Cover Photo: Dixie and Latigo are a bonded pair of senior sisters who have been with CSBR for two years! They are the best with humans and need a six-foot fenced yard.
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Brian and Nicole McLain took over management of CSBR in 2019. The all-volunteer, foster rescue was initially established by Nina Washington in 1997 and the reins passed over to Laura Jesik in 2009, with couple of other presidents in between. Both Washington and Jesik are both still volunteers. Washington started CSBR because she always wanted a Saint Bernard, but there was no dedicated rescue group for them, even though the shelters were full of Saints and Saint mixes. Unfortunately, at the time, the shelters would only put dogs on a three- to four-day hold before euthanizing them to make room for other incoming dogs and Washington wanted something better for the breed she loved so much. Dark Dog Posse had a chance to chat with Nicole about the rescue and how she ended up as President of the organization and her husband became Foster and Transport Coordinator and Official Photographer.
What prompted you to take over CSBR?
My husband and I started volunteering in 2016. We had gotten a Saint Bernard from a family friend who got a puppy and couldn’t take care of him anymore. Then we adopted a Great Dane to keep the puppy company. We wanted to do more, but two dogs was the limit, it was all we could handle. So, we started volunteering. We would show up at basically whatever event CSBR needed help with. We joined the Board in 2017 and now we run the rescue. At one point, it was mostly just St. Bernards, but I’ve got a soft spot for all dogs. So, we also take in what I call our honorary Saints and mixes. If they look like a St. Bernard, I’ll probably take them, let’s be honest.
Were Nina and Laura just getting to the point where it was too much work for them?
Yes, and a lot of compassion fatigue, honestly. There’s so much need and it really just becomes overwhelming to be the one who has to see all the pictures of those dogs and read their stories from owner-surrenders and shelters, and things like that. It becomes a lot. Because you can’t save them all. You save who you can and you do what you can, and it’s a lot. So, I think a lot of it is compassion fatigue. Sometimes you need to just step away.
Many people might not fully understand how difficult it is to run a rescue.
We’re really fortunate. When I first took over, we would get these owner-surrenders and people would tell me, “If you don’t take them, they’re going to have to be put down and you’re killing them.” That doesn’t impact me as much anymore because I’m more like, “This dog is not my responsibility. You’re the one that is making these decisions, not me.”
We’re fortunate that most of the shelters we work with are really fantastic and will do everything they can for the animals. Even the out-of-state shelters. We take a lot from New Mexico, Texas, we work with a group in Juarez, Mexico called Mutt Love. They take street dogs out of Juarez, get them vetted and everything they need to cross the border into the U.S., and then we’ll bring them up from there. One of the things I really love about the Mexico dogs is that they are super grateful. They are just the sweetest things. It’s amazing.
Your tagline, “Saving the world 150 pounds at a time.” Did that come with the original rescue or did you come up with that?
That came with the original rescue. It was the original tagline and then it changed to something else, and when I took it over—and I don’t even remember what the other one was—but when we took over, I was looking through all the paperwork and I was like, “That’s much better than what we’re using,” so, I changed it back. It’s kind of all-encompassing. We can’t save the world, but we can save part of it.
You grew up around big dogs and have always been in love with them, right?
I grew up with Great Pyrenees, and my aunt also raised Saint Bernards, so yes, I grew up around a lot of big dogs.
But Brian was a little less enthusiastic at the beginning?
Brian had a bad experience with a dog when he was young, but when we moved into our first house, we were like, “Okay, we’re going to get a dog.” I wanted a Great Pyrenees and Brian wanted a Chihuahua. So, we got a St. Bernard. That dog—he actually passed last September—but that dog was absolutely in love with Brian. When we first met the dog, Brian was like, “I don’t know about this.” But the dog was like, “Nope, you’re my person and I love you.” That totally won Brian over. That really changed everything for Brian, and now I don’t think he could ever have a small dog.
Your website URL is cosaintrescue.org, but you also have one that redirects from “gotdrool.org.” Did you come up with that?
I inherited that. CSBR has had that URL for about 10 years. I think it was one of those ones that everybody wanted and we just happened to catch it when the registration expired. So, it was one of those fortuitous moments when you’re like, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if…oh, it’s available.” So, that’s been with the rescue for about 10 years.
Are there any saints that don’t drool?
There are Saints that definitely drool a lot. But as far as not drooling at all, I’ve never met one. People always tell me they want the Saints with the smooshed face and the big droopy lips and all that, and I always tell them, the droopier that face is, the more they’re going to drool. You almost have to go for one of the mixes if you don’t want a lot of drool. But, we’ve had a couple, surprisingly, a little over a year ago we had a dog named Jingle come in and I thought she was going to be a big drooler, but she was not at all. There was definitely some drool, but it wasn’t nearly as excessive as I thought it would be.
So, you just get used to it?
Yeah, exactly. You learn to wipe down the walls and I clean my ceiling once a month because I’ll be laying on the couch and I’m like, “Oh, there’s a bunch of drool from when one of the dogs shook their head. I should probably get up there and clean that.” Danes, too. I had a Dane and I’m surprised at how much Danes drool and shed. She was the worst shedder. Even more than the saints were. It was constant, just everywhere. I was like, “You don’t even have that much hair. How is this possible?” I tried one of the automatic vacuums and that lasted about a day before the dogs were like, “This looks like a fun thing to play with,” then they would jump on it and it was just smashed.
