A Sanctuary for Senior Dogs, and Everyone Else, Too
In a Buffalo suburb, a former professional musician is building a community center centered on elder pups.
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The Scoop New York is a newsletter dedicated to companion animals and the New Yorkers who care for them, from Buffalo to Brooklyn. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were nonetheless exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s December 20, 2024. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, we’re in Akron, just east of Buffalo, now home to one of New York’s few sanctuaries for senior dogs.
White Whiskers Senior Dog Sanctuary was founded by Polla Milligan, a former SPCA staffer and professional musician who back in the day played The Troubadour and opened for Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
“I had seen so many old dogs either put down before their time or brought to the shelter where they don't do anything because nobody wants old dogs,” said Milligan, who was development director at Niagara SPCA for four years before retiring in 2019. “Very sad.”
“So the next day [after retiring] I said, ‘Okay, I'm going to open a dog sanctuary,’” Milligan said. “‘I don't know how, but I will.’ And I started writing the stuff for the 501(c)(3) charity designation, which we got at Christmas time. Then COVID hit.
“But we still prevailed.”
The pandemic was far from the only obstacle. The converted VFW hall that houses White Whiskers is its second location, after NIMBYs (Note: “NIMBYs” is my word, not Milligan’s. — BA) in a different Buffalo suburb forced the org to abandon the house that was its first choice.
“We sold it to our contractor,” Milligan told me, outside the then-still under renovation VFW post, in October. “He'd been working on it for so long, he fell in love with it. So we didn't lose any money.”
Indeed, that initial roadblock ended up a blessing. Since siting the sanctuary in Akron, said Milligan, “The town has been nothing but welcoming.”
Milligan held contests for Facebook followers, who came up with the sanctuary’s name and logo. In-kind donations poured in from local contractors and other businesses, including a car wash that contributed equipment for the grooming station.
“It's very grass rootsy,” Milligan said. “Like the lady who sends me two $1 bills every other month, wrapped in Kleenex. I mean, that's who built us. It’s better to get 10,000 $1 bills than one $10,000 check.”
In return for Akron’s generosity, White Whiskers has much in store.
The building, though not particularly large, has been cleverly and carefully designed to accommodate every perceived need for the 25 canine dwellers permitted on site, from the volunteer entrance — with a sally port to keep dogs safely inside — and aforementioned grooming area to the mini-clinic and window sill platforms for dogs to sun themselves. There’s a spacious, fenced yard out the back door, complete with an awning for shade, where dogs will be free to roam.
Equally important, for what Milligan is looking to achieve with the sanctuary, are its amenities for bipeds.
Warm and homey interior spaces will host grieving sessions for people who have lost pets, meet-ups for veterans with service dogs (kept separate from White Whiskers residents to avoid potential conflicts), a children’s reading program (with library), even company retreats.
Of the grieving sessions, said Milligan: “I'm a counselor. And I think it's an area that isn’t paid a lot of attention to — particularly people who are alone and their dog is kind of their kid. I understand this because all my kids have four legs, and I adopt only old sickly dogs, which is why I have 32 boxes of ashes. But even so, even though there's a lot of them and I don't get a lot of time with them, every time one goes I grieve deeply.
“And I can't imagine if that's your only pet, how that feels. So everybody gets a box of Kleenex and a dog on their way to our meeting room, and we just talk and cry and do whatever you need to do.”
With its bright red minivan with huge puppy-face graphics on either side, White Whiskers will cart senior canines to visits at area senior centers. There will be outreach to young folk as well.
“We wanna help the kids,” said Milligan, “who have like football teams and marching bands and all of that. They can come here and do a fundraiser, bring out a grill. We can do a little basket raffle.”
There’s an apartment, where Milligan will live full-time, with a guest room for when she “needs backup,” such as periods of inclement weather.
A most impressive feature is the new, fully equipped kitchen, for volunteer use. (“I have Julia Child's kitchen and I don't cook,” Milligan told me.)
Depending on physical condition and temperament, dogs at White Whiskers may or may not be offered for adoption.
“When they are available, it will be a longer than usual process,” reads a recent Facebook post. “You will need to visit your dog of choice here a number of times, in order to see if it's truly a good fit. This will be followed by a day out together, and then an overnight.”
Visits to White Whiskers are appointment-only. Adoption fees range from $175 to $250, depending on each dog's health. Some dogs are currently on-site, and Milligan plans to begin adoptions after the first of the year.
Before I headed off, Milligan told me a story that neatly encapsulates the White Whiskers vibe. She described trying to connect with school kids singled out for behavior issues, and getting blank faces in return. Then she introduced them to a dog named Bear.
“They were all bored out of their minds,” said Milligan. “And then I let Bear off the leash and he went around to each kid and introduced himself, and they were all enthralled. Then he went and lay down in the middle of the room, and pretty soon every one of those kids was also lying down.
“It's amazing. Dogs are magic.”
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
Lawmakers in Rochester just headed off a lot of future eviction-related pet surrenders.
Why is NYC ACC spending taxpayer money propagandizing to people in Texas and Hawaii? City electeds, per usual, aren’t talking.
After state legislators “overwhelmingly” passed it, Governor Hochul vetoed a bill that would have opened all state parks to leashed dogs.
Current Manhattan borough president and former NYC Council member Mark Levine, who when council health committee chair kept mum as then-mayor Bill de Blasio rammed through the disastrous current ACC contract, is officially and unashamedly running for city comptroller.
Though they had two years to phase out animal sales, at least one “ethical” pet store owner planned to dump unsold inventory at “the shelter,” one last-minute customer told the Post.
Godspeed, Bronco.
Grab your hankies and read to the end.
Finally, WPIX crossed the Hudson for the perfect late-December thank-god-for-charitable-individuals-because-the-state-is-MIA kicker.
This week on The Scoop New York
NYC ACC Killed 391 Cats and 451 Dogs in Q3 of 2024
The city kill pound exterminated 2,245 cats and dogs through the first nine months of the year.
This week in NYC ACC horrors
Adoptables
For the third weekend in a row, NYC ACC will hold just one mobile adoption event, this time in Queens.
Roxy, 10, who lost her home and her guardian after being adopted from the Town of Hempstead Animal Shelter in 2017, is again stuck in a kennel.
Hunter, a Shih-Tzu mix age 9-10, escaped from NYC ACC with his life and now awaits adoption at Waggytail Rescue.
Find a New York adoptable near you on Petfinder.
Food recalls
The FDA issued no new pet food recalls this week. Check here for info on earlier recalls.