Operation Mountain Misery: the rescue of 21 dogs running wild on a steep hillside in WV.

I grew up in a little town in Virginia. I'm used to seeing rural conditions and people who are not well off economically, but nothing compared to this. Remnants of old industrial operations that ended many decades ago. We're basically in ruins, literally in ruins. This is an operation that we have called Operation Mountain Misery, largely because this is a very depressed area economically. There are almost zero resources and the former infrastructure for a coal mine and the family that we're working with here has lived here for generations. The woman that lived here cared about animals and as animals would show up here, she tried to do her best to take care of them. As she got more elderly and less capable, it kind of got away from her a little bit. She passed on earlier this year in April and her son, who lives a few hours from here, put his life on hold to come here and care for the dogs. My name is Miles Goossens. This is where I grew up. My family has been in this particular hauler since around 1900. My mother, who was the last person living on this property, she was losing her ability to care for these animals, but there was no question that she did. She had a big heart. These are wise dogs. If they aren't wise, they're already dead out here. This is a really hard place to survive for people and for animals. If he just left here, no one would ever come up here and these dogs would starve to death. There isn't anywhere for them to go. We got to get these dogs off this mountain. Time just kind of stops here and it slowly just decays and collapses. McDowell County, West Virginia, which was once the greatest coal producing county in the United States, is now one of the poorest counties in the United States. With that, a lot of basic services that people take for granted are just simply not available here. As I found out in April when my mom passed away and suddenly I've got her house and dogs to take care of, one Sunday I posted to Facebook that, look, it's been four months. I've gotten nowhere. I'm stuck here. I can't resume my normal life. These dogs deserve compassion, but I need to find somebody to help me get them rescued. When I read his heartfelt plea, it just moved me and I wanted to be able to help this gentleman do the last thing that he needed to do for his mother. A person like Miles is a very rare human that would do right by his mother and not give up on these animals and I commend him for that. I thank him for that. I'm also thankful that we have the resources to bring to this community and help these animals because there is no future here. This is a dead end. I can't really say how many no's we got over all these months. All we needed was one yes the whole time and Animal Rescue Corps gave us that yes. So finally, we have caring, compassionate people that are going to take care of these animals, nurse them to full health, make sure that they're rehabilitated, that they get homes, and that's what I wanted all along for these animals and that's exactly what Animal Rescue Corps has done. This is our third trip here. The first time we came here, we came with the full team. We very successfully and pretty easily trapped nine dogs and seven puppies. By the time that was over with, the remaining dogs, the more fearful ones, had taken off into the woods, up the mountain, and they weren't coming back. This is now our third trip. So far, we have caught all but two. It has not been easy trapping these dogs so I'm not surprised it's taken us this many times up here. We are working to get the last two off of this mountain and bring the misery to an end. He can go back to his life and these dogs will slowly adjust. They're coming around. They're realizing that there's a lot better life to be lived off of this mountain and I can't wait to show them that. I feel like I'm able through Animal Rescue Corps to do what she didn't have the strength to do. I can recover some of my normal life in this transition period as I adjust to my mom's loss and what the new world is going to look like after her death. It means everything that Animal Rescue Corps is here, that they're helping me, and there's light at the end of this tunnel.