A dog hit by a car. A bird abandoned in a basement. A horse sent to slaughter. These animals were cast out in the face of trauma. But kindhearted people stepped in to give them a second chance at life.
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
Phil & Sue Travaglianti
by Sharon Best, photo by Tylar Sutton
Growing up, Sue Travaglianti made a pet cemetery in her backyard where she interred both family pets and deceased squirrels and birds she found in her neighborhood. Later, while working at a nursing home, she stayed with residents who were dying but had no family to be with them.
“I just don’t think anybody should ever die alone,” says the 53-year-old Barberton resident.
That compassion has led her to adopt three elderly rescue dogs. Her most recent, a pug named Phil, was surrendered to Akron Rescue Team in June 2018 by a family that had been evicted due to heroin addiction. It was clear the overweight Phil had been neglected from his grossly overgrown toenails and stench.
“This little guy is in a tough situation, and he needs to come to my house because I can love him,” Travaglianti recalls of her first thought upon seeing his photo on the team’s Facebook page.
Phil easily fit in with his stepfamily, which includes two rescue cats, a 9-year-old beagle-Heeler mix named Poppy, and Nada, another elderly pug.
“They all curl up on the couch together,” Travaglianti says. “He just fit in right away.”
Much of their bonding time occurs when she feeds Phil by hand three times a day. Like most pugs, Phil has respiratory difficulties and can’t eat from a bowl. So Travaglianti boils chicken, mixes it with soft pet food and patiently gives him one bite at a time.
Deaf and arthritic, Phil’s mobility is limited, but he takes cues from his stepsisters and communicates with his eyes.
“He gives you that look, and you just know he appreciates everything you’re doing for him,” she says. “We’re not supposed to have favorites, but he just has something about him.”
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Bukki & Connie Zucal
by Sharon Best, photos by Matt Arnold
Bukki was left behind. Several days after the owners of an East Canton home moved out, a real estate agent went inside to prep it for sale and discovered a frantic 30-year-old cockatoo. Bird Nerds Rescue was called, and volunteers brought the bird out of the filth-covered basement that had no food or water in sight.
It took months for Bukki to trust her saviors and regain regular eating habits. Her chest feathers have never grown back, most likely plucked out from the anxiety of being abandoned.
More than a year after Bukki was rescued, Connie Zucal’s daughter found her photo online. Zucal’s husband has a macaw, but Zucal’s African grey parrot had died. Her daughter and husband were determined to find another bird to bond with Zucal in their Dover home.
Bukki was the one.
“Birds pick you,” Zucal says. “At first, she only wanted me; she didn’t want my husband. She’s very possessive of me.”
Three years after the adoption, Bukki is happy — and talkative. She says “hello” to everyone who comes in the door, “see you in the morning” when Zucal heads up to bed, “Go Red” when the Ohio State Buckeyes are on TV and “Bukki go bye-bye” when she craves an outing.
“Bukki goes everywhere with me,” Zucal says. “She has her own perch in the backseat of my car; we take her to ballgames. She sits on my shoulder, and I’ll take her for walks.”
She also loves affection, whether it’s snuggling in Zucal’s lap “like a dog” or reaching out for contact at night.
“She’ll put her claw through the cage, I’ll put my fingers out,” Zucal says. “She holds my finger while we watch a movie.”
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Chubbs & Jill Kirsch
by Megan Smith, photos by Matt Arnold
Most would back away if a big, fat-faced feral cat crossed their path. But Jill Kirsch went toward the cat she spotted in North Canton and lovingly nicknamed him “Chubbs.”
“I was just like, One day, I’m going to be able to pick you up and squeeze those big fat cheeks!” recalls Kirsch, who owns the rescue Cripple Creek Ferals and Friends.
For at least seven years, the domestic shorthair lived in a cat colony in the woods. Kirsch trapped, neutered and returned the strays — a practice her rescue employs and that’s advocated by the Humane Society of the U.S. to stabilize feral cat populations. But Chubbs eluded her. Then the city of North Canton declared that shelters and feeding stations for feral cats had to go, and Chubbs disappeared.
Kirsch used social media to find him and took him home in May 2018. Kirsch occasionally takes home cats she rescues and keeps them or adopts them out.
Today, “Chubbabubba,” one of his many nicknames, lounges around Kirsch’s Hartville home and cares for her two rescue kittens as a parent would.
“He grooms them nonstop,” says Kirsch. “He watches over them and sleeps with them. He wraps his paws around them.”
Kirsch has a soft spot for ferals and has neutered and released more than 1,200 ferals since she started Cripple Creek in 2011.
While some may have seen Chubbs as a nuisance, Kirsch’s care brought out his loving side. Now he follows her around like a guard cat and hops onto her bed to snuggle.
“He’d look at me, and that was about it,” she says. “He is exactly where he was supposed to be.”
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Emmitt & Jeannette Hebing
by McKenna Corson, photos by Tylar Sutton
Emmitt, a cane corso bull terrier mix, grins wide in his sparkly pink harness. The only clue the 3-year-old went through some hard times is a missing front left leg.
