10/13/2025
This precious girl is Athena. Athena would like to remind everyone that, if you find a wild animal who needs help, the animal needs to go to a permitted wildlife rehabilitator. Not to your friend who raised a squirrel in 2008. Not to your neighbor who always wanted to try his hand at taking care of wild animals. And not to an animal hoarder with 27 neglected dogs.
That last one? Yeah, that’s what happened to Athena. We were called about Athena a few days ago but were on a separate call when her finder left a message. When we returned the finder’s call, the finder informed us that she had taken Athena to “Vanguard Animal Rescue.” That’s… puzzling. There’s no wildlife rehabilitator with that name, though there was a dog rescue with that name that lost their nonprofit status years ago. A dog rescue that, according to their Adopt a Pet page, has 27 dogs, not a single one of whom is available for adoption.
The finder had a pants-peeing toddler tantrum when we told her that we need for her to get Athena back from Vanguard and bring her to a rehabilitator. She said she was just going to leave Athena outside to die. We didn’t have any contact information for the nonexistent rescue called Vanguard, but our friends at TWRA tracked them down and informed them that they needed to bring Athena to a rehabilitator.
They did so, but only after calling us ranting about “the state” and how they didn’t have time to drive her to us. When we told them that Athena was going to die without treatment, they said they were getting it for her. When we asked what treatment, they couldn’t answer. That’s because there was no treatment, because only a rehabilitator can acquire prescription medicine for a wild animal. They didn’t even know what species she was or what her needs were. They were keeping her in a shoebox. Without antibiotics or UV light or dietary vitamin A, she was going to die within a few days.
We know that there are people who would say that it’s wrong for us to publicize information that puts this “rescue” in a negative light, but we’re sick of seeing people killing animals because they are too narcissistic to admit that they don’t know how to care for them, or so invested in animal hoarding that they knowingly participate in the trafficking of a protected animal.
Please get animals appropriate help.