In addition to taking donations, it says on your website that people can contribute by buying coffee. Is that right?
Yes. We work with a company called the Saint Bernard Coffee Company. They actually have multiple breed brands. I think they even have a mutt one. But what they do is they have, whatever the brand is, like Saint Bernard Coffee Company, they donate to St. Bernard Rescues across the country. So, we get a quarterly donation from them. They are always doing fun stuff too. They did the 12 days of Christmas and for 12 at Christmas they had random gift baskets and stuff like that they people could buy, and if you bought one, you’d pick a rescue and they would send the rescue a basket as well. Just in January they finished the Foster Fuel promotion, where for every bag of coffee that was sold, you could pick a rescue to send coffee to, and the rescue gives it to fosters. So, they’re really fantastic. And I’ll be honest, when they first approached us, I was like “Are you for real? This feels weird.” But it is a thing. They are really fantastic.
And you also have sponsors.
Yes. We work with different companies to sponsor various events. So, we had a liquor company that sponsored a cornhole tournament that we did a couple of years ago. We’ve had an HVAC company that sponsored one of our auctions. If a company wants to sponsor us, we will work with them to figure out the best way to do it. We also have our recommendations on our website, which is not something that someone can buy their way onto. That is only from companies that we’ve worked with and that we love. So, everybody on there is someone we have used and aligns with us. Like Huge Hounds is a local Colorado company and they have great stuff. If you need clothes that fit big dogs, they’re the place to go.
It sounds like you do a lot of events and fundraisers.
We try. We’re trying to do an event on the 15th with Colorado Tap House, which is a local brewery. We do the Denver St. Patrick’s Day Parade every year. We’ve won best animal float for the last 12 years in a row. We’ve got a big float trailer, and we decorate it with all kinds of St. Patrick’s Day stuff, then we let our followers sign up to be on the float and bring their dog. It’s always so much fun, especially when people bring their kids because kids being on the other side of a parade are like, “This is amazing,” and it’s just so much fun to watch. We’ve done that for the last 15 years.
You also work in addition to running the rescue. That’s got to take up a lot of your time.
It does. I work a full-time job, so there’s a lot of evenings and weekends that we do. But you have to make sure it doesn’t take over your life. Even though it kind of does. I say this with six dogs in my house. But it’s all volunteer, so I do what I can in my spare time. And that’s what makes volunteers so important.
Is there anything that set you apart from other rescues besides your concentration on Saint Bernards?
I think one of the things that I love about this rescue when we first started working with them, was that we had adopted a dog from a different rescue shortly before we started volunteering with CSBR, and that experience was very much like, “Oh, you like this dog? Here you go. Have fun.” One of the things that we do is we have a very thorough application process. We do home visits, we meet all the family, we check references, we talk to your vet. If you’re renting, we talk to your landlord, we verify property records so that people can’t just state they own. Our goal is the right dog in the right house. We’ve had several people come in who are enamored with, say, Sasha. She is one of our dogs and she’s been with us for quite a bit. And I think she’s going to be adopted in the next couple of weeks because a family that applied for her is actually going to be a really good fit for her. I don’t want dogs to come back. We’ll always take back dogs that are adopted from us for any reason, but I don’t want that reason to be because I did not put the right dog in that house. So, we spend a lot of time and energy matching up dogs with adopters so that it’s the most perfect match that can be.
And that’s better for the dogs in the long run, too.
It’s better for the dogs in the long run. It’s better for the people. People come back to us multiple times to adopt. We have one family that wanted to adopt one dog from us, and then they had such a good experience with the first one that they came back within a month to adopt a second one. Then six months later they were back for a third. Then they were like, “Okay, we’re just going to foster the fourth one.” Even when we’re fostering, we want to make sure it’s a good fit. Brian and I are equipped to handle behavioral dogs. We’ve got the know-how, we’ve got the experience to keep them separate and work with them together slowly, but even with fosters, I want to make sure a foster dog is a good fit in a foster family as well, so that we’re setting everyone up for success. There’s nothing worse, I don’t think, than a foster having a bad experience with a rescue. So, I don’t put dogs in a home with children if I don’t know the dog’s kid history. I don’t want to find out if a dog isn’t kid-friendly with someone else’s child. Cats, same thing. I don’t want to put a dog with prey drive in a house with somebody that has cats. So, I think that’s what sets us apart—the amount of effort that we put into making sure that everything is a good fit.
Is there anything people who are not volunteering already or fostering for you, is there other things people can do to help you out? I’m sure contributions are always welcome.
Donations are always welcome. If you go to our website, we have a couple of donation options there. We also have wish lists on Amazon and Chewy if they want to send us stuff. And if they follow us on social media, our social media tags on every platform are #cosaintrescue. If they follow us and share a post, you never know what can happen. That’s literally how we found the Saint Bernard Rescue when Brian and I first started volunteering because somebody we knew shared one of their posts, and it was like, “Oh, we didn’t know that was a thing.” So, we started following them and volunteering. If you share a post, you never know if that’s going to reach somebody who is the perfect fit for one of our dogs or something like that.
Right place at the right time.
Exactly.