Love and Second Chances (LSC) is a Bay Area volunteer animal foster organization led by Melody Chen, a former independent dog rescuer. The program has seen 5237 dogs adopted since its conception in 2012, and currently has branches in various schools scattered throughout the Bay Area, including in DVHS.
The inspiration for the organization came when Chen began volunteering after coming home to the Bay Area from college
“I started volunteering as a foster home, and then I started doing more transport, helping, and driving dogs to locations for rescue groups,” Chen explained.
As time passed, Chen began directly involving herself in the process: rescuing dogs one by one, and raising money in order to get them spayed and neutered. Then she started finding them homes one at a time, eventually building rapport and a full-fledged nonprofit.
“I started a blog back then to keep track of my foster dogs, so people can see how the dogs were doing and you know where their donation is going to,” Chen recounted. “I started getting more sponsors, people following my rescue journey for the dogs that I pulled out, and people offering to foster the dogs.”
Currently, LSC does not have an overhead facility to house dogs in or perform vaccinations due to the cost restraints. As an alternative, LSC often relies on foster families to take care of the dogs. Erica and Kerwin Hoversten, a married couple, serve as one such family, having fostered for LSC for 10 years.
“Whenever we can take a dog, we keep them and treat them as if they’re our own dogs,” Hoversten explained. “Then we help with finding families to adopt them.”
A foster family is meant to get to know each of the dogs, their personalities, and their needs, helping them become more adoptable. They are also involved in the process of choosing and reviewing who takes the dogs in when they get adopted. When they first started out, the Hoverstens ended up adopting a dog named Cooper from LSC themselves.
“I saw Cooper’s picture on one of the social media platforms that Love and Second Chances use,” Hoversten explained. “He was born in Taiwan and rescued in Taiwan. And they [the rescuer] work[ed] with Melody.”
Cooper had to be flown to Southern California before he was taken to Hoversten to be fostered. At the time, he was three months old, and after fostering him for another three months, Hoversten decided to adopt him and has had him for 10 years since.
“He was born in some village dumpster, so he was a street dog, and his mom was a street dog,” Hoversten recalled. “When they can’t handle the dogs, they just dump them there. The rescuers in Taiwan, when they found the litter, took four of the puppies and the mother. We don’t know where the mother is.”
LSC often flies dogs from international locations, specifically for people on a waitlist who most wouldn’t be able to find in a shelter so easily.
“A lot of these dogs that we rescue from the International are really bad cases. They’re either from the meat farm, puppy mill, or neglect,” Chen explained. “In the end, our main goal is just to rescue and connect the dots to find that rescue dog a home.”
As part of LSC’s strict review process, foster families are the ones who conduct these reviews, inviting the family over to meet the dog and evaluating them to see if they are fit to be pet owners.
Chen emphasized how LSC is meant to be a bright, fun, and happy program, which they hoped to implement in the website design. This was because she wanted to differ a bit from the other programs.
“When they go to rescues, all you see are the sad cases when people are begging for help the whole time,” Chen said. “I wanted people to see how happy the dogs are in their homes.”
In DVHS, there is also a club dedicated to helping LSC as an organization. Through the DVHS LSC club, students can work directly with foster dogs during adoption events and provide help to others. They help care for them and observe the adoption process. Through this involvement, they become a part of LSC’s mission and learn what it takes to provide a safe and permanent home for rescued animals.
