Animal rescue becomes a ‘full-time unpaid job’ | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Janie Smith left her old job with the federal government in December 2012, but she works as tenaciously as ever.

“I laugh and say I retired from a full-time unpaid job,” says Smith, 70. “It’s just my passion.”

About six months after Smith retired after 41 years of service at the Social Security Administration in Pine Bluff — including a few years at the Civil Service Commission in Little Rock — she decided to go to the city animal shelter to see if she could get some help. walking dogs.

“That’s what I did,” she says. “And I met some other ladies there who were very involved in volunteering at the shelter. I started walking dogs there pretty much every afternoon, and then we decided that we would try to help the dogs by finding some rescues that were willing to take them.”

Since then, she has helped with heartworm testing at that shelter and another shelter, and twice a month she transports dogs to and from the Companions Animal Clinic in Greenbrier for spaying and neutering. She starts the hour-long drive to drop them off around 6 a.m. and is usually home by 6 p.m. Most of those animals, she says, go to new homes the next day.

“I started transporting dogs to rescues that were willing to take our dogs,” she says. “We’ve been everywhere from Houston, Texas to South Carolina.”

She connected with Rescue Road in Little Rock, which partners with Last Hope K9 Rescue in Boston. She works as a liaison of sorts between these organizations and the Pine Bluff shelter to prepare dogs for rides to Boston, where adopters await them.

“That involves posting photos of dogs on Facebook, finding foster parents and preparing their medical kits,” she says. “We coordinate with the foster family and take the dogs to whoever is going to take them in.”

It’s worth watching the dogs as they are loaded up and driven to promised homes in Boston, she says, because many dogs aren’t so lucky.

“Other rescues are struggling,” she says. “One of the organizations I enjoy helping is Amy’s Animal Rescue in Star City. She’s basically a sole proprietorship.”

There are periodic fundraisers, where small amounts of money are raised to cover some of the rescue costs.

“I spend a lot of my own retirement money on gas, and when the shelter needs puppy food or things like that, I help out as much as I can,” says Smith, a native of Weirton, W.Va., a steel Mill Town , where her father was a heavy equipment mechanic and her mother stayed home with her and her brother.

After high school, she got a job in the fingerprint division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C., a job she got with her parents’ blessing after meeting FBI representatives at an on-campus job fair.

“We had to retype the information on the fingerprint cards and then file them and things like that,” she says.

A friend from high school also went, and they made new friends there.

“We did all the touristy things: the Smithsonian, the monuments. It was an excellent experience,” she says.

She had a brief meeting with J. Edgar Hoover while she was there, got into an elevator and found him there with his “entourage.”

“That was probably the highlight of my time there,” she says. “He shook my hand and introduced himself.”

She moved to Arkansas in 1973 after marrying an Arkansas native who wanted to return home.

She wishes more people in her adopted state would spay and neuter their dogs.

“It’s just overwhelming,” Smith said. “The Pine Bluff shelter has, I think, about 80 dogs and puppies.”

Each animal should be walked daily and given fresh water and food.

“They need that enrichment to get out into the fresh air and walk around,” she says. “The kennels are just not good for them for a long period of time. They need that human connection.”

Smith has had dogs since she was a child and now has two, both rescues.

“It was very interesting and at times very heartbreaking,” she says of her volunteer gig.

She also fosters dogs and explains that almost every shelter and rescue organization in the state needs people to temporarily house and care for dogs until they can find homes.

“That only helps save more dogs,” she says.

Last Hope volunteers recently gathered in Arkansas, and Smith helped set up a command center for them. Those volunteers paid their own way and used the money they raised at home to buy items to build a shelter in Carlisle.

“They have a lot of people up there supporting them,” said Smith, who plans to continue doing whatever she can to support the animal rescue efforts here. “I always told them that until you kick me out, I’ll probably drag my old self out here and do what I can. It’s just worth it. If you have the time and a heart for animals, it’s just an amazing experience.”

If you have an interesting story about an Arkansan 70 or older, please call (501) 425-7228 or email:

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Janie Smith, 70, spends her time helping dogs like this one. “He’s someone I could have sent up north, older boy, but I loved him,” she says. “He was special and I got to visit him when I went to Boston to receive Last Hope K9 Rescue’s award as Southern Volunteer of the Year.” (Special to the Democratic Gazette)