When Emmitt was 6 months old, a car hit him, fracturing his front legs. The stray never received medical attention until he was rescued from a northwestern Ohio shelter by Buckeye’s Missions and Sanctuary in May 2017. A surgeon had to amputate Emmitt’s leg. Despite the pain, Emmitt remained loving and received care while waiting to be adopted.
Jeannette Hebing saw Emmitt online while searching for dogs in 2018, and photos of him dressed as a police officer and sunbathing in a pumpkin patch immediately caught her eye.
“This guy’s a character!” she recalls thinking.
She visited him at Buckeye’s and knew she needed him. Her landlord, however, charged a $1,000 one-time fee for pets, which took her six months of cutting costs to save. She brought him to her Peninsula home this January.
“I love him. He’s my child, and I’m going to do everything I can,” she says.
When he’s not frolicking in the backyard, Emmitt likes to relax on the king-sized bed Hebing bought and moved closer to the floor so he could get up easier.
“If we’re cooking dinner, he’ll come sit by our feet,” Hebing says. “He doesn’t expect anything. He just likes to be with us.”
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Spirit & Michele Bolinger
by Kelly Petryszyn, photos by Matt Arnold
The whole country saw Barbaro go down.
The Triple Crown front-runner shattered his right hind leg during the Preakness Stakes broadcast in 2006. After the headlines faded, the image continued to haunt Michele Bolinger and still makes her tear up.
She researched what happens to retired racehorses and was startled by the facts: About 150,000 American horses are slaughtered across our borders, and their meat, often tainted by racing drugs, is sent to other countries as food. The horrific discovery gave her clarity she had been searching for. The then-40-year-old was sitting on an inheritance and waiting for a meaningful way to use it: This was it.
Bolinger started the Medina nonprofit Forever Amber Acres Animal Sanctuary. In collaboration with other organizations, Forever Amber has rescued 46 unwanted horses that are injured, disabled or captured for slaughter after racing.
While the special needs horses can’t be ridden, Bolinger felt they still had more to offer. In 2018, she started a certified therapy program where she and two mental health professionals use horses to help veterans and others work through depression, anxiety, addiction or other challenges.
“They have a way of picking up on our emotions. They’re one of the most intuitive animals,” says Bolinger.
For example, around a person with depression, horses sulk and hang their heads; people with anxiety issues spur horses to run frantically in their stalls. “The horse is reflecting,” Bolinger explains. Participants learn to cope through exercises like deep breathing, then witness the horses relaxing in response.
Horses spark difficult conversations, too. Forever Amber’s newest racehorse rescued en route to slaughter, Spirit, self-harmed himself to cope with his anxieties. A participant noticed Spirit’s scars and confessed her own cutting.
“It gave her the self-discovery to stop hurting herself,” Bolinger says.
While others thought Spirit’s severe disabilities depleted his value, Bolinger has restored it.
“These animals that other people think deserve to be thrown away are the most amazing healing creatures,” she says. “It warms my heart that we’re giving them purpose.”
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Ice Capade
Firefighters brave the cold to rescue furry runaways.
by Sharon Best, photos by Tylar Sutton
This past Jan. 24 was an ordinary winter day at Kent Fire Department’s stations. Temps hovered in the mid- to upper 20s, and the forecast called for light snow and fog.
Around 11 a.m., a call came in. Two dogs were stranded on an island in Lake Rockwell.
“Some people had tried to get them to go back over the ice, and they wouldn’t,” says firefighter Tyler Simpkins.
Ten firefighters loaded into four trucks and headed out. Four men, including Simpkins, donned waterproof Mustang Ice Commander suits — similar to what deep-sea fishermen wear — for buoyancy and warmth.
The lake was icy, so the firefighters were cautious. They tested where they could walk and strategized how they could get across about 40 feet of frozen water between them and the small tree-filled island where the Lab mix and shepherd mix were frolicking.
The ice was fragile, so the firefighters in Mustang suits crab-walked to disperse their weight.
Then, the ice cracked. One firefighter’s legs submerged into the frigid water. Thankfully, his suit kept him protected from hypothermia, and he quickly crawled out.
The rescue continued. But the ice around the island’s shore seemed slushy and unsafe, so progress was slow. Gingerly, Simpkins and others in the suits tried to draw near the dogs and gain their trust.
“They were nervous and ran to the other end of the island,” Simpkins says. “I had a Rice Krispies Treat in my coat pocket that I tried to coax them with.” But that didn’t work.
Two hours ticked by, and the dogs remained elusive. “They were getting close to us, but we couldn’t get to their collars,” says Lt. Craig Peeps.
Then the dog warden arrived on the scene with the pivotal rescue tool: dog treats.
“That finally got us close enough to put a loop over them,” Simpkins says, referring to the soft leash they used. “The dogs were ready to get off the island once they realized we were there to help them.”
Though they were cold and hungry, the dogs seemed exhilarated from their escapade, as the firefighters handed them off to the warden.
Soon after, the dogs were reunited with their owner in nearby Ravenna Township, giving this rescue call a tail-wagging happy ending.
Our Pets
Meet some of the adorable Pets of the Akron Life magazine staff.
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
