DOG LADY

A narrative about the marginalized subculture of impoverished people and the animals they love. Connecting the struggles of animals and people in poverty, it asks: who deserves the love of a pet? DOG LADY is told through the story of Lori Weise, an important figure in the animal rescue movement and the fight for social and economic justice, and founder of Downtown Dog Rescue in Los Angeles. DOG LADY is EVICTED meets THE LOST DOGS for readers of NOMADLAND, MAID and EDUCATED.

As we culturally turn our attention to the overlooked and the forgotten in our society, books such as NOMADLAND, EVICTED, MAID, and EDUCATED have garnered critical attention. They've changed the way we see people. DOG LADY: The Crusade for America's Forgotten Pets and People by Carol Mithers presents another unexplored, marginalized subculture: impoverished people and the animals they love. This compelling narrative introduces Lori Weise, an important figure in the rescue movement and the fight for social and economic justice. It asks us to consider: who deserves the love of a pet? In the homeless encampments of LA's Skid Row and LA's grittiest neighborhoods, Lori Weise is known as Dog Lady. On the outside, they call her a pioneer, a crusader, fearless... crazy. She would go places no one else would dare go, befriending the homeless and their pets, risking her life to tend to needy souls, both human and canine. Long before anyone else, Lori grasped that animal and human suffering were inextricably connected, and that one could not be addressed without the other. For over two decades, Lori Weise's pioneering work changed her from a young woman broken by her childhood to an unsung hero in animal rescue. Lori's vision offered a roadmap to a wider, more inclusive and more successful pet protection movement. Indeed, Lori created a new kind of rescue narrative addressing poverty, empowering pet owners and providing resources to reduce the number of pets coming into shelters. Through the Downtown Dog Rescue, which Lori founded in 1996, and her South LA Shelter Intervention Program, Lori created an enduring safety net for these dogs and their humans while building a successful national model for keeping pets in homes. Lori's work has been featured in a Harvard Business Review article: "Are you solving the right problems?" Keeping dogs out of shelters and people off the street is part of the same fight - it's a poverty problem. DOG LADY unites the stories of animal welfare and social justice, moving between Lori's story and the larger context of rescue: from the American dog's 20th century transition from property to family; to the "No Kill" movement changing long-standing policies that allowed shelters to kill the animals they took in; and the rescue movement's emphasis on placing downtrodden animals in more middle class homes. Through compelling storytelling and investigative reporting, Mithers will explore the phenomenon of armchair rescuers and the biases existing within the movement, from the "whiteness" of animal welfare as a whole, to the anti-human bias against the poor and people of color. Exploring the question of who does/doesn't deserve an animal?, DOG LADY tracks the evolution of rescue including its downside, "rescue hoarding," and the reality of "redemption porn." Journalist Carol Mithers is uniquely positioned to reach DOG LADY's multiple audiences. She has written about Los Angeles, women's issues and extraordinary women for over 30 years, and is known as a great story-teller, with the ability to explore complex issues within a compelling narrative. She is the author of three books including the New York Times bestseller MIGHTY BE OUR POWERS: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War (Beast Books, 2011), with 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee. MIGHTY was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and has been reprinted in 14 languages. Carol's hundreds of newspapers and magazine articles have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, O the Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles, MORE, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, Parenting, The Bark, The Nation, California, Buzz, Salon, the Daily Beast and more. Carol began to research the pet rescue movement in 2013; in July, 2015, Los Angeles Magazine ran her story "When is a Rescuer a Hoarder?" Her 2018 Capital & Main story on pet-related eviction won a Los Angeles Press Club Award, and her 2019 DAME piece, "The Paradox of 'No-Kill' Animal Welfare Policies," was one of the online magazine's most read that year. She has written a series of rescue movement and dog-related op-eds for The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and was a guest on NPR's KQUED forum, discussing a plan to include No Kill effort funding in the California state budget. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has raised three demanding rescue dogs.