we were doing that he saw my potential. He said to me: "Leorah, you have got what it takes to be a dog trainer yourself". The thought had never crossed my mind before but when he said it, everything within me just fell into place, like all the puzzle pieces were finally fitting together. I knew in that moment that Yesssss, this is me.

I signed up to a program to become a Professional Dog Trainer which will begin in September 2023. Having the expenses for seven kids and all the animals is bringing us to the limit of what we can fund ourselves. I need to raise US$2200 to help me reach my goal so I can pay for the program. After I have become a professional dog trainer I want to dedicate a significant part of my time to training rescue dogs for free so they become more adoptable. Thank you for considering to support my journey.

Update Nov. 20, 2023:

On Oct. 7th, during the horrible acts of terrorism committed by the Hamas, over 1400 Israelis around the Gaza Strip got brutally murdered. Tens of thousands of people fled the area, looking for safety in other areas of Israel. Many had to leave their beloved pets behind, in order to quickly get away to save their own lives. Other families got wiped out by Hamas completely. The shelters all over the country are being flooded with these poor animals. So I adopted one of them.

Sufah (which means storm in Hebrew) is an about five months old female Dutch Shepherd mix. Her whole family got slaughtered by Hamas in one of the Jewish communities surrounding the Gaza Strip, while Sufah was hiding in a bush next to house. The neighbors, who ran for their lives grabbed her, threw her in the car and escaped. They drove to Jerusalem where they were assigned to hotels for the time being. Of course they couldn't keep the heavily traumatized puppy, so they dropped her off ( on Oct. 7th) at the SPCA shelter in Jerusalem. Sufah had to actually be hospitalized in the clinic of the SPCA due to injury and trauma. I heard about her through by personal connections to the SPCA shelter, visited her in the clinic and when I knew she would survive, I adopted her to give her a warm family and an amazing dog pack. Small acts of kindness can change the world, if everyone does them. I believe in life, in goodness, in God's word, in His promises in His love for His creation, which is why I'm (among other things) so involved in rescuing dogs. If you want to financially help me with the upkeep and training of these beautiful souls, I would be forever grateful.