As fireworks were going off Wednesday night, a volunteer group in Laveen was hard at work rounding up dogs spooked by the sights and sounds.
“This is our way to make a difference,” said Jerod King, a member of Animal Lovers of Laveen. The group has a network of over 6,000 members on Facebook.
“Nights like tonight and tomorrow morning — it’s all about firefighting,” King said. “We get everything ready, you know the storm’s coming, you’re batting down the hatches — getting ready for it — and, you know, it hits.”
ABC15 tagged along with King and his wife, Dani Boyle, as they responded to resident reports of lost dogs in neighborhoods.
The couple carries a microchip scanner, traps and treats to lure the animals and hopefully track down their owners. If they can’t, the dogs are housed by select members for the night and turned over to a county shelter or the Arizona Humane Society and added to the county’s lost dog mapping system.
By 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Boyle and King already recovered two dogs. Like most of the animals they find, neither were microchipped.
The group regularly posts updates on their Facebook page.
