Rekha Basu is a longtime syndicated columnist, editorial writer, reporter and author of the book, “Finding Your Voice.”
She retired in 2022 as a Des Moines Register columnist.
Amy Heinz is the founder and director of AHeinz57 Pet Rescue, a DeSoto shelter that does all it can to spare dogs’ lives. That might mean caring for the unadoptable ones forever. A few of the 130 in its care are long-timers, some adopted multiple times but returned for various reasons.
It might mean a team of Heinz volunteers driving south to rescue dogs from an Oklahoma shelter that euthanizes pregnant ones ― even healthy, pedigreed ones. Heinz’s team of foster parents take them in.
One who recently did was my friend and former Register colleague, Andie Dominick, whose care saved a beautiful yellow Lab named Latte, and the nine adorable pups she helped deliver two weeks later. Five puppies are black, two white and black, and two gray.
Latte is one of the most attentive, caring new mothers I’ve seen, of any species. Mellow and affectionate, she kept her infants well fed, never snapping though she must have been sore from all nine suckling at once. She kept them safe and clean, gently nudging them steady when they struggled to walk, carefully licking flecks of dirt or grime off their tiny, fuzzy, frames. She turned them over and even cleaned up after them. As for the pups, when not eating or kissing each other, they were sleeping, sometimes stacked atop one another.
Andie was sleeping less, spending most waking hours tending to this new family, sometimes from inside the plastic kids’ swimming pool in the family room. She named each one as part of a classic car litter, mixed gruel for them when they were ready for solids, and frequently called on her assigned mentor, Tami DePenning, for guidance.
Now that the pups are nearing eight weeks, they’re almost ready for adoption. Their vibrancy, along with that of other dogs AHeinz57 rescued under the same circumstances, has been a testament to unconditional love and care on all sides. It helps restore my faith in a universe that sometimes seems at war with itself.
But it also opened up questions, as I’ve struggled to wrap my mind around the fact that, were it not for Andie and AHeinz, Latte and her litter wouldn’t be alive.
Domestic-pet euthanasia is a complex, emotionally fraught issue, and few states’ laws define acceptable ways and justifications. In rare instances, even AHeinz57, though a no-kill shelter, has had to put a dog down. Amy Heinz doesn’t condemn the Oklahoma center, noting the compound is unwalled, secured only by a chain link fence from which puppies could escape. She blames Oklahoma for being “bad about animal welfare.”
To readers: The gallery above is from 2022.
Heinz founded the shelter in 2008, after moving here from the West Coast for her Wells Fargo job. For eight years, she managed both positions, the pet rescue on her own time and dime. The impetus came while driving, when saw a truck pulled over on a highway ramp, a dog outside it. When the driver took off, the dog chased the car on only three working legs. Unable to catch up, “Gracie” positioned herself on a hill, keeping a lookout for the owner, who never came back. It took Amy many returns to the area and some thunderous weather before locating her again, earning her trust, and taking her home with her.
But once again, the happy ending can’t obscure the owner’s indifference. “I had no clue how country life worked here ― and that they just shoot dogs,” Heinz said.
Shooting dogs may not be legal but you don’t have to look far for instances of it. “Buddy,” a black Lab mix was shot last year and abandoned off U.S. Highway 30 near Ames, minus an eye and with bullet fragments in his skull. The owner was sentenced to two years. Last year, a Grimes man drew a 30-year-sentence for shooting his dog, then trying to steal it from a shelter and shooting at police in the process.
When Kristi Noem broke into the public sphere as Donald Trump’s nominee for Homeland Security secretary, it drew the world’s attention to a section in her memoir about shooting her own 14-month-old dog, Cricket, after it attacked a neighbor’s chickens. “I hated that dog,” she wrote.
The piece prompted a response from Kitty Block, the president and CEO of Humane World for Animals (formerly the Humane Society), writing “pretty much everyone recognized that what Noem did was wrong. … Treating animal life as so disposable is a shocking repudiation of the kind of relationships that so many of us have experienced with animals, regardless of their misbehaviors.”
Heinz calls Iowa “pretty bad.” In 2022 we ranked 44th among the states in pet friendliness. Is our culture hardened to animal cruelty because of the ways people profit off it, from unscrupulous dog breeders to cockfights to vast agricultural confinements that for decades have gotten away with overcrowding and other animal mistreatment? The failure of Iowa lawmakers to set higher standards and ensure they’re enforced is part of that. Under a proposed bill, Senate File 2162, puppy mills and dog breeders would have even less state oversight as their operators would have to get 24 hours’ notice before onsite visits. Search warrants or advance permission from the breeders would also be required. Fortunately, that bill did not advance before a Feb. 20 legislative deadline.
Cultures need changing too. Multiple individual pet owners have been busted in raids in recent years for keeping dogs outdoors or in fetid, overcrowded housing conditions. In one gruesome 2024 case in Des Moines, an emaciated bulldog was found in a plastic garbage bag with only his head sticking out. How could anyone so brutalize a pet?
Block wrote about our individual obligations to find solutions to conflicts and “better the lives of those who are vulnerable, rather than simply giving up on them.” That would include providing preventive alternatives to euthanizing such as spaying and neutering, offering pet medical insurance to cover high vet costs and microchipping for lost pets. Des Moines is considering eliminating first-time fees for reclaiming pets from shelters and paying late for licenses.
But meanwhile, we’re lucky to have organizations like Heinz57 and the Animal Rescue League (from which I’ve adopted three dogs) to care for domestic pets until they find good homes. The DeSoto shelter now has 27 kennels, and 57 to 80 foster families, depending on the season. There are 12 paid staff members and 500 registered volunteers.
This work is personal to Amy Heinz. She’s bonded with every dog at the shelter, and even sleeps in the kennels once a year; every employee does. Having herself been a single mother when those were “looked down on,” she feels a special camaraderie with the pregnant dogs. So she dispatches volunteers to bring them from Oklahoma, and gets foster mothers like Andie to care for them, and others to screen and assess those looking to adopt. In these divisive times, that’s something we should all encourage and celebrate.
