breaking news:
Tamira released four books in the past year: It Went to the Dogs: How Michael Vick's Dogfighting Compound Became a Haven for Rescue Pups, Squirmy Hermie's Heroics, The Curse of Cur, and Raffy Calfy's Rescue. Visit her blog here.
A Varied Career Path Leads to Animal Rescue, Activism, and Finally to Writing on Behalf of Animals and their Oft-Unheard Pleas for Help
Author Tamira Thayne writes fiction, nonfiction, and children's books, all with the common theme of advocating for the voiceless—animals in today's society.
Full media kit for It Went to the Dogs
It Went to the Dogs: How Michael Vick's Dogfighting Compound Became a Haven for Rescue Pups
Written by Tamira Thayne
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Tamira Thayne was labeled the 'animal lover' in the family from an early age growing up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. This love combined with a deep empathy for dogs—the most social of beings—ostracised to the end of a chain led her to form Dogs Deserve Better, Inc. in the fall of 2002. Ms. Thayne passed the reins of the nonprofit organization to new leadership in March 2015.
Tamira led Dogs Deserve Better through the organization's quest to buy Michael Vick's former dogfighting compound in Smithfield, Virginia. In mid-2011 they succeeded, and began the transformation of the property formerly known only for abuse to a rescue haven for chained dogs. Tamira oversaw payment in full of the Good Newz Rehab Center by 2014.
Through her work for chained dogs, Tamira has suffered in her quest to bring them freedom, but only a fraction as much as the dogs suffer. She spent 878 hours chained to doghouses in front of State Capitols and other locations educating and advocating for better laws; she has spoken at over 75 venues nationwide about the issue and how we can be better friends to those who depend on us for their very existence; she has been arrested four times for helping dogs left in deplorable conditions and sometimes so ill they were unable to stand.
From 2002 until her retirement from the nonprofit world in 2015, Tamira had herself rescued and rehabilitated over 250 formerly chained and penned dogs; her organization, over 3000. The dog pictured above, Banshee, became one of her favorites, and he loved her with a fierceness she still misses to this day. He died of lung cancer in late 2010. Watch the video of his last fetch here.