He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog.
You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours,
faithful and true to the last beat of his heart. You owe it
to him to be worthy of such devotion.
Author Unknown
In
1979, Leo Grillo began rescuing animals with only a tiny shelter
and small runs for exercise. Since nobody wanted to adopt them, he
treated them as his own. He learned veterinary medicine from
books and did his own fecal analysis and skin scrapings for
parasites to save precious funds for necessities.
He continued rescuing animals and his small
shelter turned into a SuperSanctuary where they house over 1,500
abandoned animals. They have dozens of catteries, indoor and
outdoor enclosed and every two dogs has a huge yard and a
stuccoed straw bale house to live and play in. Leo and his
associates actually go
into the wilderness and save these poor, starving animals and
give them a home and companionship for the rest of their lives.
Today they have two fully functioning hospitals on site which
saves an enormous amount of money versus hiring outside
veterinary services.
Two Happy Sanctuary Residents
Click picture to enlarge
The animals recued by D.E.L.T.A. lives in the
sanctuary for the rest of their lives with the best food,
shelter and veterinary care possible. For those who question
this policy - please read, in Leo's own words, why D.E.L.T.A.
Rescue does not adopt out its residents:
Dear Leo:
You don’t adopt, but wouldn’t it be better for the animals
to have a home where they are only one of a few instead of one
in a thousand? SK, Demming, WA
In an ideal world, you would be right. I used to adopt.
Here’s why we’re care-for-life now ....
20 years ago I thought lack of adoptions was our problem. I
rescued animals who were dumped in the forest, and who would
have died. It took me a long time to rescue each one. Then, at a
kennel where I housed them, after much advertising and tens of
exhausting hours of telephone screening, people would come out
to adopt a dog.
I was good at finding the best people. I even wrote a report,
and later a book and video on adopting. I probably adopted over
200 dogs before I realized what was happening ....
First, every time I adopted a dog, the people who took our dog
were actually looking for a pet. They were headed for the pound,
but came to us instead. So, I adopted a dog and felt like a
hero. But another dog died at the horrible pound, in his place.
I accomplished nothing.
Then, case by case, I discovered that most of the people I
adopted to brought the dogs back anywhere from a few weeks to 8
years later! And some had them “put to sleep” instead of
returning them to us ... THAT made me nuts! Very few people kept
their dogs a whole natural
lifetime.
Further, the dogs I rescued had problems. They became frightened
of humans while they were out there ... and rightly so ...
because many people tried to injure or kill them. So, adopting
them was totally out of the question because of their fear, the
real lack of good homes ... and the false heroics of quoting
adoption numbers to donors, while wonderful, innocent beings
were being killed at the pounds anyway, because there weren’t
enough homes to go around.
In
1979, Leo Grillo began rescuing animals with only a tiny shelter
and small runs for exercise. Since nobody wanted to adopt them, he
treated them as his own. He learned veterinary medicine from
books and did his own fecal analysis and skin scrapings for
parasites to save precious funds for necessities. 
