MODERN FREEDOM TRAIN SAVES ANIMALS!

By Dick Siegel
special to The Stacey Prussman Show

ANDERSON, S.C. –A long plaintive howl of despair can be heard across America’s heartland as thousands of pets are abused, abandoned and ultimately sentenced to death daily.

Enter Rhonda Sims, health care worker by day and animal rescuer by night. Rhonda receives more than 75 e-mails a day asking for assistance from the growing online rescue community. It is then that this South Carolina native, mother of two grown children and owner of five cats and two dogs swings into action!

"My husband, Larry, and I own an adult healthcare center where I work during the day," explains Rhonda. "The rest of my life is spent behind the computer trying to find placement for shelter animals before their euthanasia date. Here in the South, the euthanasia rate is horrendous because we do not have the spay/neuter ordinances like many northern states do.

"For instance, the shelter in my town has to euthanize over two hundred animals per week right now. I stress ‘having’ because they are a wonderful group of people who run the shelter – and believe me – they are absolutely heartbroken having to do this but they simply don’t have the room to care and vet the fifty to a hundred that come through their doors each day."

"It isn’t just the old and ‘vicious’-- it’s litters of puppies, pregnant mothers and displaced dogs," Sylence Campbell, who runs Room for One More, a no-kill rescue shelter in New Jersey, elaborated. "Many shelters still use the archaic, savage method of the gas chamber to execute these animals for the simple crime of being alive."

ike many others, Rhonda Sims first became ‘entrenched’ in animal rescue after the loss of her beloved cocker spaniel, Charlie.

"I was trying to find a way to fight the pain of losing him, so I developed a relationship with the local shelter director where I adopted Charlie ten years earlier. At first, I started pulling animals from there and finding rescue shelters to take them. I felt by doing this, I was saving Charlie all over again and that wherever he was now, I was making him proud," Rhonda admitted.

Rhonda then became involved in animal rescue in varying capacities – from volunteering locally, or donating money to various animal charities. For the past year, she’s been doing her own pulls from shelters and then organizing transports to no-kill rescue shelters, foster homes and vets to help these animals find loving new owners

Using online social networking, various Myspace, Yahoo, Care Too groups and personal contacts built up over the years, Rhonda began to organize a full scale team of volunteers to help save these pets and transport them to safety.

Rhonda calls her efforts a freedom train.

"Freedom Train is more than a catchy name because it reflects the symbolic nature of each transport -- freedom from pain, neglect, loneliness, imprisonment and often abuse. I don’t really consider my rescues/transports a true organization because that would mean the people involved are involved with me solely. These blessed people have a desire that goes far beyond me. These folks volunteer their own time and resources to help save hundreds of animals from death and place them in new homes."

Not all animals are to be found in the shelters. Some can be found wandering on the roadside, emaciated to the point of starvation. Some are practically next door as was Rosie, a miniature pincher, who was imprisoned in a rabbit hutch by a backyard breeder. Rhonda and her husband quickly bought the pup, and then alerted the online rescue community.

"Within no time, I had Rosie transported north and placed in foster care in Baltimore," Rhonda said. "After the dog was positioned on several websites, we thoroughly investigated about a dozen adoption inquiries before Rosie was placed in a good home.

"Both new parents and furkid are doing just fine and have never been happier." watch Rosie's Video.

With the dog in safe hands, the freedom train can once again rest easy – that is, until the next e-mail arrives pleading, "Help me Rhonda...."