Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of Americas Forgotten People and Pets

Written by Carol Mithers

Narrated by Christina Delaine

In Los Angeles's most underserved communities, Lori Weise is known as the Dog Lady, the woman who's spent decades caring for people in poverty and the animals that love them. Long before anyone else, Weise grasped that animal and human suffering are inextricably connected and created a new rescue narrative, an enduring safety net empowering pet owners and providing resources to reduce the number of pets coming into shelters.



Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America's Forgotten People and Pets unites the causes of animal welfare and social justice, moving between Weise's story and that of the US rescue movement: from the dog's twentieth-century transition from property to family to the rise of the no kill campaign to stop shelter euthanasia and the contradictions that hampered those efforts. Through captivating storytelling and investigative reporting, Carol Mithers examines the consequences of bias within this overwhelmingly white movement, where an overemphasis on placing animals in affluent homes often disregards pet owners in poverty. Weise's innovative and ultimately triumphant efforts revealed a better way.



Rethinking Rescue boldly confronts two of the biggest challenges of our time—poverty and homelessness—in asking the very humane question, Who deserves the love of a pet?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Aug 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781696617055

Carol Mithers

Carol Mithers is coauthor, with the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, of Mighty Be Our Powers, which has been translated into 14 languages. Her articles have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. Mithers is also the author of Therapy Gone Mad, and her essays have been reprinted in The Best of Oprah, Salon.com's Life As We Know It, and The Vietnam War in American Society (Columbia University Press). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.