Someone You Should Know
All the good work done by American Greyhound volunteers would be for naught if we couldn't do an efficient, accurate and timely job of processing adoption applications. Our foster homes would be over-crowded, there would be no room for new dogs retiring from the track, and our operations would come to a stand still.
But, thankfully that is not the case. We have a wonderful lady in Carol Theodorovich, who handles these applications like a machine, and keeps American Greyhound's wheels turning. When Carol receives an adoption application, she often has contacted the potential adopter and sent them information on adopting a greyhound within half an hour of receiving it. Her application processing time is usually under two days, which helps keep the hounds moving through our rescue.
But, processing adoption applications is not all that Carol does. Let me tell you a little history of Carol's involvement with American Greyhound. In the summer of 2009, Carol contacted us about fostering a greyhound. While we always need more and more foster homes for our hounds, I was not really excited about the idea of Carol fostering for us. You see, Carol and her family reside in Goshen, Indiana, about an hour and a half east of our operating area. And, we had a terrible history of sending foster hounds far outside of our operating area (none of our vets in these new areas, unable to regularly bring the dogs out to adoption events, not close enough to help out in an emergency, etc, etc). But, for whatever reason, we went ahead, drove to a meeting point in LaPaz, Indiana, and got Carol a foster dog, Elle.
A month or so later, I got a call that Carol's family would like to adopt Elle. I figured Carol would be done fostering and that would be it, no more long distance fosters. But, during the adoption she told me she wanted to continue to foster hounds for us. So, we got her another, then another and even though she had no pet store events in her area, she kept fostering for us. Late in November of that year while talking on the phone with her, Carol mentioned that she had talked with a manager at the Goshen Petco store who would like her to start holding adoption events in her store. I told her I'd love for her to start holding events, maybe develop a group of people in her area to help her and help us expand our operating area. On the 1st Saturday of 2010, Carol held the first American Greyhound adoption event held outside the Chicago/Northwest Indiana area. She has developed a nice group of people who help run events, haul hounds, and do what needs to be done to make things work.
About this same time, as you may recall, we were unable to take any retired hounds from Dairyland Greyhound Park in Kenosha, Wisconsin, due to the pending closure of that track (Dairyland was the primary source of retired hounds for American Greyhound). And, many of our foster homes were sitting idle due to this situation, including Carol's. While attending Carol's 1st event in Goshen, she introduced me to a black greyhound she had been fostering for another group. I think she may have been concerned that I would be unhappy that she had fostered for another group, but I assured her that wasn't the case. His name was Dusty, and to say I was impressed by him was an understatement. He would sit, lie down, and come on command as well as several other tricks. You see, Dusty was our 1st dog from 2nd Chance at Life (SCAL), our prison fostering partners. I asked all kinds of questions about Dusty and this program and Carol had already written out the contact information so I could call them when I got home that night (which is exactly what I did). Without Carol being in position to hook us up with SCAL, we may not have gotten involved. To date, American Greyhound has rescued over 75 hounds through this program.
Carol also is a two time participant in our Polar Bear Plunge, "Freezin' for a Reason". Her 1st time, due to poor weather, she wasn't able to make it to Chicago for the plunge and instead took the plunge in a dingy little creek by her home, by herself. Just as cold as Lake Michigan, just not as much support with the other polar bears. That's dedication!
Carol is a tireless advocate for our hounds who seems to always be in motion. In this short article I cannot come close to summing up all she does for these dogs and for American Greyhound. With her help I can see the day when our operating area extends all the way to the Ohio state line. Besides processing applications for us, Carol also runs the programs and looks after the foster homes in the South Bend/Goshen, Indiana area, stays in contact with the SCAL folks concerning hounds in the Coldwater, Michigan prison, and recently was elected to the board of Directors. This is why Carol is "Someone You Should Know".
So, you can see how close I came to screwing up in the summer of 2009 while I debated in my mind whether or not to send Carol a foster hound. Without Carol's help, we'd still be operating primarily in Lake and Porter counties, not be involved in SCAL and a whole lot of retired racers wouldn't have gotten an opportunity to find their forever home through American Greyhound. Good job, Carol!
