THOMPSON FALLS — With over 1,100 adoptions a year, the Thompson River Animal Care Shelter (TRACS) has seen a lot of dog transformations, and now, a recent rescue could win them $10,000.
TRACS entered one of their recent rescues, a poodle named Dolly, into the Dirty Dog Contest. The national competition asks people to vote on the best transformation for a rescue dog.
Dolly came to TRACS from Texas with two of her siblings. When she arrived her hair was matted, and even the shelter workers found it hard to pet her.
After grooming, TRACS employee, Lynette Thorpe, says Dolly was like a new puppy.
"They got in for grooming and all of a sudden we were like, these are just precious, precious dogs,” she says. “You wouldn't have known it when you first saw them."
Dolly was quickly adopted by a young family in Helena, and Thorpe decided to share the poodle’s transformation through the Dirty Dog Contest.
The national competition displays before and after pictures of rescue dogs from across the country and then asks the public to vote for which transformation is the best.
The dogs with the most votes can win money for their shelter; first prize wins $10,000.
Although Thorpe doesn’t expect Dolly to win, she hopes the transformation will show what her small town shelter can do.
“What we have been doing over the years is, is helping municipal shelters that are overrun, overflowing, you know, their inflow is so much more than their outflow as, as far as adoptions, so we're trying to help them balance that equation a little bit,” she says. “It's pretty dire out there, and we're literally just a little shelter trying to do what we can as far as the dogs in the world.”
You can see the winners of the Dirty Dog contest on June 10 here.
