Paws Up on life
By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian

Three dogs stick their noses through a gate on the front porch of the Paws Up Safe Home in Seeley Lake earlier this week. PUSH, a sort of homemade Humane Society, was, as of Monday, home to 16 dogs, seven of which are up for adoption. Photo by JOSH PARKER/Missoulian

Seeley Lake women have dedicated themselves to giving animals in need a better existence

SEELEY LAKE - Meet Ted, aka No. 215.

Ted is 14 years old, and his life has been turned inside out. He's confused, befuddled, probably more than a little scared. He's been living quietly with an older woman in Condon for several years, but she died last week, leaving Ted homeless.

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Until Monday, that is. Ted - at first glance, Renee Stowe guesses him to be a Bichon Frise-poodle cross - has been brought to Paws Up Safe Home, a sort of homemade Humane Society at Seeley Lake.

Except at Paws Up, he does not face a possible death sentence if nobody wants him. Stowe and her Paws Up partner, Seeley Realtor Elinor Williamson, will take care of Ted for as long as it takes to find him a good home.

"He needs a quiet home," Stowe decides as Ted waddles around in circles with a puzzled look on his face. He's come with his own fluffy bed, a sack full of toys and a container full of food.

But on the other side of a fence, behind the front door, out on a porch, 15 more dogs can't wait to check out this new arrival at Paws Up. Big dogs. Little ones. Old ones. Young ones. Black, red, yellow, brown, white - every color under the canine rainbow - are excitedly eyeing the little white dog.

Like we said, Ted's life is about to be turned inside out. Stowe carries Ted into her house and puts him in a portable kennel, where he's safe from the other dogs, but they can sniff around him and start to get used to him.

It's up in the air whether Ted will get used to them.

Even if he does, he's still got one more animal to deal with: Fairbanks.

The man found the little kitten, no more than six inches long, laying in a ditch, frozen stiff. He couldn't bear to leave it there, so he stuffed it in a pocket and took it home to bury it.

When he got home, his pocket meowed.

Not knowing what else to do - he lived in a rental that didn't allow pets - the man took the cold, scrawny little kitten to Paws Up, where Stowe nursed him back to health. Now, the tiny kitten is a huge, long-haired white cat - Fairbanks, by name, also known as "the ghost" - who leaps from counter to table to chair and back again, ignoring a half-dozen dogs below.

Maggie, an older black lab, has had enough of Fairbanks. She takes after the cat, barking and growling. Fairbanks swings around and gives Maggie a "you want a piece of this?" glare. The lab pulls up, snarling, but goes no closer. The cat doesn't retreat.

"He has no fear of dogs," Stowe says of Fairbanks. "Sometimes I think as pretty as he is, is as stupid as he is."

Stowe, ironically, is allergic to cats, but couldn't part with Fairbanks, the cat who came back from the dead.

"I take an antihistamine," she says. "Unfortunately, a bunch of cats and there isn't enough antihistamine in the world."

But Paws Up doesn't turn its back on felines. Outside of Fairbanks, they're just relegated to the "cattery" in the basement, leaving the dogs with the run of the house.

Since Paws Up opened its doors less than four years ago, some 80 cats have been taken in, and 215 dogs. (This doesn't count the cats and dogs that board at Paws Up; on Monday, a little less than half the dogs there were strays or pets "relinquished" by their owners). Some of the Paws Up dogs have been here more than once, but they aren't counted again. Once they get a number, they keep it for life. Stowe and Williamson take pictures, record data, make posters to put up around town, try to reunite a lost animal with its old family, or unite the animal and a new family if it was unwanted.

Dog No. 1 is still here, nearly four years later. Zeke, a Golden Retriever, was the first dog Stowe gave shelter to and the first one she adopted out.

To herself.

Williamson had taken in Zeke, a stray, but hadn't been able to find him a home.

"I'd been rescuing dogs for a few years before I met Renee," says Williamson, who moved to Seeley 20 years ago from the Billings area. "But trying to do real estate too, was just too much."

Stowe came in 1997, from Spanaway, Wash., a Tacoma suburb, after retiring from retail management.

"I told Elinor if she ever had trouble finding a place to keep a dog until she could place it, she could call me," Stowe says.

"I kind of suckered her into it," Williamson admits. She asked Stowe if she would take in Zeke in 1998.

"I picked up the dog and fell in love with him," Stowe says. "A few days later I got asked to baby sit another dog, and next thing I knew I had 17,000 dogs."

Stowe's log home in the middle of a Seeley Lake neighborhood wasn't equipped to handle dogs, but the town has pitched in with donations of money, labor and material so that local strays and unwanted pets will have a place to go. Now the back half of Stowe's two city lots are fenced. Inside the main fence are three more areas that are fenced off. One protects a couple of trees they're trying to grow to give the dogs shaded areas - it's also used to give smaller dogs like Ted a place to play outdoors without interference from the larger ones. Another, on one side of the house, is a "poop area." A third area houses the half dozen or so kennels, which are all covered by permanent tents that provide shade in the summer and protection from rain and snow the rest of the year. Plastic pipes crisscross the ground here, housing wiring to heat water dishes in the winter.

Ramps run up both sides of the house, giving dogs access to the yard and front and side doors. The only place the dogs can't get to is a tiny yard of grass out front that Stowe calls her own.

All dogs and cats brought to Paws Up who don't have names get one from Stowe. A dog that came in on April 15 is now "Refund." The cats, for reasons she doesn't quite understand, are all named after cities and towns.

"I guess maybe I ran out of cat names," Stowe says.

There's Fairbanks, the one that arrived thawed out and Stowe adopted. Then, there was Boston, which arrived perfectly warm and was adopted by Williamson, who promptly tried to freeze her.

Well, not on purpose.

"I have a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer," Williamson says, "and I was making a rhubarb pie. Well, I had the freezer open, getting something off the top shelf, and I had some salmon frozen on the bottom shelf. Now, this cat - you can't open a drawer or cupboard without her jumping in - and the cat just walked in on the bottom shelf. I never even noticed, and shut the door. Thank God I heard this 'Mrrrrr' and started looking around."

There is much work to be done at Paws Up, and Williamson, who started rescuing pets years ago, now says all the credit goes to Stowe, who has literally let her house go to the dogs.

"Renee deserves all the credit," she says.

But Stowe says the community has made it possible; notes that the local 4-H Club shows up year-round to help brush and groom the dogs, scoop up poop, clean water bowls, sweep up kennels, play with the animals. Come summertime, wading pools will appear in the yard so the dogs can cool off.

At 9 o'clock every night, year-round, virtually every dog at Paws Up heads inside Stowe's home - only big unneutered males stay outside - and each gets their own pillow to sleep on. During the summer of 2000, that meant 27 dogs in her kitchen, dining room and living room. It was the bad forest fire season, and worried landowners had brought their pets to Paws Up for safekeeping.

It is into this world that nervous little Ted has arrived. If all goes well - and it seems that it often does at Paws Up - the day will come when Stowe and Williamson will find a new home for Ted.

And, to tell the truth, he may not want to leave.