Humans of UNAC/UHCP: Alana Lawler, RN

National Pet Day is a day to celebrate the joy that pets bring to our lives and encourage people to help reduce the number of animals in shelters. Alana Lawler, a registered nurse in the labor and delivery department at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital, shared her passion for rescuing dogs.

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National Pet Day is a day to celebrate the joy that pets bring to our lives and encourage people to help reduce the number of animals in shelters. Alana Lawler is a registered nurse in the labor and delivery department at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital and a longtime SPNN member. We spoke to Alana about her pet advocacy work.

“I help manage a dog rescue with a core team of eight women and many volunteers. We are an all-breed dog rescue. We save dogs from Imperial Valley, Mexico, and the San Bernardino area. We save their lives, take them in, and get them ready for new forever homes.

“Our rescue has been in operation since 2014. I have had about 30 foster dogs here in our house and the rescue, The Rescued Dog, has saved 1,150 dogs!

“The work we do at the rescue is very, very similar to nursing. It’s about caring, it’s about educating, it’s about teaching and supporting and just jumping in and doing what you’ve got to do to save a life and create change for the greater good.

“I’ve always had a love for dogs and have had dogs for many, many years. I started fostering dogs with another rescue, then kind of moved into this smaller foster-based rescue with some great partners, and just kind of dove in and kept doing more and saving dogs.

“We save them from all sorts of circumstances. We save dogs directly from euthanasia lists at high kill shelters, we save dogs from the streets of Mexico, we save dogs from hoarding situations, we save dogs that have major medical issues and trauma, we just save dogs that need to be saved.

“I currently have one dog, Libby. She is what we call a ‘foster failure,’ one of the dogs we saved and couldn’t let go and adopt out—so we kept her. She is a great foster sibling to all the foster dogs that I bring through our house. Libby is a basset hound and a mix of a million other things probably—she’s a lowrider and she’s loud.

“I feel that with volunteering, if everyone can do a little, you can achieve a lot. Honestly, just seeing the families that adopt the dogs, seeing the amazing changes in the dogs and the joy that it brings keeps me doing it and loving it.”

To learn more about The Rescued Dog, go to https://therescueddog.org/

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