RESCUE ME

MARINA TARASHEVSKA IS A LOCALLY FAMOUS, SOMETIMES CONTROVERSIAL, CANINE CRUSADER.

Behind a front door affixed “Beware of Dog” sign, she holds back an anxious Chihuahua in a pink-flower choker, Faith Hill. Bella, a small beige and white mutt, hides behind her rescuer’s legs, barking in quick bursts. Miriam, a stocky older hound with a starched paw-patterned bandana knotted around her neck, keeps her distance, hesitant to inject herself into the entryway chaos. Tarashevska holds up a bowl containing bite-sized treats.

“You give it to them,” she says. The idea is that they will warm up to us strangers when we feed them, and it works. There are more — two black Labrador mixes lounge side by side in a sunroom.

“That’s Coco and Chanel, and we think they are related. They are inseparable,” she explains.

Tarashevska mothers as many fosters at a time as humanly possible, often taking in litters of parentless puppies in addition to the others. She participates in the Feral Friends trap, neuter, release program, too, so a cat colony resides in her yard.

Tarashevska spends days in the woods along southeast Dallas’ Dowdy Ferry Road, a known dumping ground for unwanted, sick, lame or dead dogs.

She encounters several carcasses — sometimes only pieces — for every live dog. She embraces each saved life. But the work can mess up a person’s mind.

her; other times they curse her. One woman tried to run her down with a car.

Growing up in a destitute Ukrainian neighborhood, Tarashevska watched her grandmother drown whole litters of kittens.

“I hated her for it; I hated it at the time, but now I know she was showing mercy, doing what had to be done,” she says, because there were no resources to keep them alive. The experience lit a fire inside her.

After moving to Dallas she started her rescuing and activism independently because, she says, “I wanted to be able to speak my mind,” and she did not want to be beholden to an organization.

She is known to rage on social media about the incompetency of Dallas Animal Services (our city’s shelter once accidentally killed three dogs that she was scheduled to pick up, a case well-documented by Dallas media), and she has left dead dogs at the shelter’s front doors as a statement of protest against ignoring Southern Dallas’ dog dumping problem. (For the record, she also has acknowledged when they get it right.)

However when the offers of aid and donations grew to the thousands, she decided to form the nonprofit Dallas DogRRR (Rescue, Rehab, Reform).

Group members and supporters take in fosters, raise money for food and medical expenses and, following Tarashevska’s lead, fight like hell for neglected animals.

They have adopted Tarashevska’s ferocity and her no-dog-left-behind attitude.

“I wish there was a switch I could turn off in my head to stop the flashbacks of the awful horrifying things I saw,” she says following a particularly grueling day. “How am I supposed to be normal and happy and interested in anything? I know I won't be able to put any food in my mouth today, I won't be able to sleep, my stupid brain won't stop running through ‘what ifs’ and ‘whys.’ ”

Each live animal rescue is different.

“Some of the dogs we find are so desperate to be loved that they jump into one of our cars and do not look back. Others are hesitant to trust and are gradually won over by our regular feeding.”

Some days she approaches neglectful owners who have dogs tied up in yards with no food or water and offers to relieve them of responsibility.

At times people have surrendered their animals to

When an abused pup recently needed a midnight rescue and a $3,000 surgery, one Facebook follower suggested letting the dog “go” and using funds raised “to help 10 other dogs.”

The commenter was met with swift, harsh criticism from the group.

Sarah Cooper, who handles adoption applications for DogRRR, says the thought makes her want to cry. “That is not how we do things,” she says. “Every life deserves a shot. There are no lost causes.”

Cooper says that’s what makes Dallas DogRRR different from many other dog rescues. “They can pull the pure breeds or healthy puppies,” she explains, but DogRRR pulls dogs off the streets, from abusive homes and the ones in shelters that face certain death. “We pick up whatever. Marina doesn’t care. It all started with her, and it grew so big in a couple years and now we can save so many dogs it is mind blowing.”

BRUTALIZED BY A SPEEDING CAR AND LEFT TO DIE IN THE DARK, SPIRIT IS NOW A SHINING LIGHT

The first public photos of Spirit came early last spring with a “graphic content” warning — blood matted the lanky Labrador’s blonde fur, one outstretched paw, mangled; his face and ear, sliced and shredded; his deep-set, dark eyes, downturned.

A car struck the dog, leaving him to die alone in a roadside ditch. But a passerby sent word that reached the now-established DogRRR group, whose members swooped in to save the ani- mal, long shot though he was.

Then on an August afternoon, the reason Tarashevska and her crew do this comes at you as clear as the Texas sky — the reason bounds toward the front gate of a townhome on three legs, nuzzling its golden nose into your belly and hugging you, placing one large paw on your shoulder and licking your face.

“He is excited to see you,” says Cooper, who has been fostering Spirit since he left his first major surgery last spring.

A GoFundMe page raised some $16,000 to treat Spirit’s massive injuries, which required three surgeries including an eventual amputation of one leg. His body also was riddled with heartworms. Now that the treatment is almost complete, Spirit is technically almost ready for adoption.

But it is clear that Cooper and Spirit are hopelessly attached. “I don’t have a husband. This dog is like the husband,” says Cooper, a German native who still speaks with an accent. She’s talking about their sleeping arrangements — the young woman, who is studying to become a nurse, shares a queen-sized bed with Spirit, his good arm draped across her no doubt, as well as her own dog, Chambers, a gentle medium-sized sweetheart of unknown breed. There is a third, Glory, another foster and hit-and-run victim. The Joker-style scar on the right side of Glory’s face and his maimed foot only add to his certain cool-guy factor, “though Spirit still kicks his ass in a race,” Cooper says laughing.

Spirit might end up a “foster fail,” a lighthearted term used to describe a foster parent that winds up permanently keeping the dog.

The goal is to find good permanent homes for all foster dogs, but it is still bittersweet when they are adopted, Cooper admits. She never wants to say goodbye to Glory or Spirit, as she did not want to let go of the others she’s adopted out, but that is part of the hardcore sacrifices made by volunteers of her ilk.

“Yes, I cry like a baby when they leave.”